Sharing my story (LONG) - new here

Hey everyone,

Hope you’re all doing okay this evening. I just wanted to share a little bit of my story and maybe see if any of you relate. Feel free to comment or share your thoughts/experiences underneath this post.

I grew up in a Pentecostal household in the Midwest. Church and God and Jesus is everything to my family. We bounced around from church to church until we settled on one and that’s the one I grew up in most of my life.

As a child I attended Sunday school, went to church picnics, church on Sundays and even went to services and prayer meetings at other pentecostal churches sometimes. As I grew up, I started attending youth nights on Fridays, Bible studies on Thursday nights, Band on Wednesday’s and prayer meetings on Mondays and church services Sundays twice a day (I went backwards there lol).

How would I describe my experience in the church? Tbh I think looking back I had very mixed feelings as a child and didn’t even realize it. I loved God and found the Bible to be inspirational and amazing and even had these “supernatural” experiences with God. I felt like I was connected with something bigger than myself and it felt good to be a part of a community.

Speaking of community though, I think for the most part I was very uncomfortable with the community I was raised in. People were very judge mental, condescending, mean, backstabbing, gossiping, narcissistic, and more. I felt as though I could never fully connect with either the males or females in the church environment but I did connect moreso with the females.

I was very heavily involved in the community and a lot of people from the same community but from other churches out of state started to know me and get acquainted with me. I had an Instagram following of about 1,300 people with kids around my age or older (then 17) from this community.

Everything kind of changed once I graduated high school and moved away. By then I had realized I was into men and once I moved to the south (funny huh… but In a liberal city) I realized my whole life I struggled with gender dysphoria which was a huge reason why I did not really identify with the other boys and couldn’t meet other peoples expectations. People were awful to me sometimes and treated me strange because I think they knew something was up with me.

I was 18 (now 25) when I began to really think about the whole logic of Christianity and how it didn’t make sense. Why would God create a system which was rigged? God is the creator of everything we know… therefore he must have created the devil. God is all knowing so he must have known that creating this devil would cause the fall of mankind which he would also create which would result in millions of people being sent to hell for eternity… it just did not make sense to me and I think this is what really started to give a bad taste of Christianity in my mouth.

I still live in the same city in the south, but I moved back home to the Midwest (in 2015) for 3 years after living in the south for 4 months. Those 3 years were awful as I was manipulated and gaslighted and abused by my parents emotionally and verbally. I would always fight with them because they gave me so much shit for my sexual identity and wanted me to conform to their standards of living and I absolutely refused. I am the type of person to do what the hell I want and nobody else. They tried really hard to brainwash me and force their stupid beliefs down my throat and I would have none of it.

Honestly, those 3 years were extremely tough and traumatized me. I finally moved back to my city in the south in late 2018 after finishing my community college (which was the whole reason why I moved back). I initially left for the south because my narcissistic father was giving me an extremely difficult time and basically bullying me just weeks before I was about to start college in the Midwest.

Now that I’m 25 I basically don’t really keep in touch with my family. I was here in the city where they reside (my hometown) for a whole week and they didn’t know. I’m in the airport now to fly back home to the south.

It makes me sad. I don’t speak with my father anymore (which I’m ok with Bc he’s a narcissist) but not to speak to my mother brothers and sister hurts sometimes. My mom is honestly kind of narcissistic too and toxic. She still tries to force the whole thing down my throat. My entire family basically lovebombs me and guilt trips me for living the way I want to and it makes me want nothing to do with them.

Just thought I’d write this. I was thinking about when I used to be a part of the church and miss having a sense of community. But it’s all too much… all the shit they believe in… it’s basically a cult.

Anyways, have any of you had similar experiences? I’d love to hear yours.