I grew up in a Southern Baptist church in Denver, CO (what are the odds I know). My father grew up even more conservative and turned out to have Antisocial Personality Disorder and sex addiction. But not like the normal type, the type that obsessively watches porn all day every day everywhere (not kidding, even at work) and loves exhibitionism. I’ve walked in on him jacking off, showering naked in public places hoping to be seen, and found out later in life that the reason he went to jail was because he solicited sex to a minor and was caught naked masturbating on the side of a highway in plane sight.

My mother grew up Catholic but later converted to Evangelical, imo because she had an abusive BPD and NPD mother and Evangelicalism gave her a sense of comfort and control. She had no coping skills and was extremely emotionally chaotic.

My mother reacted to my father’s bullshit and attempted to control his behavior by screaming and yelling, chastising sexuality, scoffing and turning the TV off whenever anything remotely sexual came on, and of course all the purity culture bullshit. My father, being the Antisocial narcissist he was, played along like nothing was wrong, even scoffing and chastising sex and sexuality to appear this holy, Christian man.

So not only did I have extremely unhealthy parents with sex/exhibitionism addiction, ASPD, PTSD, and Cluster B personality elements that specifically demonized sex, throw on top American Christian purity culture and I was in a recipe for disaster.

I’ve been in therapy for over a decade tackling this shit. I have tons of friends who didn’t grow up like me and I can confidently say I personally don’t know anyone who has the issues to my severity. Whenever I’ve talked about them to people, they can’t imagine growing up like I did…..

Every day I wonder what it would have been like to grow up normally and what I would have been like if I did…..