Adults, as Useful as a Limp Noodle

I am reading a book with a criminal profiler as the main character.  He fears he is so very good at his job because he could easily become like the people he profiles.  He has an insight into their deviant behaviors because of his own up bring.  He says how he learned to act like the people around him to avoided the abuse.  He presented a mask only pretending to be human and that thought struck me.  I never did that to cope.  I felt like my very presence was offensive, it didn't matter how well I acted.  I learn to modify my behavior to become invisible, but I did not pretend to be any thing but who I was.  I had hope that when a person overcame their prejudice they would like me and enough did, so I continue to try.

I need to make a clarification.  When I say "people" I mean that as the unspecific masses like when you hear "1,000 people died in accident".  You feel sorrow for them and maybe a bit of outrage, but you are able to continue you everyday life without disturbance. I have noticed that when an individual is highlighted by the media or a story the tragedy is easier to comprehend,  we can feel the families sorrow, the injustice and we become inflame for the individual.  That is how I think of my interactions the group is the big bad wolf and the individuals did enough for me to hang on.

I know that this is happening as you read my personal story.  When I was going through it I did not have the understanding of what was happening.  I could not explain any of it and I know a lot of individuals are feeling guilty.  I'm not going to say everything is OK and I am not going to say the way you should feel.  Now that I am able to voice my feelings.  I do not want to hear apologies.  I am writing specific instants of what happened to me because they are the instances that my thinking changed for good or for bad.  I believe that is what is important and if I can help others to understand then this exercise has been worth while.

Let me make it clear that I did not grow up being abused.  The constant ridicule happened when we moved.  I feel like my personality was formed.  I had developed relationships with peers however dysfunctional they were.  I was thrust into a new life that did not work out for me and I became very fearful of change.  I saw how my situation could be worse and I was frighten that it would become my reality.  I only had to deal with my peer group at school and 2 hours in church.  They could not attack me during class time, so I was able to make some progress with some of the fellow students.  Recess and Lunch were a horror and I learned to never be in the same place every time.  I became the most successful at blending into the fringes of large groups.  That was the best defense until some one noticed me and yelled for me to "get away".

I truly became aware of how ineffectual adults were in 6th grade.  A boy, I can't even remember his name, decide to make me his prime target.  Every moment of every day he tortured me.  It wasn't enough at recess & lunch, he had to get me during class time and he would by pretending to sharpen his pencil and pull my hair on the way to the sharpener.  He came up with constant ways to upset and hurt me.  And he did it all right in front of the teacher.  Yes, her back would be turned when hit me.    He would wait until I walked out the door and follow clipping my heals with his shoes.  The teacher would tell him to stop, but it did not matter.  I felt like I had no recourse to his actions.  The adults could tell him to stop all they wanted, it did not mean he would.  I saw how ineffectual those in authority really were.  The boy would be all smiles to their faces, but turn on me faster than a rattlesnake.  I really thought he would leave me alone.  I did not have experiences with this kind of hostility and I had no idea that the boy would only escalate.

I followed the being bullied rules.  I found them in this book and I realized that I had followed the same rules for the same reasons.

Ever since the bullies had started to pick on him, the smallest boy in the street and in his class, he'd learned the harsh lessons of self-control.  "never show they've hit the mark it only reveals your weak points."   -Val McDermid

I did not do the next part.

Learn to be one of the lads.  Learn the Vocabulary, learn the body language, acquire the attitude.  Mix it all together and what do you get?  You get a man who hasn't the remotest idea of who he is.  You have a consummate actor, a human impostor who can take on local color like a chameleon -Val McDermid

My look was so different I wasn't able to do that to avoid the attention, but as I've thought about it I am able to be nice.  It takes a huge amount of effort and concentration, but I am able to be charming and clever.  I can blend into the likes of the people I am with even if I do not agree.  The trick is to get them talking about themselves or what they like.  It is nice when the conversation is established, but I get tired at have to lead the conversation, of having to ask the guy to dance or have to pay for the date.  I also get very, very, tired of the rejection.

Back to 6th grade, I couldn't cry.  I couldn't show weakness or pain or the wolves would descend.  He bothered me for months.  I really thought he would get bored.  I did not react and I did not care about him when I left school for the day, but he did not stop.

I can't remember what pushed me over the edge.  What he did to inflame me so much.  I think it was nothing.  I think it had just gotten to be too much and I could not take it anymore.  We were standing in line to go back to class and no matter how much I tried to ignore him he would stand behind me whispering crap into my ear.  I turn on my heels and in one swift motion I punched him in the chest.  He fell to the ground crying.  Satisfaction, but no joy.  I was upset to hurt him so badly.  When he caught his breath he immediately ran to the teacher and told on me.  The absolute injustice was so bitter I could not take it.   He had been physically and mentally abusive to me for months.  The teacher never seeming to care and because he was crying and pathetic I was suspended from school.

The hardness came at that point.  I could not trust anyone.  I accepted my punishment because I did hit him.  My parents congratulated me.  I guess they knew that something else had to be going on because of my reaction.  My parents protested and the boy was suspended also.  It didn't matter.  I became so afraid of authority after that.  I was not popular or cute and I was not believed.  It was after this instance that I knew to keep my head down.

I did my good things in private.  I worked really hard on my projects and I learned if my name wasn't attached then the object of my attention had more success.  I stopped telling people what I liked or what I created.  I love ebay because they have no idea what I look like.  They buy my work because they like it.  I feel like that is true of today.  My clothing and costumes should be judged on their own merit, not because some one likes me or not. Everything in life seems to be a damn popularity contest.  It isn't talent amd I know in that kind of contest I would always lose. Unfortunately I have failed in the work environment because of "being myself".  I know I need to be more excited and love a 9 to 5 job, but I really don't do well in the constrains of an office.  In the work enviornment it seems to be more important how you do the work then the results.  I do not walk the path of others, I like to think and explore other options and I find that authority frowning at me once again, but I don't care, I choose my own way.

My "Welcome" to Simi Valley

This is what I look like in 6th grade.  Can you blame the treament?

Moving was one of the most traumatic events of my life, if not the most traumatic.  I know my brothers were getting into trouble with some iffy people, but the move felt like a betrayal to me.  I grew up in the middle of a city, a busy city and my block was my domain.  We did not have play dates or other ward members over.  None of our family lived in that area.  I walked the city block and a half to school alone every morning and that was as far as I went.   

I was jumped by a gang of older kids walking home from 1st grade.  I have always looked older than I really am and thinking back on the experience, I believe they thought I was in my teens.  This girl taunted me every day on the walk home.  She would ride a bicycle and called me fat and whatever else she could think of.  Well I notice that a group was gathering around me one afternoon.  That only means one thing...a fight.  I was glad for a fight.  I had three brothers, so I figured I could take care of myself.  Mind you I am six years old.  I let her do her taunting and bad mouthing, the crowd egging her on.  My first real experience with the viciousness of mob mentality.  She was so busy playing to her friends that she didn't see me getting ready to strike back.  I had a backpack full of books and I knew if I could strike her in the jaw or the eye.  It would hurt.  Slowly I removed the pack from off my back and held a tight grip on the two handles at the top. I could feel the point of the book against the fabric.  She was coming towards me.  I know she wasn't ready for me to fight.  I'm sure she thought I was so scared.  I looked up to she her smiling and I decided it was time to wipe away that smile.   Wham!  The point of my book hit the side of her face, right next to the eye.  I know because I drew blood.  She fell to the ground with a look of surprise, everything got quiet.  "Should I do it Again!!"  I threaten with my backpack shaking in my nervous hands.  "Do I have to do it again!"  I shouted different forms of that sentence as she ran for her bike.  The crowd dispersed and I was never bothered walking home after that.

I felt like that fight was a territorial kind of thing and I won.  I do not believe any adults were included in the process and though it seems mean, a top dog was chosen  and I was allowed to kept my street.  I so disliked the crossing guard next to school that I changed my route to school because of her and the girl on the bike was watching her area. 

I don't remember any intentional brawls after that.  There were plenty from flared anger and childish reasoning, just ask my younger brother.  He likes to remind of the times I lost my cool.  It does take quite a bit to push me over the edge, so he had his own involvement in the feuds.

I did what I wanted in Burbank.  I had a friend who after school I would walk home with, since she was on my route.  I'm not sure how it happened, but I would stay with her after school since her mother worked until 5pm.  I wasn't allowed in the apartment, so we couldn't watch TV.  It meant we came up with our own games.  This was when I learned not everybody had the same standards as my family.  I learned the grittier side of life since every vice was practised in her apartment complex.  I was shocked that people who weren't married to each other slept together while others were busy with rampant drug use.  I was there in the afternoon, so I was left alone, but my friend was scared and if I could help, I would do what was allowed.

This happened in about 4th grade because we were still friends when we moved and I really missed her.  I was grounded only once in my childhood and it was because of this girl.  I stayed at her apartment complex for too long.  There wasn't any cell phones at the time and I never met her mother.  I wasn't allowed in the apartment, so that means I could not use the phone.  It was dark when I finally walked home.  My mother was very upset with me and I remember wondering why she would be so worried.

We moved in March of 1986.  I was 10 years old in the tail end of 5th grade.  People would ask what school I was going to be in and I answered.  "I'm not sure.  It sounds like some sort of toothpaste."(The name of my new school was "Crestview".)  The idea of Simi valley was great.  A sleepy bedroom community about 45 minutes from the TV and Movies Studios my Dad worked at.  Lower crime, lower racial biodiversity, a larger church presence and more people me and my siblings age plus a large pool in the backyard.  Like I said the idea of Simi Vally made sense.

The shock of the change proved to be my undoing.  I could not accept that I was in a room by myself on a mattress on the floor.  I would wake up in the middle of the night crying and begging to "go home"  and this is why.

I should have know what I was in for the day we moved in.  The kids on the block approached us slowly and cautiously.  Sean, a neighbor boy, admitted to me that he thought I was my younger brother's mother.  I should have taken that for a clue.  I tend to believe the best in people, especially at this point in my life.  This boy was the same age as me and he thought I was a mother.

School was so confusing.  It was different from anything I had ever known, but I felt pressured to understand everything NOW!  I was assigned another girl as a guide, but she did not want to have any association with me and skipped many of the key info.  I did not even know how to get my lunch.  Nobody was interested in taking me under their wing and the adults weren't much better.  Everything I knew, all the relationships that I had worked so hard to establish were gone and no one was interested in me. 

I thought I could impress with recess.  I was one of the best kickball players at my former school, but in Simi they didn't even have a set recess.  I had grown up with a section of the play ground assigned to each class.  Everyone wanted to be on the kickball square, but there was also handball and Dodgeball.  The girls, who never wanted to play, would roam the perimeter of the playground and come up with their own games.  In Simi it was a free for all.  No one was assign.  No formal games were started.  It really was a mess.  The worst?  No kickball, one of the few games I excelled in.  I hated every recess because I was at the mercy of the other kids.  I didn't know how to be alone yet, but moving to Simi Valley taught me how unloving others could really be.

I became a target as soon as I moved there and I remained my entire life with a red and white bullseye on my back.  I have story after story of abuse, but the first overt challenge happened soon after I moved in on that god forsaken playground.

I did not know what it was like to be hunted or what it was like to be targeted.  I did not have any friends, so I was very vulnerable.  I did not hide because I did not know there was danger ahead.  I played hopscotch by myself because it was a game I had often played back in Burbank.  I was walking across the grass when two boys decided to jump on me.  Literally they jumped on my back trying to pull me to the ground.  I wasn't going to let them.  I would be at their mercy to kicks on the grass.  Lucky for me they were pretty light and I was able to support their weight.  The major problem was their grabbing hands,  I was tiring to buck them off and so they were scrabbling for purchase.  The easiest thing to grab was my shirt.  Good idea except it had snap buttons and they immediately popped under the pressure.  I lost the use of my hands as I struggled to keep my blouse closed.  I don't think I had anything else on and I could not allow that humiliation to extend.  Meanwhile two new friends decided to join the fight.  I noticed them out of the corner of my eye.  One boy positioned himself in a couch behind me while the other boy made ready to push me from the front.  It would have worked.  I would have fallen over the kneeling boy and had been at their mercy except I did not let them.  I waited for the boy behind me to get in position and I kicked backwards as viciously as I could mange at the same time twisting my body so the boys on my shoulders fell on the advancing boy.  The three became a pile and I heard the boy behind me coughing and knew I had disabled him.  The anger bloomed.  No one had come to help me.  No one cared if I was embarrassed or injured.  I was the only one who would take care of me.  The adults finally came when the fight was all over and the boys scattered.  I wasn't asked if I was alright or what exacily had happened.  The adult gave me a warning and said if she saw me fighting again I would have to go to the principles office.  I stood there flabbergasted.  I had just been attacked in broad daylight, in front of a hundred witnesses and I was given a warning.  How stupid could these adults be?

This fight was different then the one in Burbank.  In this fight they wanted to subject me.  They wanted to hurt me for a reason that I could not fathom, so when people tell me I should open up, that I should be more loving.  People just want to love me...blah, blah, blah.  Those are just words.  I am glad that people have the decency to say those words, but action, what people DO is the real truth in my eyes.  I have heard apologies.  I have heard that people will give me a chance, but I have yet to experience that.

By the way, my mother doesn't know about any of this.  I never told anyone in my family what was happening to me everyday at school.  They guessed, I do believe.  My mother knew that people were not kind to me, but she doesn't know how bad it really was, so family, we don't have to tell her.  She doesn't read on the computer and I control which postings she reads.  I like having her seeing me innocent.  I figured out my parents could not protect me from life and I never expected them to.  What was I going to do?  Run home complaining of my treatment.  Protect me!  Protect me!  They did protect me.  I was equal in my home, even special if you talk to my brothers.  I did not want that view of me to change and I still don't.  My mother may complain about my behavior, but I am more than willing to agree with her then tell her why.  So family button you lips about what I write in here.

Every day my peers did something to me.  I had my lunch tray flicked in my face. I was told I was ugly constantly.  I had and have had plenty of achievements that went unnoticed or caused jealousy among my peers.  It felt like everything I did, thought and was successful in my old home was completely wrong in my new home. I wanted to go back to a time when I was wanted and popular.  I coped in my own way.  I have been told often how wrong I am to act so anti-social, but you know what?  Fool me once shame on you.  Fool me twice shame on me.

I got the message of being unwanted pretty quickly.

Information

I have often wanted to get a scan of my brain to see what lights up during certain tasks.  I find I have some extraordinary talents and abilities, but on the flip side I have the worst problems that I have had to figure out how to compensate for.

I have a strange mix of heritage.  On my father's side a daughter of an Italian immigrant decided she would marry a white Connecticut Yankee farmer who has been in America since it's beginning.  Oh and he was 12 years her senior.  My grandmother decided they would get married.  It was quite the scandal, but the Peck's aren't known for their outgoing nature.  They seem to be lucky if 1 out of 3 kids gets married.  No surprise when I say that my younger brother and I are the last of the Peck family line.  My younger brother managed to have a son so the name is safe for another generation.  Plus my older Brother took the last name Peck, so his two sons are adopted in. 

On my mother's side I have two genius grandparents.  My grandfather is known for his work in chemistry.  As children he would grab our arms and spin us towards him to tell of his latest findings in the lab.  With great enthusiasm he would draw chemical formulas onto napkins.  I would nod my head in agreement even though I had no idea what he was talking about, but he was so happy when he spoke I thought it had to be important.  My grandmother was very shrewed.  I knew her most as a hobbiest.  She was an amateur in everything.  Amateur painter, amateur doll maker, amateur seamstress.  Apparently she was once a college professor in Chemistry. My aunts have an article in a newspaper about my grandmother going back to work and leaving her 8 kids at home.  It was quite a new thing at that time.

My mother told me a story once that my grandfather came home bemoaning the fact that he thought he had failed the tests that they had given him at work.  My mother said that she was trying to convince him that he could not fail because they had come to study his genius.  These people had come to try and figure out what made a genius and they used my grandfather to do it.

So on one side I have the intelligent college professors and on the other side I have the street smarts.  It combined strangely in my brain.  I have some learning disabilities.  I hate language.  I do not understand its ebb and flow at all.  I feel bad because I think I helped to strangle a Spanish program in my elementary school.  My best friend was Mexican and one of her families favorite things to do was make fun of me.  They would point at an item and say what it was in Spanish.  I would try my best to repeat the word, but I could not get my mouth to do what I knew to be right.  Then the family would burst out in laughter at my mangled attempt.  I knew I could never take Spanish in school and hope to pass.  At a family reunion I sat down to hear one of my cousins say, "So how many languages are you up to?"  One cousin answered "About 5."  I immediately got up and walked away knowing I had no answer. 

Nobody ever guessed or did anything about my problems.I compensated for many of my problems.   I was a prolific reader.  I picked up a Stephen King novel in 7th grade just because it was an epic tomb.  It was "The Stand" and it was over a 1,000 pages.  I read everything else too fast.  I have an incredible vocabulary and base of knowledge because of my reading, but I reverse letters all the time.  I have had to memorize how to spell.  I can not do it phonetically.  I stayed hours after school one time because my teacher said I couldn't go until I finished an essay.  For the life of me I could not figure out how to spell "going".  I could not substitute a different word and the teacher said I had to look it up in the dictionary.  I had no idea where to look for it, so I sat there, helpless.  Finally a janitor came in to clean the room.  I was desperate.  I whispered to him to tell me how to spell going.  He told me and I finished my essay only to go home quite disgruntled.  I didn't think it was fair to do that to me.

My spelling test were atrocities.  The only subject I would get F's in, so my mother started practising with me before every test.  She would say the word and have me spell it.  I did fine with her only missing one or two words.  Then I would take the test the next day...F, in red ink.  My mother figured out that I would reverse the text when I wrote it down and looked at it.  I should have just written the word and then gone on, but it never looked right.  I was mortified when the school was looking for spelling bee contestants from each class.  I thought I would be knocked out right away.  It didn't happen.  Finally we were down to three students including me.  I got the word.  Crap!  I know how to spell it.  I did not want to be in a spelling bee when my tests were terrible, so I misspelled it on purpose.  I tried to carry spell checkers around with me, anything to not misspell words because it makes a person seem unintelligent.  I finally had a break through by accident.  My parents bought me a typewriter and word processor in one.  You could write your document first and then it would type it out when finished.  It had a spell checker that beeped the moment you spelled a word wrong.  It beeped constantly when I used it.  I would check and find that I was misspelling the same words over and over.  I still have to pause at times, but I retrained my brain to spell those common mistakes correctly.

I look at problems very differently then the people around me and I have had to learn how to adjust my words for them.  I feel misunderstood all of the time.  I gravitated towards quilting because of the way the fabrics are put together.  I glance over the instructions, but mostly I look at a picture and I decide for myself how I want to put it together.  I decide the size or I do it by how much fabric I have.  When sewing a dress I do not read the directions.  I lie in bed and I go through each step in my mind.  I cut the fabric out in my head.  I start sewing in my head and I make the mistakes in my head.  Then when I sit down to construct the garment, I have already done all the steps and I complete the project in record time.  Sometimes I wish I was a genius.  People seem more forgiven of geniuses, but I find my brain works much quicker then my hands.  I often make mistakes that a genius doesn't do because I am not exacting.  I am not obsessive in my need for control, so I often would get a math problem wrong because I did not care the 1.

I admire Sherlock Holmes and the character Dr. Georgy House on "House MD" and to a smaller degree Patrick Jane on "The Mentalist"(I think they cheat with him sometimes)  These characters observe their surroundings and are able to come to conclusions that seem like magic.  What I like about these characters is that they explain why they come up with their conclusions.  Holmes in particular seems to have a wealth of information at his fingertips.  They have incredible memories and that is a place I excel in.  I remember and because I remember when a statement is said months later I can pick up the connection.  I was in a production and doing costumes.  While I was getting my make-up done helpers were frantically trying to get other actors ready.  At first they would ask my mother where things were,but soon the helper would ask, "Where is the masking tape?" "In the Yellow California pizza kitchen bag on the little stage to the right next to the  wall."  And that was one of the reasons why I was a good costumer.  I almost always had the things needed and if I had touched it.  I knew exactly where it was.  I do not have the level of knowledge of the characters I admire, but I am able to figure out a lot about a person through body movements, tone of voice, and overheard  conversations.  I watch people.  I kind of wish I had training in being a physic, but I am not very good at improve.  People do not follow the script in my head and it can get me into trouble.

I have the ability to read people almost like books.  I can tell by the clues that we give out all the time.  An individual talks even when their is nothing coming out of their mouths.  I listen.  I listen because it was a matter of survival, but as I faded into the background I became fascinated by the dichotomy of people.  What they showed in their movements and faces does not match up to what they say.  I had the hardest time accepting that they really weren't being two face, but that they didn't know what they were projecting.  I sit to talk down with someone and I know that they are unhappy and I know that they are depressed and I know that they are trying desperately to hide it all.  I get into trouble when I say something, so I do not say anything even though I see them heading for a crash and burn. 

I figured out late in life that I remember my interaction with individuals.  I care.  I care what a person says to me.  If you tell me your favorite color or the birthday party theme.  I remember the fact and use it to start a new conversation later, but  the other person does not remember telling me these things and freaks out.  I figured this out doing a play.  I had the same conversations over and over and I did not understand.  We had gone through the whole rehearsal process together, we would perform a weekend together and by Sunday it felt awful to be separated.  Then Friday would come around again and I would pick up in the same place as when we parted, but other people didn't do that.  It was like I never existed and I had to jump through all the hoops again and overcome the obstacles again.  I would give up.  I couldn't stand having to start the relationships at 0 when I thought we had gotten to a 4.

So things never seemed to get any deeper.  Over and over the same conversations, so other people would feel at easy.  I am all for those stupid conversations about the weather, but please, can't we move on from that?  Very few. 

I did not know for along time that I was seeing what people wanted to bury.  I reacted to the traits that individuals wanted to hide and very few have been able to understand my motivations.  I do not do what is expected.  And thank goodness I really do not care anymore.  I guess that is why I finally decided to write this blog.  I fought it for years because I did not know how accepting people would be to my point of view.  In person I get yelled at and I find it much easier to bow my head and apologize for my action or really apologize for how you see my actions because I have a reason behind everything I do.

 

Why I stuck with the LDS Church- Adult

OK with this posting I could go off on so many tangents.  But I have tired to keep the story on task.

Well, I floated on my parents testimony and friends willingness to go to church for quite a while.  I felt guilty if I skipped Sunday church all together, but I still did not like going.  For the sacrament meeting I stopped sitting with my family and played with friends in the back row.  Finally I stopped sitting in the chapel all together.  I would hang out in the Foyer.  It had a sofa and nice armchairs for the parents who had to take screaming children out of the main meeting.  No nice mother's room anymore.  I liked it in the Foyer.  I liked the kids being dragged out.  They would calm down and I would play with them.  I felt like the meetings in church was a bunch of droning.  I was not interested.

I graduated High School and as I said before my Mother forced me to go to the local Community College.  I had a unique experience there I believe.  The overt taunting ended.  I would still hear a group of guys making derogatory remarks within their circle, but they kept it to themselves.  I could live with that.  I ate alone.  I studied alone,  I went to class and bowed my head trying to become as small as possible.  I had no idea how to do "small talk" with another person.  I knew I had to listen to the other persons thoughts, but really they hardly ever talked about anything I was interested in.  How do you become closer to a person when you don't agree with them?  I was in constant fear that I would say something to upset them and the hounds would be released.  So I was fine with being alone. 

But in Community College the caliber of people were different,  They had to want to be there.  Huge difference to anything I had experienced before.  The class size would shrink by the end of the semester as my peers motivation would dry up.  This was also the first time that I heard B.S. said as if it were the truth.  Not only was it crap, but people were very passionate about the crap, which confused me.  It was my first real world realization that not everyone thought the way I was taught,  How shocking!  The problem was I would express my opinion and it would be met with the same face people get when they smell a stinky diaper.  Could I be wrong?  What a new and incredible idea.

On the campus of almost all Colleges the LDS church has a space for the students to hang out, meet and take classes. It is known as Institute.  My Mother talked about loving her Institute at Yale University.  Elder Jeffery Holland was her teacher and she has many stories about her time with him.  Elder Holland in now an apostle of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a major leader.  I, on the other hand, I never went.  Finally, the leader I told you about in the last post who was still my friend, invited me to an Institute class.  I hem and hawed, but she said she would come and pick me up.  This leader was notorious for being late and I figured it would become to much for her and she would quit so I said yes with this in mind.  Well, dang it!  She was on time and dragged me to class on my day off from school. 

The class was on the history of the church.  I had heard most of it on and off most of my life.  I didn't know the whys or the who's and that was what the class was for.  I was not in a class with my peers., they mostly went at night.  I went during the day with the mother's who home schooled and grandma's.  The conversation did not interest me.  The most exciting class was when a fight erupted over Home schooling vs Public school.  I thought there was going to be some bloodshed, but no.

My friend was off talking to someone as I wandered around the building.  I knew I would not be comfortable in that space, no matter the pool table or how many puzzles were set out.  I felt like an invader in a place that was meant to feel like home.  I made a choice at that moment.  I made a choice to decide if I wanted to continue in this religion.  I was acting like all those hypocrites that I had hated in my teen years.  I knew my parents would be heart broken if I decided to end my association with the church, but I was twenty by this time and I needed to grow up.

I told my friend of my decision on the way back home.  "Oh," she said in response. "They have a religion class you could go to."  "Are you crazy?" was my reply.  "I don't want to learn about the church from a bunch of Mormons."  I thought that they would tend to be a bit too bias. I figured hearing it from members I would get a skewed view.   I wanted to hear the bad stuff that other people had always said about us.  I wanted to face the black hole of conflicting opinions.

At the time I was in a Theology class.  My teacher believed in God(but not the devil) which was quite a rarity for professors teaching that subject.  I would talk to him after class about the lessons.  In one of these talks I admitted that I grew up Mormon.  He jumped on me like a starving southern fat man seeing his mother's homemade pickled pigs feet.  "I teach a Religion of the World class.  In all my years I have never had a Mormon in my class.  If you give a talk about your religion it will count for half your grade and you won't have to take the final."  It sounded like a good deal,  so the next semester I found myself, the only Mormon, in a room full of outsiders.

I don't know about other Churches, but ours has a whole culture and language behind it.  It can be very confusing to try and explain a simple word because it has so much meaning behind it that everyone already knows.  It is very easy to pick out the person that doesn't belong.

The course was very illuminating, but not for the reasons I had intended.  I had come to the class wanting the teacher to tell me what I believed.  He said nothing about the Mormon church.  He talked about the Eastern religions. He covered Islam and the prophet Muhammad.  The Jews were represented along with Catholicism.  Nothing about the church that I had spent my whole life in. 

But an unexpected by-product happened from the class.  Each week my brain would be spinning with the beliefs of others and I wasn't sure how to make it jive with what I felt to be right.  For some reason my Mother would pick me up from that class.  I would ask her question after question on the ride home.  I trusted her.  She is a very intelligent woman with a Masters in Zoo-ology.  She had background in the sciences and she was blunt in her answers to me.  I could not bear those pat answers I heard in Sunday School every week.  I wanted to know how to work the teachings to my benefit.  She also believed and tried to live her religion.  She studied and knew what she was talking about in a way that I needed.  Sometimes I would get upset with what she told me on the ride home.  Sometimes I would feel an explosive excitement at what I had figured out.

I wanted the gritty dirt on the church.  I had wanted the scandals and I never heard about any of it.  I was getting introduced to the gospel, the actual teachings and beliefs..  I was being introduced to what many religions taught and I was being allowed to shift through all of them.  I did a paper on the religions that believed in reincarnation.  I study books and struggled to figure out the whys.  I wasn't finding the answers I needed.  Nothing I read in the literature soothed my soul.  I did not feel peace.

Want to know what made me the most upset?  What was the hardest idea for me to swallow?  I could not stand the thought that God was the Heavenly Father of all the people who had lived on earth, all the people who now live on the earth and all the people that would live on the earth.  If that were true then that meant that I was a little tiny insignificant speck in a sea of humanity.  That thought paralysed me.  I had felt like a branded number while in school.  The lack of my needs being met was rampant and I believed that God would treat me the same way.  In my mind there was no evidence that God loved me(I was wrong of course.  I had been born into a wonderful family) and if I was just another person among many then I would be lost.  I wanted to be special.

Now here is what tipped me over to remaining in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  They were the only ones I knew about that believed that God had restored his gospel and gave personal revelation.  I was promised that I could have my question answer by the source, not by a Priest that knew better than me, but by God himself.  That is a huge promise and I decided to put it to the test.  No one was going to tell me what was right,  I was going to find it out for myself.  And that choice put me on the road to change.  I trusted my feelings over anyone else's already and I did the same with my religion. 

The time came for me to give my talk to the class.  I wanted to back out so much because I realized that I didn't know anything.  I was clueless about my own religion.  I felt like the one eyed leading the blind. 

I ask everyone for help in giving that presentation.  I had a professional artist in the Ward draw me some visual aids.  I didn't care about the grade, I felt pure terror at giving wrong info to 30 other students.  I begged the missionaries to give the talk for me or at lest hand over the teaching material they had.  I was given a no to that plead.  Finally I decided to talk about the Plan of Happiness(what the church teaches about life and death) and talk about what made us different from other christian Church's i.e. We believe the president of the church is a Prophet, seer and revelator, who is supported by 12 apostle.  I brought my Mother to class for back up.  I felt she could clear up anything that I could say that wasn't quite right.  I opened my presentation up to questions.  I had participation and felt like it had gone very well.

I did not covert anyone that day, but a woman came up to me after class and said that her son had started to date a Mormon girl.  She had been worried that he was getting sucked into a cult and had come to the class to learn about the Mormons.  She was very grateful for my presentation and felt that every thing would be alright with her son.  She thanked me again and never showed up to class  after that day.

It is now over 15 years later.  I have gone forward with the teaching and promises with great fever.  I do not take any ones word for it, but seek to find my own answers.  I still don't like to go to church because I think it is boring, but it is a commandment and I follow those.  I want to talk about the nitty-gritty of what it takes to follow the Commandments, to express my spiritual experiences and to feel the love of Christ, but that is difficult for the average person.  It takes a huge amount of work to choose spiritual over physical.  It is very hard and I have become more compassionate to my fellow man if they are willing to give up hours of their life in service to the church.  I just believe it should be in the service of their God.  That is where a lot of my motivations differ even with fellow church members, let alone the world.  My loyalty is set.  I will try to choose my relationship with Jesus Christ over anything else on earth and while I wished many times that I could be free of the harm that is innate in a world with choice.  I have found that I have the prospective to see where it fits in the grand picture.

Why I stuck with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints- Childhood

Warning, this is my first overtly religious post, but I have my reasons.
1.  This blog is to tell of my thinking and coping as a person outside of the mainstream of society.  My religion is one of the things that I used to help.
2.  I believe all religion is important and if you believe and try to live your beliefs then good job, continue to be a positive influence upon the world.  You will only do wonderful things.  Sorry atheists.  I believe in God and I am not ashamed of that, but I know it is a sensitive subject.  The Church of Jesus  Christ of Latter-day Saints(LDS) has concepts in it that I use everyday.
3. I am not here to convert anyone.  I did that on my mission.  I am done, but I am willing to answer how I, me came to my conclusions.

So If I have explained myself to your satisfaction, I hope you will continue to read....

I've told you a bit about my family and a small amount on my childhood.  I thought that church was on Sunday.  We did do Family Home Evening when I was younger.  It is one night set aside during the week usually Monday,  when the family gathers together for a lesson.  We are asked to do so much more like Family prayer and reading the scriptures once a day.  My mother would try, I have to give her credit, but the other things would fizzle out after a week.  Blessing the food and Family Home Evening were the constants outside of Sunday growing up.

Should I be honest and tell you what I remember most about Family Home evening?  It was the refreshments!  Do not ask me what my parents tried to teach us, but I remember piling in the car after we said Amen! and heading off to 7-11.  I talked with my older brother and he said we went to Foster's Freeze at first and each of us got a chocolate dipped cone.  With his prompting I found that memory in the back of my brain, but I didn't realize it was attached to Family Home Evening.  No, I have a clear memory of Dad driving us to 7-11 where we were allowed to get a Slurpee(cherry only, the other flavor was coke) and one piece of candy.  I would go for the large Jolly Rancher Stick because it lasted along time and we never really got candy except on holidays.  Back in the car we would squish into the backseat where we would return home to feast on our prizes and watch "Ripley's Believe It Or Not" and "That's Incredible".  My younger brother came up with a song on the ride to 7-11.  It went "7-11! You're Naked!" and we laughed and laughed.  That is soooooo clever when you are four and seven.

 Well, going to church on Sunday was as normal as going to school during the week.  I attended from birth and I was in a great building until the age of 8 years.

 Let me give some information on a day at church.  A congregation is broken down by geographical location.  Invisible lines that decided when and where you go to church.  If you lived on a border you may not attend church at the same time as your neighbor across the street.  These groups are called Wards.  The Wards are run by the members and each of us has a job or calling.  One day you could be the leader of the woman's group and in 2 years find yourself teaching 3 year olds.  Our meetings have become a 3 hour block.  The reason for the Sunday meeting to to partake of the sacrament.  A prayer is offered and bread and water is passed out to all in attendance.  That is our time to renew the promises that we made at Baptism.  We have talks from the pulpit from other members of the Ward and that meeting closes.  Next the children under 12 years of age break off to primary.  One hour they are in a class decided by age with a teacher and in the next hour they meet as a large group.  The teenagers. split up by age range journey to their teachers while adults gather together for their Own group.  This hour is known as Sunday School.  There we get a lesson on the scriptures.  We  study the old testament, the new testament, the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants, concentrating on one book for an entire year.  And then for the last hour the Sunday School breaks into gender classes.  The 18 and under go on to Young Men's or Young Women's.  The older men go to Priesthood and the older Women go to Relief Society.  For those classes there is a manual discussing Church teachings, for example the men and women are studying the words of a modern Church leader or what Latter-day Saints believe to be a prophet.  That is an average church meeting and the order can be different or times change once a year.

I didn't care about any of it growing up.  My first church of memory was originally a fancy country club on the hill.  The Church had purchased it and converted it to a meeting house.  I did everything to avoid having to sit still for hours on end.  For Sacrament I loved getting the piece of bread and little cup of water, it was an expected treat.  I would keep the paper cup the water came in and play with it for a good 15 minutes, undoing the folded rim and carefully un-pleating the paper to get a perfect rippled circle.  Then I would punch a hole through the center put my two first fingers through the hole and pretend they were legs and the destroyed cup was a pretty pink tutu.  I would play on the pew dancing my ballerina legs until I  did the splits ripping my paper circle.  I was quiet, so I am sure my parents were happy with me entertaining myself. having to deal with 4 kids.  When I got bored I would pinch my brother to make him cry.  Screaming children are removed from the meeting as a courtesy to the other members.  This building had the coolest mother's room.  It was on a second floor, one wall was made of windows and the microphone was piped in, so the mothers could still see and hear what was going on in the meeting and us kids could be as loud as we wanted.  I did what I thought were terrible things in those windows.  Only the speakers could see what was happening and I would flash them all the time.  Oh what a brat I am!

I don't quite know how I avoided going to class.  I was under 8 years old and some of my best times were exploring that building.  There were nooks and crannies everywhere.  I remember going to class once in a while, but I played hooky an awful lot.  My favorite thing to do was to sneak out to the back parking lot to a cement wall covered by wild Honeysuckle vines, at the right time of year they would bloom white,blue and purple.  I would pull out the stamens from the back of the flower and let the small droplet of clear sticky pollen alight on my tongue.  Just an instant of the sweetest flavor would spread across my taste buds, then gone.

I also loved to listen in on the adults and spy on them.  The country club had a large concrete balcony.  I could crawl under the balcony and listen to people talking above me, as their heels clicked above my head.  If my mother mentioned a name I recognised I would tell her what I had learn in those conversations.  I must not have heard anything juicy because she never asked where I got my information.

I was able to get back to the kids group meeting because a bell rings through the church signalling the end of class.  I would try to make the adults think I was with my mother the whole time by sneaking in next to her during the class transition.  Then when someone from primary would come to ask my mother where I was I would be standing next to her.  I would make them "convince" me to go primary with them.  Oh, I can't believe I did this, but I promise you I did!

I did get caught, but I just learned what not to do the next time.  My Father was Sunday School President and one of his jobs was find wayward teens who were trying to skip their Sunday School class.  It was quite a trick to hide from him!

That building was closed for renovations and we were moved to a new building in Hollywood.  I never saw the county club again.  My family moved before it was finished, but that is fine.  I love having it in my memory as the way it was.

With the move to the new building my wandering ways were curb.  That building was set up like a fort or a motel. Four buildings full of classrooms around a courtyard.   I would be spotted in a heartbeat, but something funny happen.  I became one of the only active in the whole primary.  That means I would go to my classroom and I would be the only person who showed up.  Even the teacher didn't come! But I recognized a good thing when I saw it.  I took the roll, check off my name, pushed it back under the door and sat and read my book.  The squeaky wheel gets the grease and I figured out if I stayed quiet and didn't cause any problems then I was left alone.  Everyone had something to do at church and I learned how to blend into the background good or bad.

So imagine my utter shock and dismay at my life being turned upside down by moving to Simi Valley.  The primary had a hundred kids.  In my class alone were 10 girls!  I did not like girls, they were a complete mystery to me.  I find girls to be backstabbing, highly emotional double agents.  You could never tell if a girls was really your friend.  Boys I could read like an open book.  Two choices- hostile or willing to put up with you.  Girls play games with perception and it starts in childhood.  They just become more covert as they get older.  I do not know how to do that.  I am blunt and straight-forward and I say what I mean.  I love all the comments that say so & so wishes they had tried harder to get to know me.  Hey, I was not easy to love!  You had to be brave to be my friend, not only because of the abuse of others, but because I can be very harsh.  Not on purpose.  I die inside when I am told I have hurt someone by being too truthful.  I have learned how to regulate myself with time, but I do not apologize for what I see and for what I feel.

The point is I did not look at the Church I was in for knowledge. I did not "study" the teachings. I did not understand that my parents were trying to be honest and good. At church I was shielded by the good people who were trying their best to follow God's commandments. Truly bad people would not sacrifice to be a member of the LDS church, it is way to hard. So I did not look to the institution to learn about Jesus Christ or the Gospel. I did not care. Church meant only the personal interactions I had with the people who happened to live in my same geographical area.

So I went into Young Women's.  Could not stand it.  Like I said in a previous post, I felt hypocrisy.  I hid in the car.  I hated my life from 10 to 16 years of age.  During that time I hung on by my fingernails.  I thought of death constantly and I was considering the best way to kill myself.  It is a good thing I am a wimp because every way I came up with to finish my self off sounded too painful to try.

The difference that kept me going to the meetings was a woman who was called to be my leader at the age of 16.  She let me into her life.  I had never had that before,  She let me come to her house and I would sit in her kitchen and talk for hours as she made lunch and them made dinner.  She began with the usual Latter-day Saint cliches, you know the saying that we use in response when we don't know what else to say, but that would passed and she was willing to explore my deeper observations.  This leader let me express my thoughts, the concerns I had about peoples behaviors and my own in reaction to them.  I was not judged or told to stop.  She offered her advice.  She offered her support and she was the first person that I could be negative with and she still accepted me.  I learned what it was like to connect with another person and the beautiful interactions that human beings are capable of.  I had yet to experience another person on such a one-to-one level.  This woman was my leader and a teacher that I could connect with was called.  All the older girls I did not connect to graduated except for two.  For once church was the best place in the world.  It was a haven from school and I hung out with these people outside of the Sunday meeting.  The leader continues to be a major part of my life.  We would separate for years sometimes,but we would always reconnect and find each other.  I love her dearly.  I happen to know that she reads this blog.  We have been unable to overcome the distance in our relationship.  Her family had to move to a different state and she had to adapt to her new surroundings.  She would come back and see me, but our interactions were not the same.  Finally I moved to Virginia.  I am also still friends with the girl a month younger then me in church, but a year below me in school.  We reconnected after my mission because I believed she was the only one who would understand the difficult, almost traumatic side of serving a mission.  We talked and we have never stopped.  She is one of the best sounding boards I have ever had.  If I have a thought chewing inside of my brain.  I call her and she lets me say whatever I need to.  It can be negative.  It can be against God.  It can be incredibly spiritual and so sacred it is hard to discuss, but she lets me do it.  This peer has followed me through my whole evolution. 

And that is why I stayed as a teenager.  Two people who made a difference.  Two people who loved me.  It is amazing how one person can influence the rest of our lives.

Next I will post my decision to stay as an adult.