#growing up homeschooled

[anonymous-witness777]

The best compliments I've received-- "your writing makes me want to worship God more" "your work reminds me of the Bible; it has a surety to it" "I love how there's always a latent apocalypse behind your writing" "hearing that was a spiritual experience" -- all center on a quality in my writing which I believe is due to gifts given me in childhood. What some call Religious Fundamentalism -- whether it is or not, depends on where you're standing.

It is knowing that Jesus could return tomorrow. It is knowing that heaven and hell are real. It is cutting all the skeletons and Harry Potters out of the LEGO catalogue. It is wondering if that sound in your humidifier is a demon. It is praying for everyone to be saved. It is hearing your father pray in the language of angels every morning. It is your mother singing in tongues and then translating for you, all to tell you that Jesus loves the little children. It is Larry Norman and Phil Keaggy and Barry McGuire on the stereo. It is the experiential knowledge that miracles happen, that legs regrow and tumors shrink. It is prayers for sweet dreams each night, prayers when you go to sleep happily and prayers when you wake up from nightmares. It is rebuking demons on Halloween after you give candy to the Spider-Man at your door. It is the red songbook with the Jesus fish on the cover, with To God Be the Glory and Turn Turn Turn. It is Prayer Bear and VeggieTales and The Donut Man, it is GT and the Halo Express and Adventures in Odyssey. It is Young Earth, the pterodactyls flying above cowboys; it is Old Earth, the Big Bang bursting into void as Hugh Ross tells us what it means.

And now there's been some changes -- I've lost belief in Mokele-Mbembe, but gained at least a healthy agnosticism about Santa. I no longer consider Harry Potter inherently Satanic, but now consider A Voyage To Arcturus inherently Satanic. There's a give and take. But I stand on the same warm earth, rich with the promise of heaven and the pity of hell. Jesus is firm; that doesn't surprise me. What surprised me is all else that has stayed: the hippieness and fierceness and end-times-ness and the traditional and the subversive. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday today and forever, but even my childhood he has let me keep. At least in parts. And it strikes out like lightning on occasion from my words, and it isn't me, not really, it's my mother with her lilting lullaby voice that all the same spoke of heaven and hell and blood and martyrdom and love like consuming fire. It's she who planted these flowers which grow round the spokes of the wheel whose hub is God.

[antiquepearlss]

You know what? Fuck it, they both have homeschool trauma

[scourgiez]

I’ve always liked the idea of Elliott’s old -> new portraits being him growing up through the years

[gideonisms]

I feel like if your parents tried to indoctrinate you but the side effect was autism accommodations and the indoctrination didn't actually work, they should get a passing grade in parenting. All's well that ends well

[toomuchdivergentformyneuro]

probably the most constant thing of my life has been the social isolation and loneliness i experience

since i was a young child, i’ve always struggled to make and find friends, and often was left alone

for a long time, nothing could defeat my spirits and will to make friends, and even the loneliness wasn’t enough to make me stop

nowadays, it gets to me, the loneliness, and i often wonder if i’ll have all the friends i’ve deserved all along

[edscuntyeyeshadow]

shoutout to the bitches who grew up in environments where the only kind of sex ed available was abstinence-only, and thus had to learn via fanfiction. love y’all, hope you’re doing okay

[why-ami-not-asleep]

brother just told me and my mom tht his all the work he does is undervalued in this house and like. what the literal fuck

[jordankennedy]

the web is sooooo super overbearing helicopter parent to me

[spenjelly]

How it went trying to teach mini autistic me how to write:

Dad: that’s good, but you need to have space between the words.

Me: *confusedly starts adding stars to my sentences*

Dad: aha, no, not that kind of space

Me: the space needle?

Dad: no, like you need to put nothing between the words

Me: that’s what I’m doing!

Dad: *sweating* ah, but not that kind of nothing..

[jane-not-rizzoli]

Where are my people in their 20s who grew up without the internet?? Or without a TV?? Or were home educated? Grew up off grid?? Where are the other grown up children of strange adults??? PLEASE I KNOW ITS NOT JUST ME

[sasssydaddy123]

Realizing more and more every day that I was not raised in a "normal" way

[conceptofjoy]

Same person from earlier since u didn’t think I was totally insane here’s another fun anecdote about my childhood - I used to make my mom take me to the butcher and then look at the butcher with the plaintive eyes of a child and say can I have some organs please (I wanted to look at them and investigate their inner workings) whenever we had dinner I would give fun facts about the biology of the animals we were eating. Everyone hated that. One time my mother also found me trying to kidnap a chicken from the park so that I could feed it to a tiger at the zoo later that day (my zoo obsession). I was also extremely popular at the hospital for my odd demeanor I was there a lot because my dad was sick (he’s good, don’t worry) and they would let me pretend medical malpractice with them (they let me take people’s stitches out and would come to my dad’s room and pull out tumors and be like look what I look out of someone. do you want to see surgery photos?). Tbh adults kind of loved my off putting and strange demeanor once I convinced the sea world staff to let me go in the shark tank even though that was extremely illegal and for adults only but I guess I just had such a powerful all consuming love for anything scary and violent that were like surely if a seven year old can handle the shark tank its this one. There’s a photo of me gleefully putting fish in a crocodiles mouth just covered in blood my parents were pretty supportive of my “interests.” Do u think the harleyberts let seb live out his warrior heart. Do you think they took his little katana and replaced it with an age appropriate wooden sword. Do you think they let him kill his own food. That’s another thing I always wanted to do so I could become one with nature but for some reason my parents wouldn’t let me idk why :/ do you think seb tries to do wilderness survival training and shows up with roasted bugs and a DIY water purifier that’s also what I did (my parents confiscated my bugs)

GI IIIVE ME A S SECOND IM LAUGHING SO HARD I

DUDE IM SO GLAD YOUR PARENTS WERE MOSTLY SUPPORTIVE LMFAOOOO parents confescated ur bugs... im sso sorry hhhoooughmy god.

the crockerberts are also odd individuals. NANNA. there r two matriarchs of the household and they are both chaos demons (angels) while seb cant do all his heart desires out in the wilderness, i think he can make do with the tools and alternatives she (plural) delivers to him.

[vashti-lives]

Me: I love this yarn so much I’m so excited to turn it into sweater aaaahhhhh!!

Also me: I can’t decide what pattern to do I think I’ll just knit this cardigan that I already have a gage swatch for and a plan for.

[secretcherimaybe]

Thinking about cartoons

About how cartoons are a kids god given right.

Cartoons are both art and a gift to kids

Every age Should watch and enjoy cartoons but they are such a specific safe space for kids

Just

Feeling sentimental

[connieaaa]

It should be said: the human spine is why I stopped believing in creation science, the human spine is the equivalent of playing Jenga with beans with a nuclear power plant inside. No one is that incompetent.

[giddlygoat]

i kinda just wish i had a quiet life with a day job i can excel at and enough free time on my hands to complete a drawing every day if i wished. i think it’s important to follow one’s dreams and always strive to better one’s life and try new things but also, maybe my idea of “better” is slower. maybe i just want things to relax a little and i think that’s okay