Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Discrepancies

My birth mother was and I'm assuming still is very liberal. I remember most of my family fell in the liberal spectrum, and religion wasn't a priority. I had one uncle who was a terrible bigot, and he was tolerated but secretly despised by just about everyone. I used to listen to my mom and her friends smoke weed and solve the worlds problems when I was supposed to be sleeping. I was always encouraged and inspired by their passion. They often talked about things that are my main focus today. Environmental issues were a huge issue for them, and I of course got my love for animals from my mom. My mom despised close minded people, republicans, corporations, bullies, and politicians.
My mom and her friends, and eventually my step dad talked about world issues all the time, both when I was in bed, and right in front of me. There was never any"not in front of the kid" stuff.
My adoptive family are super Christian, super conservative, and super Republican. Just to really make it difficult, they are also super bigoted and super close minded. Religion is forced down your throat, and if you don't claim Jesus as your savior, or whatever it is they say you have to do, you are going to Hell, no matter how good of a person you are. But, according to them, you can be a bigoted asshole who really doesn't do much to contribute to society, but if Jesus is your savior, you're golden. In addition to these difference, no one in my adoptive family gives even a little bit of a shit about the environment. They don't even believe in Global Warming/Climate Change. They aggressively refuse to recycle.
These drastic differences in my life make it hard for me to have conversations about my life, especially in regards to family. If I talk about my childhood, it's full of stories involving liberal ideas, and if I talk about late teenage to early adult it's got religious, conservative undertones. I try to keep it straight in my head, and edit as I go, but there have been times I've slipped up, and gotten some strange looks. In most cases people don't ask about the discrepancies in my stories, but I'm always waiting for it to happen.
I generally do my best to avoid these types of conversations because it's just too much to keep track of in my own head. And I don't like the feeling I have when I know my story doesn't match up, and I'm waiting for the day when someone says, "wait a minute, I thought you're mom was liberal" or "wait a minute, I thought your parents were republican" or whatever. It just makes everything awkward, and my weird family life is something I keep private, even though now I've posted it on the webz!


2 comments:

  1. "my weird family life is something I keep private"
    There was a blog post on Offbeat Home about weird families, or family structure that take awhile to talk about.
    http://offbeathome.com/2016/02/family-of-origin-stories

    People use religion most of the time to hide behind. It is so annoying. I mean some people honestly believe that the second coming of Jesus will happen and it will be the end of the world and therefore keeping the earth clean is pointless. And therefore veganism is pointless. Vegan Warrrior Princesses Attack had a great podcast on atheism which you might find interesting, though it is 2 hours long.

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    1. It is beyond annoying. my adoptive parents use religion to hide all of their flaws. I'm listening to that podcast right now! I like that they talk about issues like racism. Thanks for introducing me!

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