Motherless Bride

So, since my last post, I got engaged (March 6th)!  Woo hoo!  I'm really excited about it, Matt's my favorite and I haven't killed him, so I think this is a good thing.

Of course, there's always those other issues that I have to contend with that sometimes put a damper on my excitement.  I'm speaking, of course, of my decision to cut my mother out of my life.  That would be one thing, but my birth father is also out of the picture - he was an awful person who I barely knew and he died in 2012 - and my grandparents died in 2005 and 2007.  Not only that, but I have little to no contact with the aunt and uncle I grew up with (they were the legally adopted children of the people I called my grandparents, while my mother was the foster child, so I have no legally recognized relationship with them), and all that I have left that is technically family is my mother's soon-to-be ex-husband's brother, sister-in-law, and niece (who has a husband and two daughters).  I am, essentially, alone.

Normally, I am fine with this.  But there's something about weddings that I guess makes you lose your mind a little (maybe this is just me), because it was really hard to go to David's Bridal and do my dress appointment knowing that my mother wouldn't be there with me like she was supposed to be, and it's really hard to know that Grandpa won't be giving me away at my wedding or dancing with me at the reception because he's gone.  And I never really mourned either of them, either, my mother kept me away from them after I moved in with her and I saw them once before my grandma died, and then I saw Grandpa once about a year before he died, and that was it.  I didn't have a chance to have a connection with them after I left their home, and I had so much awfulness happening around the time of my grandmother's death that I barely had the chance to register it, and I was working 47 hours a week at Arby's when Grandpa died, so I didn't have a chance to think about his death much, either.  The older I've gotten, the more painful it's been, because they were more parents to me than my mother ever was, and they would have been there for the wedding, Grandpa would have given me away, Grandma would have wanted to be in the room with me while I get ready (she would be 102 if she was still alive, so I kind of doubt she would do much to help), Grandpa would have at least tried to dance with me for the father/daughter dance, and I just feel like I've lost something I didn't even know I was going to miss.

I think the hardest part is realizing that there is no one left who remembers my birth, who knows all the stories from before I can remember.  (Even if I was in touch with my mother, she lies about everything constantly, so I can trust nothing she tells me.)  There is no one left, in the traditional sense, who knew me when I was small.  I didn't realize it when I was 20, but I am very much alone.  Yes, I have amazing friends who I am proud to call sisters, and yes, I am gaining a whole new family by marrying Matt, but none of them remember my first birthday.  None of them can tell me what kind of baby I was, or whether my mother had morning sickness with me and how bad it really was.  It's all these small things that I'm supposed to do with my mother, or at the very least a grandmother, and they crop up when I don't expect them and blindside me and then I spend hours crying because it hurts so much to realize that this is the hand I have been dealt.  Most of the time I can reconcile myself with it, but moments where I'm discussing floral arrangements with Matt's mother, or how I want to decorate, or talking about cake or invitations, and I think that it's supposed to be my own mother that I should be talking to about these things, this should be my mother that helps me plan my wedding.  I'm grateful to Matt's mother, she's wonderful, but it's not the same.

I know I am lucky, and I feel ungrateful for feeling the way I do.  Erin's dad is giving me away and (probably) doing the father-daughter dance with me.  Matt's family has welcomed me with open arms.  I've had multiple volunteers for stand-in for mother of the bride, and even grandmother of the bride, and they will be treated as such at the wedding.

I wish there was a guide for this type of situation.  I can find nothing on the internet for brides whose mothers aren't dead but aren't going to be allowed anywhere near the wedding (like seriously, we're showing her photo to the ushers and having them tell her she can't come in, and if she insists, they're to call the police and get me, because I want her nowhere near my wedding).  There's plenty of guides for brides who had good relationships with their mothers who died, but my mother is not dead and I did not have a good relationship with her.  My mother is in Colorado, and there I hope she stays.

I know I am lucky, and I am grateful to everyone who has offered to help (even if I have no idea how to accept help or what to tell them to help me with), I am grateful to everyone who has been so supportive, I really am.  But tonight... tonight I am just sad and lost and feeling very orphaned.

Atheism

So, I'm going to venture into a controversial topic - religion.  Woo hoo.  As you may have guessed from the title, dear reader, I am an atheist.  I am 27 years old and I've been an atheist longer than I have not been an atheist, if that makes sense.  And, in all honesty, I'm not sure I was ever not an atheist.

A little bit of background to explain where I'm coming from:  I was raised in the Catholic church by my mother's foster parents.  (I always just think of them as my grandparents, and from this point forward will refer to them as such, but the distinction is important.)  My mother was not around (I think I've mentioned this before), so it was up to them to raise me, and they were devout Catholics.  I mean, they really had faith, they believed ardently.  Every day at the same time, my grandma would sit down with her prayer book (what even is that?) and pray for an hour.  They always prayed before each meal.  They prayed before bed.  They went to Mass every week.  And they sent me to a Catholic preschool and a Catholic elementary school.  I didn't even know there was another religious option besides being Jewish until I was in 3rd grade, when a new girl came to school and she couldn't take communion with our class during the weekly Mass and I assumed she was Jewish and she looked at me like I had 3 heads.  (I'm pretty sure I only knew Judaism was a religion because of Jesus.)

I don't remember ever feeling that certainty that other people seem to feel in their religions, that knowing that their god is definitely there watching over them.  I had children's bible stories to read, and to me they were just nice stories, like Cinderella.  I'm not kidding, I felt exactly the same way about the bible stories as I did about fairy tales.  And I was a child being raised by devout Catholics.  I think my atheism was always going to happen.  Anyway, it never felt real to me the way it seems to be to the people I know that believe in God, and I started questioning it to the adults in my life sometime between 3rd and 6th grades.  I can remember specifically one of the teachers at my school reading a statement to our church one day, talking about Roman Catholic this and "our monotheistic" beliefs or something along those lines.  I do remember she said "monotheistic" and how much it confused me.  How can we be monotheistic if we believe in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? I wondered.  What about the saints?  We prayed to them, too, so didn't that make them gods, making Catholicism a polytheistic religion?  And even if you ignore the saints, how do you reconcile the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit style of worship with the statement of being monotheistic?  Obviously, I didn't ask these questions with this wording (at best, I was 11), but these were the kinds of questions that I was beginning to ask.  I didn't even know what atheism was, I didn't find out that was a thing I could be until I was about 13 or so.  I wasn't shy about it either, and I got bullied pretty badly for that (among other things) in middle school.  (Also, what the fuck is up with that?  Jesus says "love one another" so let's go persecute this girl who has no friends because she doesn't believe in Jesus or our God!  That does not make any kind of sense whatsoever.)

Anyway.  That's where I came from.  I did try, but I felt like I was talking to an imaginary friend, which, for all intents and purposes, I was.  I'm learning how to be comfortable with being "out" about the state of my (lack of) beliefs - it's very hard to allow people to see this part of me without fearing that I will be persecuted or thought of as a terrible person, which is what has usually happened in the past.  Here's the thing - while I was taught that not being religious meant that person was not a good person and they were going to hell, that is so beyond wrong.  I am a decent human being.  I care about people.  I try to help those around me when I am able.  I think it's wrong to treat others badly, or unequally, or to maim or injure someone for any reason other than self-defense.  I think children should be allowed to be children and not forced into work, marriage, war, prostitution, or death by those around them that are supposed to be there to protect them.  There's so much more to me that makes me a good, decent person than whether or not I believe in your god.  And then I wonder - why do you believe in god?  Why do you think that there's some sort of all-powerful omniscient being "out there" somewhere who benevolently watches over the humans on this planet?  If I was an all-powerful omniscient being, I don't think I'd care about one tiny little planet when there's a whole galaxy, a galaxy of galaxies, a universe of galaxies of galaxies, a universe of universes.  The world is bigger than our world, and we don't even know how big it is, and you can't tell me that all that is out there and expect me to believe in a god that was created to explain things before people had science.  That is really what religion is, that is the origin of religion in general.  I can't see how it's ethical to teach your children to believe in god but not teach them that there might not be a god at all.

I'm not sure I've actually made a point with this, but I felt I needed to say it, so I guess I said it.  I could probably go on - the universe of universes that I mentioned, for instance.  For all we know, that universe of universes is a teeny little speck on some world somewhere out there, a little dust mote, completely, utterly microscopic, and the world it floats in is just a tiny part of another universe of universes.  It could go on infinitely.  I cannot reconcile all of this with the concept of a god.  The two things cannot coexist in my head.  *shrug*  I'm not sorry, though.  I am happy with the way I am.

Ah, Memories...

The NYPD just had a feel-good hashtag campaign completely backfire on them.  This reminded me of a situation I was involved in where a police officer had less-than-stellar behavior.  Let's enter the way-back machine...

When I was twelve years old, my mother called 911 on me because I was refusing to do the dishes.  I kid you not.  She used to call the cops on me anytime I argued with her.  When the police arrived, instead of lecturing my mother about abusing the 911 system, one of them backed me into a corner in the kitchen while I sobbed hysterically (this being my first interaction with the police beyond the D.A.R.E. thing we did in 5th grade).  He informed this frightened twelve year old that she had better do the dishes and obey her mother or he'd hear about it and come arrest her and take her to juvie.

And, shockingly, this initiated a lifelong fearful mistrust of police officers.

Thanks a bunch, random Kansas City, Kansas police officer.  I'd rather do pretty much anything than have to deal with a cop because of you.

I suppose I could also thank my mother, since she was the one who called 911 and caused the traumatizing situation in the first place, but that was pretty mild compared to some of the other terrible things that she did to me over the course of my time with her.

Just felt the need to get that out there.  Why not, right?