I need to catch up on my therapy homework. I've been in an experimental therapy program, and I have to do freaking worksheets for it. It's really annoying, at this point, because it hasn't seemed to be helping. I thought maybe it'd be good for me, but it mostly just feels like a waste of time. They finally sent me some of my money for it, and I'm grateful, but I just want to stay home so bad. Therapy is exhausting, and it doesn't feel like I'm solving any of my own problems. It really does just feel like work. And I know that it is lowkey, but I thought maybe I'd get SOMETHING out of it. I do feel more valid in that I am not alone in my experiences, but that doesn't really feel like a virtue of the therapy. That feels like a virtue of getting into a room with other people who share the same criteria as me. And I don't think any of them really like me. Which doesn't matter, but when I see the uncertainty on peoples' faces when I talk to them I straight up want to kill myself. Not a healthy thought, this is known, but what am I gonna do, talk about it in therapy? Post about it on social media? As if. There's no safe forum to be vulnerable with others, not really, so I'll have to do it on a pedestal instead.

I am Highkey Angry All of the Time

I went to a city meeting yesterday and there was a religious extremist there, a traveling preacher, and he came off so awful. He obscured where he was from and what sect he was from. He was neither from here nor from the sect that people in this area tend to be from, but he neglected to really introduce himself properly. He really tried to insinuate himself into the local culture but didn't know shit. It was like... offputting and sickening. He was such a fucking snake. It's not his origin nor his sect that bothers me, not really, but the fact that he was trying to obscure himself in order to pretend to the city council that he spoke for the people here. It really gave me a heavy heart. Does he think people are that stupid? But also, these freaks really do succeed. They're doing it in Texas, Arkansas, Alabama, Tennessee, Florida, Ohio, Michigan, California... they're creating cities where people are encouraged to tattle on women who are trying to get family planning assistance, they're harrassing people who work for clinics and literally lying about them and calling them criminals in public, they're silencing the actual opinions of those who live in a place. I feel like that ought to be illegal. It's really getting me pissed.

Thinking about this stuff has me thinking about dark pasts. Religious extremists in other countries, the projections of soothsayers who have been right about the alt-right playbook so far, the ways this mirrors civil wars. The way that when I was part of those groups that wanted to control womens' bodies that way, I was taught it was going to be war someday. I was raised anticipating needing to be a soldier. I was raised thinking we'd have to kill the demons, and then I was told the demons were teachers, doctors, liberals, gays, and so on. I ran across the country to be away from my church, and I got a moment's rest, but here they are again. The extremist soldiers of a violent god.

A friend told me that people reacted badly to him in the crowd, that the town is full of reasonable people. Every place that's been taken over by extremists is full of reasonable people! People are reasonable! But religious extremists are extreme, and they do terrible, extreme things. Terrorism, harrassment, murder, lynching, killing, blackmailing, lying lying lying, demonizing, scapegoating, holy war.

The reason I left my own religious group in the first place was because I realized they were harming their own followers. Children. But if someone reaches full adulthood, 30s 40s 50s, and does not think, "Wow this makes me feel really disgusting, and it kinda sucks that we're teaching thousands of kids to feel that they are evil deep down," then I can't imagine that I can help them. But people leave cults all the time, so maybe I ought to have hope.

I also just know that these people often don't really have their moral faculties about them. They're told their own feelings and instincts and thoughts are bad, and they ought to only listen to the leader who speaks for God. I was terrible back before the truth hit me like a bolt of lightning. It was like a bolt of lightning, though. I don't know how my mind came to it, but I just thought, wait... The way I feel is how they are making those children feel. I can accept that treatment of me, but I cannot accept that treatment of children. I was just disgusted.

But we live in a broader culture that hates children, including and especially the types who consider childbearing mandatory, because they're the type to think, "Spare the rod, spoil the child." I feel like when I was a child I hated children, but soon after I reached adulthood I suddenly realized my responsibility to them. All adults have a responsibility towards children in their community. And all adults in my community were failing those children. I couldn't be a part of it. I hope others will learn to feel responsible towards childrens' wellbeing, not just towards controlling them and their mothers with an iron fist, punishing them for daring to be anything but a fatherly head of household. I hope others will realize that it is particularly disgusting to be so cruel to people early in their development, especially if that child wasn't even wanted by their mother. I believe in choice, but if choice were removed, kind treatment of those children is required. The church must take accountability for the things they force others to do.

It's the next day

Therapy was helpful. I need to move onto my next day's blog, so I'll make this short. During therapy, I've been realizing that I need to give people a chance to get to know me and to judge me and to disappoint me, just in case there is a chance that it turns out okay. I've been really closed off. Even with my friends, I'm not really truthful, because I can't be. There is such a limited range of emotions I allow myself to express directly to people. Anger is one of them. My heart feels heavy when I think of my past, and it falls right down into my stomach when the people who ruined my childhood and my family and my country appear before me. I can't assume that people are always going to ruin my life, even if everybody has the power to. I can't live life thinking that everyone wants to kill me immediately, even if I know plenty of them want to kill people LIKE me EVENTUALLY. I don't know how to be an optimist.