„Growing up in a church is such a nice detail for people writing your biography“, my witch giggles into the orange sunset and I have to take a deep breath. „In case people do so, because your writing escalated enough with the world.“ And she giggles once more.
It took me 25 years to realize that this was a unique fact about myself. I said it to an ex-lover when drunk and only in that moment realized the impact of what I had just said.
„I grew up in a church“, I had giggled. „A Lutheran protestant church, and it was weird.“ And I had giggled into my bottle of wine.
These moments of realization about yourself are weird when you accidentally share them with someone. Even more when you’re already naked and feel like one of these was too much … but which one?!
Most of the time, I am not aware of it. I have lived mostly without thinking about it, but there are some key moments in which I realize how much that influenced me, and it‘s not the happy ones.
It’s moments I spend on my own, looking at the dramatic sunset wondering about tomorrow.
„The world can feel so lonely when you once were united under the same imaginary friend“, my witch giggles and I have to nod.
It really does.
When I was growing up, my living situation changed rapidly from year to year, but the church was always there, which is why my mother brought me there whenever she could and also spent all her free time there, She still does, by the way. Time spent at church is the reason I learned to play the violin and sing. It‘s the reason I sometimes had my homework done, and the reason I had friends that had seen me growing up. It felt just like the family I never had, so no wonder, as a teenager I used to stay there when I had nowhere else to go. It was a place of singing, eating, living together, and sometimes I wondered why we even had to pray together.
Did we really have to?
Can’t we just have some more tea and sing another song?
When the community embraces you, you feel as if you truly belong. The feeling is warm and cozy, and at least I really tend to forget why I was praying.
“Well, because everybody did and you were scared of being send home”, my witch teases me and I role my eyes.
My head never worked like that.
When we were praying, we suddenly used those ancient words that promised obedience. Old verses asking god for forgiveness. Words that displayed a fear of the future and regrets of the past.
Words that made me feel unwell.
“You can ignore them and in your head say your own words”, my mother responded to this, and I sometimes thought about what I would like to say to god.
Only to realize that there was nothing.
“I don’t have much to say to Daddy either”, my witch giggles. “He was very mean to me.”
It was a terrifying moment when I realized that I do not believe in god. When I realized that I had no words to fill my prayers with and that I did not need this someone all my friends were praying to.
I did not need god to explain the existence of the world to me. Subatomic particles dancing and attracting others was enough.
I did not need god as a moral compass, because I found the human rights resolution much more helpful than the bible.
I did not believe in god.
And suddenly, I felt as if I did not belong anymore.
The community, the singing, the eating and living together felt differently afterwards.
My mother likes to point out that I could still do all of these things with them and that the religious aspect was very small, but still it was there.
And I was not a part of it.
I chose a lonely path.
But is it really that lonely?
I sometimes wonder about that.
It feels lonely for me, because I am used to sharing my life with a group of 50 people, united in their believe in god and their need to sing to him, but that is not normal.
I think being alone is much more normal than I am used to.
And that’s okay.
The way the church tried to warp me into their community has put this loneliness inside of me that usually makes people return to them.
“But not us”, my witch announces proudly and I begin to shiver as the sun is disappearing.
“Still, it made me cling to people that were not good for me”, I remind her.
It also made me think the friends I had found in my university years had to last forever and left me heartbroken when we all moved on.
“I wanted people to be there and see me through the years”, I tell my witch. “And the people that had once done that did not understand me anymore.”
My witch takes off her dress and puts it around my shoulders as I shiver. “And against all odds, we’re still alive.” Then she giggles again. “It probably also made you become a science teacher, you know.”
Growing up in a church might be a fun biography fact for someone writing the weird things I do, but it warped my mind into a community sense that does not fit a normal life.
And these thoughts tend to come back when there is a dramatic sunset.
Mistress witch writes 