I just wanted out. I didn't know I had a choice, it was all a given. It was clearly not a healthy environment. There was something rotten at the core of the whole shebang. You had Jesus, hanging up there on that cross, and you felt badly for him, but then, the rest of it just never added up.
And the Nuns and the Priests had all this power, and it seemed like it was all about guilt, pain, suffering and unhappiness. Not a lot of laughter in the halls. In retrospect, it's safe to say that the Nuns and Priests seemed like pretty much un-well people.
I was out of there by 7th grade, my family moved to Wisconsin and well, that seemed like going from Purgatory to Hell. I hated Wisconsin with all my might and passion. I felt like an alienated city kid, dropped in rural, podunk, backward America. But I spent time in a public school, and it seemed a little liberating. I was still lost, still doing my best to be invisible, but there was less intimidation and indoctrination. I remember being into poetry, and reading a poem in class. First time actually being seen in school.
Mostly I was all about goofing off on my own. That was my refuge, goofing off. I read and hear about these Catholic Church scandals and it all seems so horrifying. A concerted system of abuse. All across the Christian globe.
Yes. Horrifying. So glad I escaped pretty much unscathed, except for the guilt, the shame, the cloak of invisibility I carried with me. I had to work hard to shed all of that shit. I mean, it's an on-going process.
