Shards of the past, still lodged in the present

[jennythereader]

This was inspired by the "rooms you've never left" posts done on several people's journals recently, including nounsandverbs.

Parts of me are still...
10 years old - sitting on the living room couch with my brothers, listening to Mom & Dad tell us they were separating.

12 years old - showing Mom the magazine that had published one of my poems, only to have her freak because Dad's new girlfriend was one of the editors. I left the house in tears and walked for what felt like hours, she drove to Dad's house and wreaked stuff.

13 years old - breaking down in tears after reading a poem about my just-deceased grandfather to the class... and having my classmates laugh at me.

13 years old - watching that horrible movie at my cousin's church, never really being able to feel un-conflicted about Christianity again.

15 years old - In english class, reciting a poem about how isolated I felt, and seeing a look in some of my classmates eyes made me realize that they hadn't really understood what they were doing to me all those years. Long term, things didn't change much, but for a little while they were better.

17 years old - sitting backstage after a play rehearsal, talking about how I "knew I wasn't very love-able, and didn't really expect to ever meet someone." Alicia signing my yearbook a few weeks later with reassuring words that I would. She was right, and sometimes that still suprises me.

There are other moments that are still with me, but these are the ones that are lodged so deeply that I think they will still be affecting me until the day I die.

Comments

[purpura.livejournal.com]

What horrible movie?

[jennythe-reader.livejournal.com]

I don't remember the name of it, if I ever knew, but it was about what will happen when the events in the Book of Revelations begin.

The scene that gave me nightmares for weeks was the last scene in the entire movie. A group of people who had refused to take the Mark of the Beast were being held prisoner in a church. One of the main characters, a young woman, was among them. She was taken out to the parking lot behind the church and told that it was her last chance. They then panned the camera away from the character and stopped at a bloody guillotine. The screen went blank, and all you could hear was her screaming.

[sioneva.livejournal.com]

Wow...I'm glad I never saw it or it would have given me nightmares too :/

I have similar moments but have never stopped to put them together in quite this way. Thank you for sharing some of yours!

[jennythe-reader.livejournal.com]

That experience played a large part in forming my opinions about religious fundamentalists (of every type), and left an ambivalence in my feelings about Christianity in general that still lingers.

I love most of the concepts that Jesus taught, but hate what some of his followers have done with his ideas.

[purpura.livejournal.com]

That would have given me nightmares too! I still have nightmares from 8th grade when they made us read horror stories in class that Halloween!

[jennythe-reader.livejournal.com]

It was awful. Jackie (my cousin) and I both had nightmares that night.

[purpura.livejournal.com]

BTW, I love your "Jesus was a liberal" icons. It's so very true!

[jennythe-reader.livejournal.com]

Thanks! They were made by mhari, and I'm pretty sure I grabbed them off of the community liberal_icons

Christianity and your movie

[(Anonymous)]

Amazing that you took that scene as a part of Christianity - when it is a scene describing what the world of evil does and will do to Christians. Much of it is beginning today - with those that would stifle any Christian observances and who promote immorality and evil in our arts and lifestyles.

Re: Christianity and your movie

[jennythe-reader.livejournal.com]

Mostly it isn't the movie itself that continues to bother me, but the fact that the church my cousin was attending felt that this was a good movie to show at a occasion where there were lots of kids present, most younger than Jackie & I. I don't remember exactly what the occasion was, but I think it was a "Christian alternative" to a holiday like Halloween or New Years Eve.

Basically it ties into my feeling that any group that feels it needs to manipulate people's emotions in order to get them to join has something seriously wrong with it.

It was my first exposure to the ways that the more conservative branches of Christianity differ from the mainstream/liberal tradition that I was raised in.

Note: This is almost a direct copy & paste of my reply to Tom's sister when she raised a similar point.