#silver processes bs

[castingmysilver]

It took me *far too bloody long* to connect the dots and recognize that generally "parents rights" translates *directly* to "children are property and/or not fully-fledged humans yet, and we should be allowed to do literally anything we want with them as long as it doesn't undermine our community norms by giving them too much autonomy." You wouldn't instinctively think it worked that way if you were raised on the rhetoric! But I keep running over and over into both anecdotal evidence and actual News to the tune of homeschooling being commonly used as a cover for egregious physical and sexual abuses and overt educational neglect, folks I was taught would stand up for families in need calling the worst offenders dragged into court "heroes," even more mainstream behaviors in the insular homeschooled and religious-schooled communities often raising eyebrows among those outside who mysteriously got treated better... so many people turning a blind eye at best to horror story scenarios to allow their status quo, and meanwhile... there are people who actually believe children should have rights and choices as far as is safe for them, shouldn't be micromanaged to the edge of their sanity, should have *kindness* and shouldn't be hurt in ways that would be criminal to a fellow adult??? The evidence keeps building up for me. "Parents' rights"="children have none."

[castingmysilver]

....I keep being surprised and distressed and disappointed by how many people not only have access to information which could undermine their views but *have* accessed it, *know* it, at some level even *believe* it, and seem to make a conscious choice to interpret it in such a way as to make themselves feel superior and the other guy (gender neutral) look bad.

I was raised *without access.* I literally did not have opportunities to learn things which weren't spoon fed to me ideologically, much less incentives to try. Everyone I knew and trusted was from inside the same insular community, all my school curricula; ideologically compatible radio only, internet usage watched and sometimes directly controlled, visual media vetted, *library books* vetted individually before I checked them out until my mid-teens. Even books my fundie homeschooled peers were allowed to read sometimes didn't pass inspection. Even if they were for sale on the shelves of bloody Lifeway.

And for me... there are many things I have been initially confused, but also *relieved* to discover in the wild! It's so cool to me that the world outside the greenhouse is a more complicated and less unmitigatedly terrible place than I had been led to believe! That many people are in fact working from different data and interpretations than I was rather than denying "the truth" for the evil lolz or whatever, and that many, many people whether they love my God or not are doing their very best to love their neighbor and help their fellow-man.

And then I keep finding that the people who tried to keep me in the dark were not perpetuating a *mistaken* belief and too invested to look outside, and they weren't unaware, even, that their take on the data could be actively harmful. Sometimes maybe they convinced themselves there would be *worse* harm from another course of action, but...

They still knew. They knew. Sometimes they even developed the ideas I was taught as an intentional hostile reaction to the ideas I was relieved to discover. There are so many powerful people who demonize their neighbor and terrorize their own children *willfully*, with the full ability to have chosen otherwise.......

I was a *child* for fuck's sake, everyone who was supposed to teach me was teaching me badly, many of them were *originating* bad teachings rather than just passing it down the grapevine, and I *trusted* them.

I trusted them.

[castingmysilver]

ghost voices

Your words are empty.

You can`t own me.

You`re all shattered glass

And huddled fear，

Tears spent and darkness passed.

Your voice may stay， but your strength won`t last.

My light is drawing near.

My lady`s stars are in the sky，

White and golden banners fly;

And you`re no Power or predator，

No demon

To me.

Your fangs are gone，

I will be free.

Your rage weighs less

Than a deadwood tree.

—

didn`t mean to post this to the main blog， but decided to let it stay

[castingmysilver]

....I find a great deal of Derek Webb's "The Jesus Hypothesis" album relatable but I'm kinda stuck on these lines from "Some Gods Deserve Atheists" rn.

"When you were young

Hypothetical sin

Was all that you'd done

It was so simple then"

So........ this would imply having a generalized view of sin nature but *not* believing every other move you make is fucking up???? That was not my personal fundie-adjacent experience!

[castingmysilver]

Agh. Just remembered that time Mom glued together pages in copies of the college literary magazine I got published in not only for the family copy but for *every copy she wanted to give away* because there was a poem with an extended sexual metaphor. O.o

[castingmysilver]

I am not going to become them. I will do everything I can to never hurt anyone I love in that particular depth and variety of way.

I learned good things from a form of them, and got good inspiration, and they supported me in ways maybe nobody else could.

I hope they heal.

I hope even if they do the person they become next stays the fuck away from me.

[castingmysilver]

Goodbye. I wish you well still, but goodbye again, I do not need that version of you in my head, I do not need your goddamn comfort anymore.

[castingmysilver]

I still have lots of ex-cousin stuff, they were very generous. Most of it I honestly want to keep because of some mix of keeping the good times and it being genuinely quality.

But there was an elaborate commission I made I was keeping the hardcopy of in trust, which was so heavily customized to their tastes that I just can't deal. I can't destroy it either, but it's basically free to a loving home or the first person to offer me money whenever it turns up next in my room-cleaning.

Also there's a blanket. Not a great blanket, just something lightweight they had around and impulsively put in the bottom of a care package because I needed a hug and it was the closest I could get long-distance. And I finally decided I'm definitely trashing that.

I don't want the person they became ever to touch me again.

It's going out with the cat litter this morning.