I was a horse girl, a would-be outdoors girl allergic to every biting thing in Florida. I played internet games, for hours. I was told not to dance around the house, I was told not to sing around the house. None of my neighboring playmates wanted to dance or sing, or play animals. So I sat at the computer for 5-6 hours a day. Rookie numbers of course. Ten year olds now are scoring almost double but this isn’t about them yet. This is about the hours of my childhood, digitally customising pastel avatars, roleplaying as a dolphin trainer, or fairy, or equestrian, escaping to a better life.
I couldn’t afford to get away from my parents or even the house in my preteens, and they couldn’t afford to send me away, except to a private christian school. That was what they saved seven thousand dollars per year for. Not dance lessons, not equestrian lessons, not piano lessons.
Mom and Dad attended school events, and to my two plays when I was twelve and thirteen, but not to clubs I wanted to join. No acting, no art, no dance, no sports, no music, no poetry clubs or camps, roughly 20 hours of horse summer camp and 1200 of Vacation Bible School. They didn’t follow me into the library, or the extra mile on the beach, or into the trails when we went camping on our single camping trip. I went camping once in my life and everything that could have comedically gone wrong went wrong. We were ambushed by raccoons, I peed my sleeping bag, I nearly killed someone (I tripped an old lady at the museum and she fell backwards). I got the flu too but it’s still one of my favorite memories. They took me to one ballet. They never took me to any concerts. I had to seal and label hundreds of envelopes when I was twelve so I could be paid with a ticket to see a Christain band. That was the only concert I attended before I was twenty, able to work legally, and I still had to get their permission for that.
They abandoned and offered no consolation through the years I was disgusted with myself, so disgusted by my breakouts I’d trade hours of computer time for hours of preening, destructive preening in front of the mirror. They got aggressive, saying “Why would you do that? Do we need to make you wear gloves?” They were against me when I questioned my sexuality, something I had been doubtful of since I had heard that girls liked boys (Why? Lmao). I never had an imaginary boyfriend, but I had lots of imaginary friends, I had imaginary parents too, but many times I also pictured myself as a adventurous orphan traveling from one country to another who’d drift from fictional family to family like the weird cousin or half sister destined to grow into the weird Aunt.
My doting soul wanted to be a caretaker, but I knew I was bad at it, especially because I did not have a model caretaker in my life to teach me how to grow things. I couldn’t grow plants, my hermit crabs died after three months, my gerbil died after a year. My parents would look at me as stiffly as my crab’s lifeless body and say “Throw it away and do better next time.”
My parents prepard dinners Americans would call decent and Europeans would call unhealthy. Everything was meat and potatoes with the occasional broccoli. If I credit them with anything beyond the basics to satisfy C.P.S., my parents know how to make vegetables taste amazing. I still put steak seasoning on my veggies.
On paper, my parents did an amazing job. Spacious house(s), top rated school. since I was 6 we moved every four years until I was 19 and then we moved every single year. From ages 5-8, I was the new kid every single year.
Eight years old, third grade, was my first year at that Christian Academy. I’ve attempted and failed to forget every year of my existence from then until fourteen, a freshman at the local queer art school. I had no friends throughout those years (except a fleeting one in eighth grade). None of the kids liked fairy tales except one girl who had a closeted interest in Harry Potter, but she was smart from the beginning and never stopped. She knew not to talk about those books or she’d get sent to the principal’s office and punished with time out from recess. She was the one who got piano lessons, and violin lessons, and other forms of enrichment that allowed her to think for herself which led to an irony when she got caught by a dichtomy. She had to choose between being friends with me or everyone else. She choose the better choice. It was better that she was friends with everyone else. I wish I had tried harder to be friends and isolated myself less, but I was scared, and honestly just as stupid as the other kids thought I was. Yes, I was very stupid despite my skills in reading and art. I couldn’t play instruments, sports, keep up with pop culture because I wasn’t allowed to go on YouTube or listen to any radio station other than Christian FM. There were Disney shows I wan’t even allowed to watch (Wizards of Waverly Place) (Anything aired on Halloween). I couldn’t tell what flirting was, I couldn’t find cool ways to stylize my uniform but we technically weren’t allowed to anyway. I wasn’t smart enough to bribe friendship with whatever sweets I brought from home. That was the most idiotic thing about me: I was extremely selfish. I liked my things and kept them all to myself and made myself to believe that nobody would care about horses, or classical music, or fairies, or mermaids, or dragons, or archery, or ice skating, or sewing, or forests, or shells, or flowers, or dancing, or singing, because nobody had ever shown me before or during my time there that they liked any of that. So I separated myself.
That all started to change when I went to high school. I was allowed to see everything I had missed before though my parents had no idea what they were allowing. They just thought I was following all my “friends” (The girls who didn’t actively bully me (again not criticizing them, I’m the one who isolated myself from them)) from the christian academy to this more worldly school (They hoped that I and my academy mates would be a good christian example for the “other” kids).
I looked stupid at the academy but I looked far more stupid in high school. The geometry teacher on an anecdotal tangent talked about how we evolved to sneeze to release adrenaline when we looked near the sun.
“No we didn’t!” I cried out in a whiny, baffled voice. The entire classroom quietly turned around and without any hatred or accusation the kids and teacher, gently but firmly all chimed with a little bit of humor in their voice, “Yes we did.”, “Yeah, we did.” and “That’s a lesson for later.” That was the start of many cognitive rehabilitations that I expect my readers can put together. Like it’s okay to be gay, trans, any race or religion, but it’s not okay to neglect and indoctrinate. The school’s policy of not being invasive but saved me and delayed my radicalization although I would say the internet left most of the crumbs of social literacy for me to pick up but I still had many many dumb moments. The point is that’s in the past and I’m really glad it is. I both want and don’t want to go deeply into it. I still haven’t mentioned the things I was particularly indoctrinated in: KJV, NIV, Beka Books, Focus on the Family, Christian Broadcasting Network, Veggie Tales.
As I look back, I find the difference between blatantly explicit child abuse and the psychotic games my parents played masked by love bombing thousands upon thousands of dead beat “I love yous” is like the Police vs parasitic CEOs. Four cops bloodily beat my 70 year old grandfather to death, and his child held me psychologically and emotionally hostage, all while promising heaven and icecream and other rewards that turned out to be lies. I almost wish they hadn’t lied and just told me except doing their dishes and winning them prestige points, I was worth nothing to them.
I clung to my copies of Chronicles of Narnia and The Magic Tree-house like lifeboats because otherwise I never got and was forcibly restricted from Avatar the Last Air Bender, The Lord of the Rings, Pokemon, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, The Hunchback of Notre dame, Pocahontas, etc. etc. I would say the very limited works I got were lifesaving. I contemplated ending my life many times, but I’m so glad I didn’t.
I really want to go into deeper detail about my testimony later, but I need to know that anything in addition to what I’ve already said is necessary.
I live in Florida, I’ve said these things because of the rise of fascist indoctrination in the name of child safety. These parents, just like mine, may claim they care about safety, but they themselves are not safe, and neither are their teachings on women, people of diverse backgrounds, cultures, races, and work ethic. They claim they care about children’s safety but children don’t feel safe to open up to their parents about important life topics such as romantic relationships, drinking, drugs, or honesty in academics. And to be honest, if these censor loving parents are anything like mine, they not only don’t care about safety, they don’t care about their kids at all, just their reputation. And that has fatal consequences, fatal not just for kids, but for society.
Diversity and critical thinking are dying, and I am compelled because of my past, to tell people what is killing it and what will save it. I used to be a stupid girl because I was afraid of the punishments for being informed, but I’m not anymore.
Today’s ten year olds are going through neglect like circus animals, expected to perform as their parent’s nuclear mascots, drugged with cookies and poptarts for breakfast, little debbie’s for lunch and icecream for dinner, and Youtube, and Tik Tok. I contemplated suicide at nine. Kids at that age are actually doing it now.
This is the real danger kids are facing. Get informed, and if you can do anything in addition to educating your peers, help.
This was amazing.
https://ec.ala.org/donation/OIF-0000-INTELL