I was saved when I was 13 years old.

 

I remember the day very well. I remember  dress I was wearing. I remember where I was sitting in the old church my parents brought me to every Sunday morning and Sunday night and Wedesday night and on the weekends for Youth Activities. I remember this feeling of just...needing to go to the front, to the altar, to take to the preacher. I remember going down there, remember telling him "I want to be Saved." I remember his squeezing my hand. I remember him saying "Praise God. Thank you Jesus." I remember him taking me to a bench, asking me a few questions, leading me through the Sinner's Prayer. I remember standing in front of the church, all the people coming by and shaking my hand or giving me a hug. I remember feeling like I belonged, finally.

 

That feeling -- and it was a wonderful feeling, a sense of belonging and acceptance that I'd never really had before -- lasted for a week. Maybe two. Then it was replaced by Rules. Rules for what I Must Do to be a Good Christian Girl. There were so so so many rules. Pray every day. Read the Bible every day. Tell EVERYONE about Jesus (as though they'd never heard it before!). No swearing. No drinking. No dancing. No dating until you're at least 16 and then only with boys from church and only in groups, never alone. Confess your sins every night because you don't want to die and have unconfessed sin, that'll get you punished when you get to Heaven. Oh, you'll go to Heaven because you accepted Jesus, but it won't be as good as it could have been if you die with unconfessed sin. Even those sins you don't know you committed! Yes, that's right. You can commit a sin and not know about it and if you die without confessing it, it screws over your Heavenly Reward! So every night, I prayed, "Jesus, forgive me for the sins I committed today and didn't realize."

 

My feeling of belong was replaced with a feeling of inferiority, of never being good enough, never being able to Do It All Right and of being a Failure as a person. I was always terrified I'd do something wrong. Always terrified I'd let God down. Always always always afraid. Fear became the dominant theme of my life.

 

I spent a year, from about 16 to 17, being totally, completely afriad to do anything not directly related to God or the Church. I wouldn't allow myself to watch television. Or listen to non-Christian music. I made myself read a chapter of the Bible every night. I prayed all the time. Constantly. No ending. I wasn't doing this because I loved God or because it made me feel more loved or whole or whatever. I was doing it because I was TERRIFIED I was going to fuck up and go to Hell. I was certain that I was bad, wrong, damned, completely unworthy. And why wouldn't I feel that way? Everything the church taught me said I was. God was doing me a favor by letting me into Heaven, but he'd only do it if I followed all the rules and said all the right things and thought all the right thoughts and went to the right school and got the right career and married the right boy and had all the right children and made them go through the whole cycle again.

 

I was terrified and traumatized by my experiences growing up. And NO ONE noticed. Or, if they did notice, they didn't say anything. They just let me go on. That last year, that year I was so intense on being Good and True and Right, I was falling apart. I cried all the time. I slept all the time. I had no joy. I had no peace. I was clearly totally fucked up. And NO ONE noticed. NO ONE did a damned thing. My parents took me to see the preacher. He told me to read my Bible more! Like I wasn't reading it enough? Every day, chapter after chapter. Every day, more and more depressed and suicidal.

 

When I moved out to go to college, when I was 17, I made the conscience choice NOT to go to church anymore. I decided I would NOT join the Baptist Student Association like my parents expected me to. I made the decision I was NOT going to seek out religious students to be my friends. I'd just had enough. I'd spent a year, throwing myself at God's feet, begging him to love me and accept me and to Make Me Good and to take the pain away, and he just wasn't listening. Or maybe he was listening and he didn't care? Maybe he was the sort of God who got off on causing teenage girls pain. You could certainly make a case for that from reading his Bible. Lots of pain and destruction and torturing his children in there. So I'd had enough. Fuck this, I thought. Well, didn't use that language at the time. I was too terrified of burning forever for it. But that was it, essentially. Fuck This. I tried. I did my best. I believed and I loved and I followed the rules and what did it get me? Standing in front of the mirror in my parents' bathroom, looking at a bottle of my Mom's sleeping pills, trying to make a list of all the sins I'd committed so I could confess them all before taking the bottle and sleeping forever, that's what it got me. Looking at all of my father's hunting rifles that were in the gun cabinet, all easily accessable with plenty of ammo, trying to decide the best place to shoot myself to make sure it worked and I didn't end up a vegetable for the next 60 years, because my parents wouldn't turn off the life support.

 

So Fuck That, I thought. I was still alive and I was out of my parents house and I could decide if I was going to submit myself to that torture anymore. And I said No. Just, no. It was the most radical thing I'd done in my life and I was scared out of my mind. But I knew, I knew if I was going to survive and be a functional, happy person, I had to get out. I had to get away from the place that had filled me with so much fear all my life. I had tried to be what they wanted me to be. I had tried so so hard to be the person God told me I was supposed to be. And I just couldn't do it.