Screw it, intro, why not.
I'm Leek, any pronouns really, and I'm currently a computer engineering dropout, but will eventually go back to school for an earth science. This is my personal brain dump blog, there are some themes that will be major throughout my whole blog, and there will be some fandom related things that will come in waves as it shows up on my dash. The major things that this blog will have on it are outlined below, although I post about Jewish things the most(being a convert is extremely important to me, and I like being loud about the things that are important to me.)
I was raised in a Holiness Movement Christian Conservative household as the eldest daughter of 3 children, and the one who was supposed to carry on my family's Christian and conservative values. This included me being unschooled for all but 6 weeks in 8th grade(about ages 12-14 for the US). If you don't know what the term unschooled means, it's a subset of the homeschooling community that believes in a "hands-off" education method of children. Kids are left from an early age to decide how they spend their days and what they want to learn. This style of free form study can be useful for some teenagers, but when used for children who are of kindergarten age it leads to an extreme lacking in fundamental skills such as basic math, reading, writing, days of the week even. I was very lucky and I learned to read fast, and enjoyed it. My 6 week stint at a middle school was started by my father sitting me down on my bed and yelling at me that public school would turn me into a crack addicted whore, and ended with him yelling at me that I got a failing math grade on my report card. This 6 week stint made it incredibly clear to me that I didn't know what other kids knew, while I was thriving in English and surviving Social Studies, I couldn't make it through a math class without needing to ask for help with basic multiplication. I found out years later that my parents pulled me out of school because the counselor was threatening to call CPS. I ended up getting my GED at 21 and have been kicking ass since, having gotten into university for electrical and computer engineering I was able to make it all the way through to junior year before I burned out and needed to stop for the foreseeable future.
I'm queer, both agender and pansexual, recovering from an imbalanced marriage that I am now divorced from, and figuring out who I really am. I moved in with my ex immediately after leaving my parents at 20(I kinda sorta ran away and haven't spoken to them since, I won't be speaking to them again anytime soon.) which led to some issues. There was immediately a power imbalance and a stress that the relationship was transactional, with very not fun emotional times if I didn't follow up on my side of the transaction. Divorced back in October, and my self worth(and street smarts) have skyrocketed since!
I am also on the last leg of my religious journey. Having been raised Wesleyan Christian, and being AFAB and loving to read and ask questions, I was both ostracized and put down constantly for wanting to expand my knowledge and also understand where the beliefs I was raised around are based in the Bible. After a particularly toxic experience with community service put on by my church at 14, I decided to start my deconstruction process. This led me to periods of being atheist, agnostic, atheist again, various flavors of neopagan for about 5 years. I made good friends with several Jewish people who were more than excited to invite me to their temples, learn about the culture and beliefs, and if it wasn't for me having moved around a lot in the last six years, I would've settled down into a synagogue already. I'm currently converting at a Conservative temple and I'm so close to finishing the process. I have truly found both a home for my religious soul, and a home for my community in Judaism. I'm very vocal about it, and I won't apologize.
Wow, that was a lot. I hope to absolutely never type that much on this website ever again, and if I do, I'll make sure to put pictures next time cause this is killing my dyslexic ass.
