Our House is Haunted Because We Are Haunted

Coming back to this place was a mistake. I'm reminiscing about this this very moment. It is about eight o'clock. It is not the home itself that possesses bad memories, but the people in it; the two of us, I and my mother, who reside here. We are haunted.

When I came back this summer, I came back only because I could not find a job that would pay for my neccessities when I was in Louisiana(I went to study Film/Ancient Languages at Centenary College of Louisiana. I was unsure what I wanted to study at the time. My stay lasted about a year. Presently I am in NY, however. But at the time I wrote this I was in OH.) I did not know that something would have worked out, until the day my plane landed in OH, and I received word that my resident life director was looking for me, because she was going to help me find a way to stay and finish my education over the summer and into the fall.

Even though I felt miserable on my campus, nothing could compare to the misery I felt when I came back home.

Everything I felt on that campus, in Louisiana, of being far from home, the independence of it all, all became undone when I came home.

There I was. Back where I started.

Back to the womb i'd though i'd never escape.

And I was back.

I was devastated.

I went on long walks at night, around a part of OH that wasn't particularly safe, just to get out of the house.

By chance, I ended up meeting a few friends(Well, "Friends", but I didn't know they weren't good people at the time). I met one of them, then two of them, then met the rest of their friends in real life.

The all lived in an apartment. A very poor apartment in a rundown neighborhood.

I would crasg with them almost every night. I did anything and everything to avoid going back to my house.

I had my first experience with drugs with them. I tried Marijuana and Ritalin. The marijuana didn't do anything to me, but the Ritalin made my teeth shatter uncontrollably. (I had experience with shrooms in college, which, thankfully only trying them once, I still regret that decision. My mind's not equipped to deal with the fourth dimension. Not yet, anyways.)

I also had boyfriend at this place. The circumstances under which we met were strange, to say the least.

We "met" each other on Myspace. I thought he was another friend I had met before him, we'll call him Friend A: a much cuter, part-Romanian Goth whom I was going to help film both actual films which he had written, or had the basic idea of in his head, and art/pornography, in the vein of Suicide Girls, but a bit darker.

I got a message from who I thought to be this Friend A on Myspace.

I checked out his pictures.

Friend A was a photographer.

Under one of the photographs was his signature insignia. So, of course, I thought it was him.

When he messaged me, I thought it was him, so we exchanged numbers.

But when he called, I knew it wasn't him. He had an accent. An accent that actually sounded Romanian, which Friend A didn't have.

I was a little freaked out.

But when I asked Friend A about him a little later by chat or by phone, he told me he knew him. So I thought why not meet him.

In person, he was not very attractive at all. He had a "Dark" appearance. His background was Spanish, a.k.a he was from Spain. But he grew up in El Salvador.

Right off the bat I thought he wasn't a good person. I have this really strong sense of intuition.
But I was willing to try it, though while looking out for myself, of course, to guard against being hurt.

To keep a long story short, which includes Tarot cards that successfully told me what I already knew myself, I "found out" that the entire environment I was in was not full of honest people, as I thought it was.

Not in the least.


I stayed away from my mother for at least two months before I went back.

When I went back, I had to deal with that fact that I didn't have the money to pay for the transcript from Centenary.

I was in the house, almost every day, thinking I might never leave.

I read(A Little Princess, Oliver Twist, Harry Potter- the first and second book, and the majority of Crime and Punishment).

I tried to get a job, but no one would hire someone with no experience; not even in fast food or retail.

The next few months, which I swore was more like a year, was spent wallowing. I did nothing, and the friends I had deserted me, in favor of their lifestyle of gossip, rumors, and lies.

Eventually I would go back to school, this time art school, as I learned that my life was built around art, and that my reality was and has always been escapism. I decided to enter the field of Fashion. (And have since started learning to play the guitar. Really, I just look for any way to express myself.)

I was accepted into one of my top choice art schools, and my presently in my third quarter.

Pretty good for a home schooled kid with no art on her resume(I threw away all of the pictures I drew when I was a kid. It was nonsensical. I had decided that since me and my mother were moving, I wanted a new start. I should have kept them. But well, you learn from your mistakes)

Unrecoverable State of Destitution

As the only parent in our household, my mother often lead us into what would become an unrecoverable state of destitution(Both financially, and actual destitution). My mother's main problem when it comes(Came, as I no longer live with her) to managing our finances is that she does not understand the basics of how money works. In addition, on more than one occasion, she had a habit of writing fraudulent checks and even stole a check from one of my "Friends". Fortunately, I can honestly say that my mother has only ever acted illegally in order to provide us both with the neccesities of life.

A few months ago(More like a year and a half ago or so), I let a friend stay here as he was having to deal with (What seemed to be at the time) an emotionally damaging roommate. This man was my semi-boyfriend, but I was only to later discover(I had known, yet kept myself oblivious to the fact) that he was not the person he claimed to be.

One day, after several weeks of patiently waiting for his check to arrive at our house, he called in to his bank only to discover that the check had been cashed.

He swore revenge against the person who cashed it.

Obviously, this was a case of fraud.

Having learned the ins and outs of law, as he was studying Law(I think) back in his home country, he printed out the check and found the name of my mother printed on it.

When he showed it to me, I was crushed.

I was forced to pay money from my own check and from a job I had, making music videos, in order that he not have my mom put in jail. Even when I tried to explain my mother's situation to him, even after I told him my mother was schizophrenic, he simply said no judge would believe it, and that they would put her in jail, and not a mental institution, and that he would make sure of it.

Other things my mom had done was to use a credit/debit card that didn't work in order to buy food for us to eat. Usually when she did this it was Chinese food. I guess for some reason it was harder to fool a grocery store, than some fast food places. She had successfully gotten an online delivery service to deliver food to her house. But a few days after we received the package, I think they tried to get in contact with her because the order did not g through on their end. They did not receive their money.

So, we were pretty much blacklisted from every Chinese food restaurant and online grocery store in the midwest.

The greatest damage to our financial situation comes from my mother's lack of initiative: Her unwillingness to follow up on cumbersome situations.

As I sit here now(Then, not now actually), we face eviction.

Our land lady is very nice. But a busienss person can only be so nice.

Our rent has nto been paid in over two months.

Legally, the land lady could have given us an eviction notice three days after the rent was due. But she didn't do that.

(She's actually a very nice lady. She came over once when I was playing some early Batcave/post-punk music. She said she remembered listening to it when she was younger. She understands my situation in the middle of this all and has really been a "friend of the family).

There is something wrong with my mother's bank account. I really hate it when I try to tell my mother common sense, and she fills her own head with delusions. I even hate it more when her bank does the same. It's no good for either of us.

I remember once my mother got a receipt from ehr bank and it said she had $80,000.00 in her bank account. Alright, I heard that one with my own ears over the phone, as proof, but i've heard so many lies from her it's impossible for me to believe she could have that sort of money.

My mother has a Bachelor's in Business and Administration. But she has been unable to get a job since she had me. I think the reason for that is me.

I don't understand where she could be getting that kind of money.

Sometimes she purchases something, and even if she has a negative balance, she swears it'll go through.

It's all apart of her schizophrenic delusions.

I feel bad. Because sometimes she's lying, and sometime's she's not. It's just hard to know what time i'm facing. Will it be like other time? The last time, when we had to go to a pantry for food? Or, the other time when she actually had the money to pay the rent for the month?

Inherently Exceptional

I've spent the majority of my life talking to myself. From my childhood days to the days of my teen years, my company was the only one I had to keep. I don't have much of a rap sheet in communicating with other people. Hell, i'm finding it hard enough to communicate my ideas to or onto this piece of paper i'm writing on. Talking with myself just comes naturally. It's pretty much the only thing i'm inherently exceptional at. I often know what I want to say, I have the perfect set of words in my mind, and i'm actually extremely articulate, but i'm just not confident enough to say it, or forget what I want to say when I try say it. I think it goes back to my childhood. Obviously, as I was taken out of elementary school and home schooled instead, I never developed the social skills needed to communicate with other people.

Maybe it is also because my mother had the uber conviction that everything she believed in was right. In effect, I found myself looking inward in order to find the answers that I didn't have anyone else to converse with about. For example, my mother was against homosexuality(Of course, not knowing that I was bi). So, if I had asked her about it she would have simply said that it was "Wrong". So if I wanted to truly discuss and rationalize social and political issues, i'd simply work it our in my mind. I'd say, "Being gay is not wrong, it is simply a choice. People are individuals. they make their own decisions. The only wrong choice a person can make is when they take away the choice of another person, because they're taking away their right to choose for themselves, obviously without their consent(Wow, and of course that sounds Anti-Abortion...which I am not, actually). My way of figuring things out has always been logic. It's just been my way to come to rational conclusions. Some things are just common sense. So, yeah, i've been known to have as long as two hour conversation with myself, because I am unable to speak to other people.

Sometimes, when someone is talking about politics in class, or when they say something that puts me off, I find myself answering them, positively or negatively, in my mind. But I can never speak up because I am afraid. I fear too much about what other people think. Even now when I am writing this, I am criticizing every word i'm about to write, even in my mind before I write it.

Introduction

The following is the basic outline for a self-help book I wish to one day have published. Most of this is brief, and to the point, and is also the subject of my blog: Dealing with the aftermath of both having lived a sheltered life, and with a schizophrenic, and religious, mother, no less. It may or may not reflect the finished product, as I would have it if it were published. The post that will follow this one will be snippets of my life, of my current trials and tribulations a few years following these experiences.


PROLOGUE

I am no adept in the study of the mind. Nor do I claim to be. But, having been for the last eighteen years the guinea pig of a psychological experiment, I feel well-equipped to analyze the environment in which I was born, and the people and circumstances surrounding it, as if I were handed the highest degree attainable in such a study.

I have written the pages which lie ahead in the hopes that I can inspire a future generation of parents.

Perhaps, as well, I can also inspire the field of psychology and maybe even the educational system, too.

But more than anything, this book, and, for better or worse, the honest words contained within, are for those who have lived as I have lived or felt as I have felt.

This book is not limited to the ill-equipped home school-er who has been or will be thrust into the world without the experience and knowledge necessary for survival.

Nor is it limited to those who suffer and have suffered, as I have since my youth, from various undiagnosed forms of disorders .

This book is simply for those who have lived as I have lived and have felt as I have felt, and oftentimes, still feel.

You know who you are.

No matter what your station in life, your class, your race, your gender, or any other ordinal factor, I am sure that at one point you have felt as I felt.

And, if you have painstakingly taken the effort to crack open this book, perhaps you are all but too sure you will find a little bit of me in you or a little bit of you in me while reading the words ahead.

I sit here on October the 15th, 2007, at 2:02, trying to piece the memories of my broken life back together.

Someone needs to..

I have lived a long time, trying to forget that the past ever happened, only now remembering that it has shaped who I am now in the present.

So I will no longer run.

I will face my past so that I can find the courage to face the present.

I begin with my autobiography as a home school-er and I end with the outcomes of different areas of my life.

All of the people involved in my story are unnamed. I will simply refer to them as “mother”, “father” or refer to them with made up names or names that designate their roles, at least, to me.

After the autobiography, I address issues such as: Identity Crisis, Depression, Independence, etc etc.

Then, in closing, I offer insight based on my own home schooling experience about how parents should go about home schooling their children. If they should home school at all…

My last words before I begin my story is that I offer my love and support to anyone who is going or has gone through the undaunting tasks of being a citizen of this world, without having been taught the necessary requirements.

I know how that feels.

For sanity and peace of mind
-[insert name]



















PART ONE

An Autobiography: My Life

I can not tell you where I was born or who my father was or even what his name was, for those three are as sketchy a fact as the mother who bore me.

I can, however, tell you about my mother… As much as I know about her, anyways.

She was and still is both a religious woman and a schizophrenic.

I think it is enough to say that that is not a very good combination.

During the time that she was my mother, the times I remember, anyways, I am not sure if there ever was a time when she was neither religious nor schizophrenic.

Ever since I can remember our family has purportedly been Jehovah Witness.

I cannot lay claim to this fact as I personally am unacquainted with any knowledge of the religion.

But I can say this is also the religion my mother has claimed ever since I can remember in her conversations with other people.

I have heard from past-Jehovah Witnesses that she was not one at all, but rather invented her own brand of Christianity.

I am not sure what the truth is, though I could definitely believe the latter…But rather than assuming that a religion I know nothing about was or was not practiced truthfully by my mother, I will simply give an overview of her beliefs.

My mother has very strong beliefs in God.

But this does not always appear to have been the case.

She has told to me stories of her youthful days; when she was in college and experimented with things she now considers to be wicked. Things such as Sororities…

Evidently, though, she has repented from that said evil lifestyle…

When I was young, we went to church every Sunday.

As I grew older, however, we separated from the church, and instead had special dinners on Sunday, over which, if I remember correctly, my mother prayed.

From here on out until the present time, my mother made her up her own rules about God and morality, which, I guess, is all anyone ever really does.

I remember, for example, several occasions in which I and my mother talked about certain things she was very serious about. Rules and regulations she would enforce once she thought that I had a mind to break them.

Things I was and was not to do…

I was told, early on, that I was never to bring a boy into her home. Ever.

I remember when we were invited over to the house of a woman my mother’s age.

I remember the look of utter shock and agitation on my mother’s face as the woman asked me if I had or would ever want a boyfriend and I said, “Yes”.

My mother glared at me until I told the woman that the answer I gave was a mistake and glared at me harder later in the day so as to make me remember what I had said. As if I had said something horribly wrong.

I was also told that a woman was not to dress in the clothes of a man. (I.e pants).

My mother clearly communicated to me that if I had started to dress like a man…I might begin to look at women with sexual interest.

Homosexuality was one of those things that we never discussed. It was an automatic “No no”.

It is around this time that my mother decided she wanted to home school me….

It is also around this time that she separated from all of our extended family.

I believe this is because of the nature of only two, but still two very vocal members of our family.

I have an aunt who had her own little Cheaper by the Dozen litter. Twelve children by different men.

Her daughter, as well, was following in the footsteps of her mother.

My mother did not associate with them and regarded them as people she didn’t even consider to be of her own flesh and blood.

They were “Worldly” as she called them…

It is because of this and the general imperfect state of the world that my mother thought that the whole world, including our own family, was full of unrepentant sinners.

It definitely did not help her mental state.

I believe that the Columbine Massacre was one of the utmost things that stole my mother’s faith in the world and the reason she wanted to home school me.

I remember that day when we sat in our living room, watching the news.

I think it was that moment that sealed my fate.

In her conversations with adults, and, either what she taught me to say or what I would say to other people, peers and adults, not knowing that it was coming more from her, than from me, was that she didn’t want me in the school system because to her the school system was corrupt.

I subjectively picked up things she would say to me subconsciously, things about how there was no order in public schools; the sex, the violence, the chaos…

It is from then on out she home schooled me…


As I mentioned earlier, my mother is a schizophrenic.

When you combine religious conviction and schizophrenia, something’s bound to go awry.

I don’t assume to be able to diagnose my mother’s condition, but, in my knowledge and direct experience, my mother’s feelings of God were directly inspired by her schizophrenia.

She often talked to me about things she had seen. Delusions. Things she was convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt were real.

As a woman of faith, she believed in the physical manifestation of God and the Devil, angels and demons, because she believed she saw them and had been given the power to see them.

She often related to a dream in which she saw a hooded figure with an occult mark over his forehead. I believe this figure was a man and not a demon but she was so visibly torn by it that she believed it was a forewarning to some sort of impending doom or temptation.

In this instance, I can imagine how she could be moved by it.

In fact, though most of her fears are unfounded and not based on any real physical threat, most of them seem to have been derived from something that she witnessed in real life but took precaution to the extreme.

As for this story, I remember there is, and this is a fact, I believe, a story circulating around our family about how one of my aunts fell into a Satanic cult and was almost goaded into throwing her newborn baby into a water source as a sort of “sink or swim” method for ascertaining whether or not it should live.

But there was no such threat around us at the time of these delusions.

In a way, my mother’s reactions to these dreams is how I reacted when I was young and first discovered that I could form pictures in my mind, talk to myself, and dream as well.

I think it is a little overpowering for her.

She does not understand the basic mechanics of dreams; how and why they form and why they seem so real.

She has dreams and delusions which are obviously caused by conscious and subconscious fears, no doubt fueled by her superstitions. But she has no idea that that is all they are. Dreams and delusions. Superstitions.

I bet the idea has never crossed her mind…

Often times, when I talked to her, still when I talk to her, she will sometimes space out and start whispering things to herself in a fast monologue that I cannot lip read, all the while oscillating back and forth, only to come back to reality with a stupefied facial expression as she notices that I have been standing there for a while, waiting for an answer to an unanswered question.

I remember, on more than one occasion, finding her in a room, motioning back and forth and talking to herself, gesticulating her hands across the air as if she were striking some unseen entity.

One of my earliest recollections is hearing her curse for the first time.

It was not natural at all.

It wasn’t unnatural because of the language. It was unnatural because, one, I had never heard her curse before ,and two, because it was more of an uncontrollable spasm than a natural speech pattern.

She would be angry with something and begin to talk of it angrily but calmly and then all of the sudden insert a curse word, say “Sorry” for making me hear it, and, getting angry at the same thing all over again, attempt to explain it without the use of vulgar language, only to fail.

Another staple of my mother’s schizophrenia is that she was utterly convinced that she didn’t have to do anything in this life; that blessings would just fall from the sky and land in her lap.

I remember when we moved from one state to our present state of living one year.

My mother saved up enough money for the plane ride but did not save money for either the hotel or anything else that we might have needed.

Needless to say, when we got off the plane, I didn’t know what was going to happen to us.

We waited in a small waiting chamber in the airport for a few hours, which seemed like forever.

I asked her why we weren’t moving and where we were going to go. She, looking out of the big windows, watching limousines go to and fro from the airport, responded that my father, a man I had never met since my birth, was going to pick us up in a white limousine and whisk us away to his mansion far off in some isolated part of this state (the white limousine is something she has mentioned to me long before we left the state in which we previously lived).

Needless to say…We ended up in a homeless shelter for about a year, if I recall…

My mother was also thoroughly convinced that I was meant to do certain things because God had ordained it.

One of my earliest recollections of this was when I had started doing figure skating and gymnastics.

To say my mother had become a belligerent soccer mom would be an understatement.

I suffered abuse all because of something she believed I was born to do.

I remember going into figure skating and gymnastics, and being told that I could do it “for fun”.

My mother had never made mention of the money she was spending for me to do these sports until she wanted to use it against me.

One day, when I was at the rink, I remember getting into a discussion with my coach and some of the other girls. We talked about the Olympics…

I had told my coach that if I had the chance I wouldn’t go. Wouldn’t want to.

Somehow… this got communicated to my mom later on the same day at the arena.

In the parking lot, it was wintertime then, my mother started screaming at me and hitting me, punching me in the face.

I tried to run towards the traffic that was in front of me but she caught me and threatened that worse would happen if I continued to scream.

No one could hear me or see me….

I also remember another occasion…

I had asked my mom if I could quit one of the sports. I believe it was figure skating.

My mother only told me that God wanted me to do “both”. I couldn’t do one and not do the other. It didn’t work like that.

It was “both” or “none”.

So I said I didn’t want to do any..

I went into my room and got my gym bag which had my two pairs of skates and all of my outfits in it and I started towards the garbage with all of these things in my hands.

As quick as lightning, my mother launched at him, hitting me, telling me that God had wanted me to do figure skating AND gymnastics. Both…not “none” and not “one”.

Of course I replied that I thought she was giving me a “choice”…

As I feel it is now the proper time to tell, since I will shortly begin talking about my experience in school and without, I went to an elementary school, a public school for a few months (a “selective” but public school), and a private, all-girls high school for about a year and a half.

I believe I was taken out of elementary school a year before I would have graduated.

For the record, I had friends in that school.

I was a happy child. Popular with the teachers and students.

I had friends and I was social.

I was a star pupil, as well.

All of that changed when I was home schooled.

I never saw any of my friends again..

My mother home schooled me through a Christian curriculum which need not be named.

I had always thought there was something ultimately limiting about the curriculum. One, because I was basically taught not to think at all but to have the thinking done for me.

The curriculum was all about all of things God did but offered no proof of these things. It was also biased towards non-Christian beliefs, which is something I never really grasped until I got older.

The average day for me began at around 6:30 in the morning and ended at about 4:00 in the afternoon.

I washed and had breakfast.

I had the standard curriculum: Theology, English, History, Math, and Science.

I also had electives like Calligraphy.

My mother attempted to teach an instrument class.

I played the clarinet, which I had been learning just fine in the public elementary school I had come from.

My mother was not equipped to teach me to play an instrument, although she boasted of having learned to play the autoharp when she was young.

But it is because of her trying to teach me something that she did not possess the knowledge to teach that over time I lost the ability to play at the level I had learned in public school.

After school, I would watch public television or spend the night in my room reading.

Some times, I and my mother would watch public television or some other channel, depending on what was shown, at night.

Although my mother couldn’t shield me from everything that was shown on television, she tried.

If we were watching a show in which there was what she considered to be an unnecessary display of emotion, such as mere touching or kissing, she would often times make strange vocal sounds of disapproval, grimace, and then, more than likely, turn the television to another channel.

Whenever I would ask about it, she would say that there was nothing wrong.

And although I would often times feign not knowing the reason the television was turned to another channel, deep down I knew


I have spent the majority of my life reading.

Since I can remember, I have always been an avid reader and have always had an active imagination.

As seasons came and seasons went, and I was confined to the home, my only companions were five cats and a mom; plus the occasional book and the online research that the computer afforded me.

But, contrary to belief, I did own a television…

As far as the media is concerned, I was only sheltered from it half way…

In the afternoon through the night, I usually watched public television or the occasional action, sci fi, fantasy, or soap opera show.

There were some other things I watched and was allowed to watch, shows that were popular at the time, but, for the most part, my television viewing was pretty much monitored and limited to educational and cultural programs.

So too was the music I listened to, monitored.

In a way I thank my mom for this for I would not be the woman I am today had I been exposed to certain music.

But, in a way, it has also been a limiting experience.

I was brought up with Classical, Opera, and Christian music. I remember little to no pop, although I do remember some(Except the fads, Britney, plenty of Boy Bands, No Doubt, Mariah Carey, Spice Girls).

I remember owning several soundtracks, as well.

My mother didn’t indulge in pop but with some of it she was generous enough to let me listen to it. As I grew up, however, I further developed my own tastes as the beginnings of my identity channeled itself in the form of alternative music, then hard rock, then metal, then other forms like Gothic music.

I even consciously began to see myself in all of the misfits of the silver screen.

This would undoubtedly manifest itself in real life as time moved on and I found myself in direct contact with people.

Subconsciously, I guess, I always knew that if I were in public school, given the fact that I liked learning and loved to read, and just was “different” in many different ways, I would most likely be treated in the same manner as were such people on the silver screen.

When I went to high school for the first time, I didn’t know what to expect.

If there was one lesson I wasn’t prepared to learn, one thing I wasn’t prepared to deal with, it was how suddenly someone who seemed to be your friend could turn on you at the flip of a dime.

After I had been at that high school for a few days, I had joined a clique in order to survive in that jungle of pre-adolescence.

It was an all-girl clique, full of the most popular and desirable girls in school.

I will never really be sure if I fit into that clique; both in their minds and in the minds of the rest of the student body.

But I tried.


One thing that won me a lot of enemies is that I was a vocal participant in each and every class discussion.

I was the teacher’s pet.

Honestly, I and my mother had never had class discussions about any of the things she taught me.

I listened but never spoke; even if I did not agree with what she taught me.

Her word was law.

She taught me to submit to her will; to the things she wanted me to believe.

Still, in a way, even though I was taught not to speak against my mother’s beliefs, reflected in our home school curriculum, if they were her beliefs, I assumed that my peers would encourage each other to discuss the subject at hand.

I was wrong.

Even though I was still a part of that clique, I have a feeling they talked about me behind my back.

Not long after my first experience in high school, a place where, towards the end of my stay everyone who had befriended me in the beginning deserted me in the end and I spent every day eating at a table by myself during the lunch period, I went to a private school.

It was an all-girl’s Catholic school.

I was not ready for this experience, as well.

From day one, I didn’t feel as if I belonged there.

It didn’t matter the demographics of the other girls, every one else seemed to belong to the same family; they seemed to seamlessly camouflage into the school as if they were always a part.

On my first day of school, I went to school without the blouse to my uniform, because my mother and I couldn’t afford one.

I went dressed in a worn out and dirt stained blouse, replete with the school’s skirt; which was given to me out of the hand me down closet of the school; a closet full of previously worn school clothes.

I tried to befriend another group of girls in this school, although I knew, like with the group of girls from the last school, I was nothing like them.

I watched them smile and laugh, not even behind my back but to my face, as I tried my hardest to blend into their group; to not stick out like a sore thumb as I so often seem to do.

But it was no use.

I either smiled or laughed too much, had a weird habit of eating, or brought strange lunches to school that would make everyone grimace in disgusts.

It is during that time that prolonged periods of sadness began to kick in.

I would not eat for days on end, and I tried, unsuccessfully, as I had no eye for current fashion and could care less about it, to pick out mainstream clothes to fit in with the other girls at my school.

The only thing I had to preoccupy myself with was studying.

I was a diligent student but I had no friends.

I began get a little paranoid.

It’s strange to explain this but I had altered my private lifestyle, a lifestyle I knew no one but me and my mother knew about, because of a paranoid fear I had that someone would find out the “real me” and I would be even further outcasted.

I enmeshed myself in popular culture.

Pop, hip hop, rap, and r n b.

Even though I mostly limited myself to the music I thought was innovative(Outkasts, Alicia Keys, etc etc), even given the genres, I fell into a bout of depression because I knew I was not being myself.

I would not play my own music in the comfort of my own home.

A music collection which was then a collection full of seventy-five plus compact discs and cassettes I had amassed without the aid of any outside influences.

I would only play this music when I was I had my headphones one and I would almost always only play it with the volume low.

I cried in my room, which was pretty much the only room I inhibited.

I got angry often.

When I got angry, I trashed my room; I often pushed the dresser to the floor, etc.

I had all of these emotions and feelings but I didn’t dare to show them to anyone or to express them in any way; except on the pages of journals that no one would ever see…But me.

I suppressed everything to try to fit in.


Going to college, like high school, was also a challenge.

One I ultimately overcame. But not without experiencing emotional turmoil in the process.

Here I found myself unpopular and friendless.

Most importantly, I realized a major difference between myself as a home schooler and all of my peers.

Everyone else had learned to cope with all of their emotional problems, if they ever had any, I’m sure they did, in middle or high school.

If they were having problems then in college, they hid it extremely well.

In general, I was then experiencing everything I should have experienced and learned from in middle and high school.

How to deal with identity issues, how to form your identity without caring what other’s thinking, knowing that not everyone will like you, etc.

I was emotionally more than a few grades behind.

And of course, no one could be bothered to help me.

No one understood.

I came across as a child to these post-teenagers who were ready to dwell in their newfound courage; who no longer knew what it felt like to feel the insecurities that I felt in those moments.

In my frustration, I took out my anger on my dorm room.

I screamed and threw the room into a disarray.

I was only digging myself deeper into that hole my mother had dug for me a long time ago. But I couldn’t tell anyone that my lack of sociability was my mother’s fault.

This now became my problem; something I had to face like an adult.

Whenever I had to give a presentation, my knees would buckle beneath me, my voice would quake and I could feel my heart in my chest so vividly I thought I wouldn’t make it through…Although I always did, unfortunately.













Part 2:
The Aftermath: Life After Home Schooling

It is a strange observation that I have made, looking back at my life.

The very purpose home schooling itself, at least, in my experience, is to curb the behavior of young adults from being a certain way.

It is a slap against the face to children because it is the equivalent of saying, “I don’t think you can handle the world.”, “I don’t think you will overcome the temptation”, and, most importantly, “I don’t want to give you the tools to assess whether or not my own beliefs against said temptations were merely my own opinions; ones that I selfishly will not give you the right to form your own opinions about”.

For most parents, it is subconsciously a fountain of youth to forever keep their children in a childlike state, physically and mentally.

The majority of parents are afraid of the world. Afraid of their children growing up and having to choose…Having to make tough decisions that might ultimately make or break them.

Even my mother’s schizophrenia and religious conviction can be considered as simply a very real parental fear only taken to the extreme; which is, perhaps, a measure most parents won’t go to but no doubt must feel.

In this section, I will talk about the outcomes of several of the areas of my life as a result of my mother’s austere method of home schooling.

I will talk about the trials and tribulations I have faced concerning my predisposed but unfounded biases on certain issues and the truthful knowledge I acquired about those biases in question.

Subjects include issues such as: Sex and Sexuality, Identity Crisis (Especially Individuality versus conformity), Safety and Paranoia, Social Anxiety, and depression (not used in reference to the disorder) in general brought about.

For a long time I have grown up in the shadow of my mother.

It is a shadow that often times seems to have the length and width of eternity.

I can never be sure if I will ever escape its infinite grasp; for it is a habitual part of my mentality.

My mother’s views of purity and chastity as the most righteous degree a human can attain in this life has my own(I understand that at least her reasoning, though still faulty, is due to the fact that the first man she fell in love with(Or second), my father, was also the first to leave her. Given the state of her mind, and given the nature of herself being a woman, and thus emotional, that conclusion at least seems logical for her mindset.

I find that most parents, of which my mother was one, control every action of their children in order to prevent sex and sexuality, ultimately.

The home school environment is by nature one of sexual repression.

My own home school environment was no different.

My mother had never and would have never let a young man into the threshold of our home(Remember trying to bring one, didn't go so well).

Boys were a big, “No no”.

In addition, anything that was “sexually explicit” on television was readily turned off. Even the mere sight of a girl being sensually playful with a man, even simply kissing, would make my mother turn off the television.

I can now sit here with conviction and say that my sexual repression was also a direct result of my sexual liberalism.

By chance, when we got a computer, I found pornography(Actually this is when I was about ten years old, sorry for the going back and forth between years).

I believe this is also why I am bisexual; my first encounter with nudity, not the fact that I was home schooled.

I knew nothing about sex when I was young, watching women on those pornographic sites, as they all were, save perhaps one or two sites dedicated to male pornography. But somehow I had taught myself how to orgasm and climax off of it without touch.

I had no idea what I was doing…It just simply… came and went.

Before long I had preferences for what sort of women I liked. The countries of origins where I thought the more beautiful the woman…The more exotic. The more appealing the shape of the body in certain areas.

I became addicted to pornography.

At first, it was a very problematic addiction as it interfered with my studies. I basically couldn’t do my homework or be on the computer at all, without accessing pornography.

After a while, I moved on from pornography to acting out sexual fantasies alone in my room.

I would take a favorite person, be it in an actor, actress, or character from some franchise, and I would pretend as if I and the other person were having sex.

I even created fantasies where more than one person was involved. I would imitate all of their voices.

**I will not use the names of any disorder in this section since I am not in the position to diagnose myself or anyone else. But I will describe how my own mental health suffered during and after home schooling. Because, though I have never been diagnosed with anything, I know what I have through. I will simply let you judge…

The first womb a person comes to know… The first womb you and I have ever known is that of the mother.

It is warm and nurturing. It is where we slept and ate and knew no harm; the ultimate protection.

I can only image that is for this reason that babies cry. Pulled out of that seed of protection and thrust into a world of uncertainty…And change.

It is because of this fear of uncertainty and change that I was not only home schooled in the first place, but, because of that decision , and because I have not been socialized with other people, I have clung for so long onto what can be thought of as the second womb; the home.

The home is not any different than the womb.

It is that place you can escape to, to escape from reality.

Like the womb, it is both warm and nurturing.

In your home, you are protected from the world and the uncertainty of the changes that occur outside the home. You are not, for example, concerned about where your next meal will come from and whether or not you’ll be warm during the winter months.

You are protected from direct and indirect contact with those who might try to inflict physical or emotion abuse upon you.

Even if, like myself, you were not born into a perfect family and even had the misfortune of having physical and emotional abuse brought upon you, I can at least say, for myself, at least, that it is still different from the new-ness of the same abuse by another person. Even simply the thought of it is an unpleasant one. Thus, the action needed to learn how to live one’s own life, thrusting one’s self into an unfamiliar environment, is harder still.

It is, unfortunately, to say the least, so much easier to stay with what one knows, rather than to enter something one has never experienced.

And that is exactly what I have felt during and after my home schooling.

After eighteen years, on and off, but still, almost all of those years remaining indoors, without friends, contact with family, or going to social gatherings of any sort, it is far easier to stay at home, surf the internet, listen to music, watch television or a movie, read a book, or play a video game, rather than to go anywhere where there is something new to overcome; the crowd at a movie theater, concert, or convention, for example.

The home as the second womb doesn’t just provide protection from the words and deeds of others. It is also a place free from the criticism of others.

I find this to be another one of the most important differences between the home and world.

The world is not a womb. Nor does it disguise itself as one.

It is not there to protect you from the elements or from other people.

The world is a place where only the strong survive. But the womb does not create strength of character…It fosters weakness.

When I had gone to college and left home for the first time in my life, this was the year two thousand and six through two thousand and seven, by the way, I was ill prepared to find that many different people emcompass many different beliefs, both logical and illogical, differing and sometimes even opposing my own.

I had the (un) liberty of spending hours alone with myself, reasoning and debating an issue. But, with no one there to contest my beliefs, my solo debates were futile.

In this way, I had been preprogrammed to believe that this environment in which I lived and my beliefs about it and the world outside, which I had never experienced before, that I knew the absolute truth about it, even though I barely knew anything about it.

In this way, the home was also a barrier that my mother placed between me and the world.
After all, I have never known anything more than what she would tell me about the world. If she told me that the world was a bad place and that all men were users and abusers, I would believe her.

It wasn’t that I was not open to the possibility that I might be wrong or that she might be wrong or that our beliefs, separately or together, were not the only ones worth considering..

It was my ignorance which was not my own but the product of a mother who didn’t dare tell me not only that I might be wrong and that her beliefs and the strong opinions she had about them, might also be flawed.