If you're just coming in, you should start with part one and work your way up to here.
--------------------
My parents hated my friends, growing up. Sure, there were a few they liked okay, but most of the ones that stuck, they encouraged me over and over to abandon. More than once, I was denied rides to friends' houses because they "didn't think she was a good influence on me." This was made all the worse by the fact that we lived five miles out of town, in a small neighborhood with one kid my age. I couldn't walk to friends' houses, and my parents wouldn't take me. I became very isolated.
I still struggle with this isolation, even today. I was taught repeatedly as a kid that you never invite yourself over to someone else's house. You never ask to come over, you wait for them to invite you. This is a habit that has so ingrained itself in my behavior, I can't go over to my own grandmother's house without an invitation. I spend the whole time feeling like a burden, imposing on the good graces of my host.
Because I never invited myself over to my friends' houses, and it was often "inconvenient" (per my parents' insistence) to invite them to mine, I rarely saw them outside of school. This served exactly my parents' intended purpose - whether they would admit it or not - of separating me from the friends they didn't like. While I was home, alone, in my room, my best friends were out there making other best friends. Ones that could come over and hang out when they asked.
Even when I got my own car, much of my life was scripted for me. Although the grip loosened a bit when I turned 18, I was still treated like a 15-year-old, well into adulthood. Anytime I was living at home, my schedule was completely subject to my parents' schedule. If they wanted me somewhere, it was immediately far more important than anything I could possibly have had to do. Meaning of course, that, should I dare to make plans without checking with them first, it was entirely my fault if it inconvenienced them in any way, and was therefore deserving of punishment.
For example:
The summer after Bear and I started dating, Venus and I decided to have a sleepover, along with our close friend Sabrina*. I was 22 years old, I left a note on the counter for my parents, so they wouldn't worry, I figured I was in the clear.
I was wrong.
My dad called, about 10:00, asking me where the hell I was. I mentioned my note, and he said he had found it, and then proceeded to go on for five minutes about how irresponsible I was, and, essentially, how dare I have a sleepover with my friends without his permission.
Remember, I was 22 years old.
He then proceeded to go on for another ten minutes about how irresponsible Venus was. A single mother with two kids (who were with their father that week), living in public housing (so is my boyfriend, dad, what's your point?), without a real job (she did and still does work full time in the emergency room at the hospital). He went on about how if she has free time, she should be using it to look for a real job (again, she had one, and it was the middle of the night. Where's she job hunting, China?), not throw sleepovers like a teenager.
I wanted to scream at him, "We are adults! You don't get to control us anymore!" but I couldn't. I knew if I did, there was a world of backlash and abuse waiting for me when I got home, so I kept my mouth shut for the most part, keeping to correcting facts only when he was dead wrong, and muttering sarcastic mm-hmm's when necessary.
Essentially, what it all amounted to was that my friends weren't good enough for him. Because they weren't part of the plan he had for my life - one in which I was a singer and musician, playing happily with the family band for the rest of my life - they were "bad influences." They "weren't encouraging me to follow my passions." The so-called passions he projected onto my life, which in fact he had done a very good job of killing stone-dead.
Oh, sure, they had started out as passions of my own. Passions for music and songwriting, that my parents aggressively over-supported, to the point of irritation. They bought me guitars, pushed me to seek performance opportunities, even drafted me into what started as a band with several of their friends, but quickly evolved into a "family band," a la the Von Trapps or the Partridge Family, playing seasonal programs of original music at churches nearly every weekend. My sisters were drafted too, when all their friends moved on with their lives. Suddenly, our dreams of performing music were sidenotes to their dreams of having a famous family band. After all, if they achieved their dream, we achieved ours by default. Everybody wins.
Except the part where everybody loses. Because when the only people in your band are your children, it becomes very easy to let it take over everyone's lives. It got to the point where we were forced to rehearse for hours every night - god forbid we make plans of our own - running the same songs and stupid, slapdash scripts over and over and over and over until they were good enough to be deemed worthy. But, of course, they never were. Nothing short of absolute perfection was ever good enough for my father, the self-proclaimed leader of the band. If we complained, we were reminded that if we want to be professional musicians, we would need to practice every single day, just like this, even if we wanted to have solo careers. That was the point at which I began to hate music. It got progressively worse the longer we were involved. My father complained frequently that no one ever had input for the band except him, but when we did give input - like my suggestion that the poorly-written scripts that accompanied our programs were childish and embarrassing - we were shot down, told that he was right and we were wrong, and we were doing it his way anyway, because that's what people wanted. It's no wonder we all stopped talking altogether during rehearsals. Rarely did a rehearsal go by that didn't involve at least one fight - usually between my father and my youngest sister - and someone in tears - usually my mother, who blamed every problem on herself. As soon as I moved out of the house for good, I vowed I would never play with them again, and to this day, I haven't.
While I understand that they just wanted to see me achieve my dreams, their seeming expectation that I would achieve them at the age of 15, 16, 17, to me indicated that I was somehow a failure. Although they waxed poetic about how much they loved my songwriting, or pushed me into seeking performance opportunities (by reminding me that family friends much younger than me were performing somewhere new every weekend. Thanks, dad), my big break never came, and their encouragement turned into unbearable pressure.
Their curiosity as to whether I had written anything new lately turned quickly into guilt and shame, as they reminded me that successful musicians wrote new songs every day, and I should really be focusing on my craft, instead of hanging out with people who don't play music, or watching Netflix all the time.
This was especially evident in my relationship with Brunhilda. For three years, they encouraged me to make friends in the music department, and find a different roommate, who would challenge and encourage me in my music. I didn't have the heart to tell them, music majors do not like me, and frankly, I didn't much like them. Olivet was a classical music school, and while I loved composing, my personality was not compatible with the singers and musicians of the department. Classical musicians have a way of being a bit stuffy, even if they don't intend to, and while I was acquainted with many of them, and found friendships with a handful, I was still the weirdo, the creative free spirit, who didn't jive so well with their flawless professionalism. As for the other composition majors, it turns out composers are few and far between, and tend to be sort of introverted. Nowhere did I find the sort of companionship, the instant connection, that I found with Brunhilda and the gaming club. Here were the kind of people I could relate to, the ones who didn't fit in, and liked it that way.
But, along came my parents, pushing me to "spend time with people who are interested in the same things as you," as if that wasn't exactly what I was doing.
Perhaps my parents were right to try and pull me away from these friendships. After all, most of them turned out just like I have - disillusioned, alienated, forging their own paths of not-my-mother's-Jesus, daring to question the strict conservative upbringing of their forefathers. These independent, free-thinking, open-minded adults - Lord knows those aren't the kind of influences you want your children to have. After all, they might spread their heathen gospels of "Love thy neighbor" and "equal rights" and "forgiveness."
We are rapidly becoming the norm among our generation - a generation of rejects and heathens, raised one way, but discovering others. A whole demographic of former fundamentalists, raised in fear of the big, scary real world, where everything is a trap, out to steal you away from your true purpose, only to discover that the real world is neither big nor scary, and people with different opinions - and even, dare I say, different religions - are just as nice as your childhood youth pastor, and do not, in fact, want to drag you straight to hell, as countless youth groups and parent-provided literary works had promised. A world where you can have a civil discussion with someone who disagrees with you - and come away not hating each other with the passion of a thousand suns. You may even find yourself admitting you were in the wrong!
In this way, this generation is slowly developing a new definition of Christianity. One that rejects the guilt and shame so many of us were trained to accept as normal. A definition in which mercy is something that is granted, not earned, and your neighbor's opinions are just as valid as your own. Where church isn't the only place you can find Holy Ground, and a suit and tie is not a necessary step toward salvation.
We are taking the modern, clean, well-behaved White Jesus, and saying, "this is not the Jesus I worship." Our Jesus is a filthy, barefoot, radical who hung out with prostitutes and tax collectors. Our Jesus is the Jesus who turned over the tables in the temple, and bravely defied the teachings of all those who came before him. A Jesus who dares to say, "maybe your way isn't the best way," to the respected elders and high priests. Who took all the rules of the old testament and threw them out, in favor of just two: "Love the Lord your God," and "Love thy neighbor as thyself." My faith may not be my mother's faith, but it is my own. I couldn't have it any other way.
[Continued in Part Seven.]
--------------------
*names have been changed for privacy.
--------------------
My parents hated my friends, growing up. Sure, there were a few they liked okay, but most of the ones that stuck, they encouraged me over and over to abandon. More than once, I was denied rides to friends' houses because they "didn't think she was a good influence on me." This was made all the worse by the fact that we lived five miles out of town, in a small neighborhood with one kid my age. I couldn't walk to friends' houses, and my parents wouldn't take me. I became very isolated.
I still struggle with this isolation, even today. I was taught repeatedly as a kid that you never invite yourself over to someone else's house. You never ask to come over, you wait for them to invite you. This is a habit that has so ingrained itself in my behavior, I can't go over to my own grandmother's house without an invitation. I spend the whole time feeling like a burden, imposing on the good graces of my host.
Because I never invited myself over to my friends' houses, and it was often "inconvenient" (per my parents' insistence) to invite them to mine, I rarely saw them outside of school. This served exactly my parents' intended purpose - whether they would admit it or not - of separating me from the friends they didn't like. While I was home, alone, in my room, my best friends were out there making other best friends. Ones that could come over and hang out when they asked.
Even when I got my own car, much of my life was scripted for me. Although the grip loosened a bit when I turned 18, I was still treated like a 15-year-old, well into adulthood. Anytime I was living at home, my schedule was completely subject to my parents' schedule. If they wanted me somewhere, it was immediately far more important than anything I could possibly have had to do. Meaning of course, that, should I dare to make plans without checking with them first, it was entirely my fault if it inconvenienced them in any way, and was therefore deserving of punishment.
For example:
The summer after Bear and I started dating, Venus and I decided to have a sleepover, along with our close friend Sabrina*. I was 22 years old, I left a note on the counter for my parents, so they wouldn't worry, I figured I was in the clear.
I was wrong.
My dad called, about 10:00, asking me where the hell I was. I mentioned my note, and he said he had found it, and then proceeded to go on for five minutes about how irresponsible I was, and, essentially, how dare I have a sleepover with my friends without his permission.
Remember, I was 22 years old.
He then proceeded to go on for another ten minutes about how irresponsible Venus was. A single mother with two kids (who were with their father that week), living in public housing (so is my boyfriend, dad, what's your point?), without a real job (she did and still does work full time in the emergency room at the hospital). He went on about how if she has free time, she should be using it to look for a real job (again, she had one, and it was the middle of the night. Where's she job hunting, China?), not throw sleepovers like a teenager.
I wanted to scream at him, "We are adults! You don't get to control us anymore!" but I couldn't. I knew if I did, there was a world of backlash and abuse waiting for me when I got home, so I kept my mouth shut for the most part, keeping to correcting facts only when he was dead wrong, and muttering sarcastic mm-hmm's when necessary.
Essentially, what it all amounted to was that my friends weren't good enough for him. Because they weren't part of the plan he had for my life - one in which I was a singer and musician, playing happily with the family band for the rest of my life - they were "bad influences." They "weren't encouraging me to follow my passions." The so-called passions he projected onto my life, which in fact he had done a very good job of killing stone-dead.
Oh, sure, they had started out as passions of my own. Passions for music and songwriting, that my parents aggressively over-supported, to the point of irritation. They bought me guitars, pushed me to seek performance opportunities, even drafted me into what started as a band with several of their friends, but quickly evolved into a "family band," a la the Von Trapps or the Partridge Family, playing seasonal programs of original music at churches nearly every weekend. My sisters were drafted too, when all their friends moved on with their lives. Suddenly, our dreams of performing music were sidenotes to their dreams of having a famous family band. After all, if they achieved their dream, we achieved ours by default. Everybody wins.
Except the part where everybody loses. Because when the only people in your band are your children, it becomes very easy to let it take over everyone's lives. It got to the point where we were forced to rehearse for hours every night - god forbid we make plans of our own - running the same songs and stupid, slapdash scripts over and over and over and over until they were good enough to be deemed worthy. But, of course, they never were. Nothing short of absolute perfection was ever good enough for my father, the self-proclaimed leader of the band. If we complained, we were reminded that if we want to be professional musicians, we would need to practice every single day, just like this, even if we wanted to have solo careers. That was the point at which I began to hate music. It got progressively worse the longer we were involved. My father complained frequently that no one ever had input for the band except him, but when we did give input - like my suggestion that the poorly-written scripts that accompanied our programs were childish and embarrassing - we were shot down, told that he was right and we were wrong, and we were doing it his way anyway, because that's what people wanted. It's no wonder we all stopped talking altogether during rehearsals. Rarely did a rehearsal go by that didn't involve at least one fight - usually between my father and my youngest sister - and someone in tears - usually my mother, who blamed every problem on herself. As soon as I moved out of the house for good, I vowed I would never play with them again, and to this day, I haven't.
While I understand that they just wanted to see me achieve my dreams, their seeming expectation that I would achieve them at the age of 15, 16, 17, to me indicated that I was somehow a failure. Although they waxed poetic about how much they loved my songwriting, or pushed me into seeking performance opportunities (by reminding me that family friends much younger than me were performing somewhere new every weekend. Thanks, dad), my big break never came, and their encouragement turned into unbearable pressure.
Their curiosity as to whether I had written anything new lately turned quickly into guilt and shame, as they reminded me that successful musicians wrote new songs every day, and I should really be focusing on my craft, instead of hanging out with people who don't play music, or watching Netflix all the time.
This was especially evident in my relationship with Brunhilda. For three years, they encouraged me to make friends in the music department, and find a different roommate, who would challenge and encourage me in my music. I didn't have the heart to tell them, music majors do not like me, and frankly, I didn't much like them. Olivet was a classical music school, and while I loved composing, my personality was not compatible with the singers and musicians of the department. Classical musicians have a way of being a bit stuffy, even if they don't intend to, and while I was acquainted with many of them, and found friendships with a handful, I was still the weirdo, the creative free spirit, who didn't jive so well with their flawless professionalism. As for the other composition majors, it turns out composers are few and far between, and tend to be sort of introverted. Nowhere did I find the sort of companionship, the instant connection, that I found with Brunhilda and the gaming club. Here were the kind of people I could relate to, the ones who didn't fit in, and liked it that way.
But, along came my parents, pushing me to "spend time with people who are interested in the same things as you," as if that wasn't exactly what I was doing.
Perhaps my parents were right to try and pull me away from these friendships. After all, most of them turned out just like I have - disillusioned, alienated, forging their own paths of not-my-mother's-Jesus, daring to question the strict conservative upbringing of their forefathers. These independent, free-thinking, open-minded adults - Lord knows those aren't the kind of influences you want your children to have. After all, they might spread their heathen gospels of "Love thy neighbor" and "equal rights" and "forgiveness."
We are rapidly becoming the norm among our generation - a generation of rejects and heathens, raised one way, but discovering others. A whole demographic of former fundamentalists, raised in fear of the big, scary real world, where everything is a trap, out to steal you away from your true purpose, only to discover that the real world is neither big nor scary, and people with different opinions - and even, dare I say, different religions - are just as nice as your childhood youth pastor, and do not, in fact, want to drag you straight to hell, as countless youth groups and parent-provided literary works had promised. A world where you can have a civil discussion with someone who disagrees with you - and come away not hating each other with the passion of a thousand suns. You may even find yourself admitting you were in the wrong!
In this way, this generation is slowly developing a new definition of Christianity. One that rejects the guilt and shame so many of us were trained to accept as normal. A definition in which mercy is something that is granted, not earned, and your neighbor's opinions are just as valid as your own. Where church isn't the only place you can find Holy Ground, and a suit and tie is not a necessary step toward salvation.
We are taking the modern, clean, well-behaved White Jesus, and saying, "this is not the Jesus I worship." Our Jesus is a filthy, barefoot, radical who hung out with prostitutes and tax collectors. Our Jesus is the Jesus who turned over the tables in the temple, and bravely defied the teachings of all those who came before him. A Jesus who dares to say, "maybe your way isn't the best way," to the respected elders and high priests. Who took all the rules of the old testament and threw them out, in favor of just two: "Love the Lord your God," and "Love thy neighbor as thyself." My faith may not be my mother's faith, but it is my own. I couldn't have it any other way.
[Continued in Part Seven.]
--------------------
*names have been changed for privacy.
No comments:
Post a Comment