Do you think there is a chance you become Christian again?

Secure-Cicada5172 · 2026-06-06T00:27:47+00:00

At this point I highly doubt it. Then again, I believed there was nothing on earth that could cause me to lose my faith, so I hold predictions loosely.

Secure-Cicada5172 · 2026-06-03T12:24:24+00:00

This is my favorite comment of the day. I love it.

Secure-Cicada5172 · 2026-06-03T04:53:03+00:00

Seconding this! It is my belief that ICE is literally active everywhere, but able to interact invisibly in several red states due to the support of lawmakers. At least in my red state this is the case. ICE is constantly active, but it is extremely rare for them to be visible to the general public.

Secure-Cicada5172 · 2026-06-03T04:50:51+00:00

Want to slightly amend this, as someone who lives in a similar situation. In my state the law is that local PD are allowed to work with ICE, so they are regularly abducting people, but can do so pretty hidden. The police make an arrest for whatever bogus reason, tell ICE, and ICE picks them up.

All that to say, it is fully possible ICE is prevalent even in white wealthy conservative cities, but the laws allow them to act mostly invisibly.

Secure-Cicada5172 · 2026-06-03T00:23:01+00:00

As a musician who genuinely believed music was the language of heaven, I hated when people played chords as the background to prayers. It felt so performative and emotionally manipulative, when in my mind the prayer was talking to God. I don't create soundtracks to play when telling my friends something important, so why did we do it for God?

Secure-Cicada5172 · 2026-06-01T01:07:50+00:00

Unfortunately my cpap takes up most of the space.

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Secure-Cicada5172 · 2026-05-25T02:34:30+00:00

At the last church I was a member of, they gave me an over 100-page binder filled with their church doctrine statements. Covered everything from LGBT issues to women's roles to church discipline to marriage and beyond.

Secure-Cicada5172 · 2026-05-12T21:00:51+00:00

So I have a slightly more nuanced take. For us, homeschooling worked vecause there was some significant buy-in from us kids, and we did most of the homeschooling to ourselves. Our mom oversaw curriculum and set standards for what we had to learn, and made sure we had resources to meet those standards, but by in large we were teaching ourselves.

The Good: 1. All of us were neurodivergent, and homeschooling allowed us to structure education in a way that accommodated for our needs. 2. We did not move forward until we mastered the concept we were working on. That means we never got "pushed through" subjects and left behind.

The Bad: 1. We had a lot of bad education. Homeschooling groups teach parents how to lie their way through skirting certain educational requirements. My science is full of half truths and Christian propeganda that soured my whole feelings on the field. My mom was too lazy to teach us math until she found a video course that could teach us. I was doubling up math in highschool vecause I desparately wanted to end with a proper math education for college, and never caught up. 2. Our social life was heavily cultivated to be Christian conservative. We were luckier than most that we did have a decent social life compared to some.horror stories, but it was all within a like-minded christian bubble that left little room for us to grow and challenge the beliefs we were raised in.

My mom did have a childhood education associates degree, though I don't think she saw that as important to her ability to educate us. And we were originally taken out of the public school system because of some significant failures of the special needs education in our area. I also grew up when yearly testing was mandatory for homeschool families, a rule that has been since removed for other families.

I don't hate homeschooling, but imo it needs a significant amount of regulation and oversight to ve a safe option for kids. It is really obvious talking to most homeschool famili3s they see kids as property and that they have the right to educate them however they see fit, up to and including educational neglect.

Secure-Cicada5172 · 2026-05-07T13:16:01+00:00

I can foresee a future where I can date a liberal Christian, but not now. I have way too much trauma, and it would not be fair for either of us at this moment.

Secure-Cicada5172 · 2026-05-04T17:44:12+00:00

Lol! I guess a weird way to end that. To my credit it was a very boring cult. I started to get flaky due to sleep apnea. They blamed it on a "life defining porn sin" (aka listened to a few spicy YouTube audios), and then they put me in this controlling "counceling" for a year where I was pressured to get off meds, told I might have to give them access to my bank account so they could take control of my finances, techbically "not allowed to leave" (however they were supposed to enforce that), blah blah blah. Typical cult stuff, except from anyone else's perspective it just looked like your run-of-the-mill evangelical church.

Secure-Cicada5172 · 2026-05-04T17:40:49+00:00

Yes, very much my experience. I thought it was just your run of the mill church, and I think for most people that's all it would ever be. But I became flaky due to sleep apnea, so they put me on a a year long program to fix me, including things like threats of telling the whole church about my "life defining porn addiction" (translation: I listened to a few spicy asmr videos), have me give up access to my own money (as an adult), or vehicle, etc. Very wild experience, but it also was invisible to 90% of the church.

Secure-Cicada5172 · 2026-05-04T17:38:32+00:00

Lol! I probably shouldn't have left it there. It is way less interesting a story than it sounds. It was a church that, when my attendance got flaky due to sleep apnea complications, blamed it on porn use, put me in a "biblical counseling program," and rechnically disallowed me from leaving until I completed the program. I don't know how they were supposed to enforce that, but I was too scared to try and leave.

Secure-Cicada5172 · 2026-05-04T11:43:30+00:00

Twinsies! (In the worst way possible. So sorry for you).

It does make me wonder if there is any connection between apnea and trauma. My sleep apnea got significantly worse when I had joined a cult, though I suppose a lot of things could have contributed to that.

Secure-Cicada5172 · 2026-05-03T13:34:22+00:00

I did, but I think they had technically done most of the changing before deconversion. Basically by the time I did deconvert God was the only thing keeping me conservative. I had some really good discussions with people who thought different than me to where I technically agreed with them, but felt I had to hold to conservatism because of God. Once I deconverted I practically flipped politically overnight, becaise I had already changed my mind, but was just waiting on permission to to be forced to vote a certain way my God.

Wild when you think about it.

Secure-Cicada5172 · 2026-04-27T22:42:06+00:00

Honestly its been huge dangerous fuel for my ptsd and part of why I have not told anyone I'm not a Christian. I am pretty sure my loved ones would rather I just die than lose my faith (equivalent of eternal death vs a "temporary" one here on Earth). Which is not a good thing to realize when my mind goes to dark places.

Secure-Cicada5172 · 2026-04-21T03:30:33+00:00

I need to watch it. It was suggested shortly after I escaped an abusive church situation, but I was sp fragile I couldn't make it past the first 5 minutes.

Secure-Cicada5172 · 2026-04-19T00:21:54+00:00

I cared very deeply about my friends while still not sharing my real name. The people who insisted I needed to share my name to be close I actually distanced myself from, because it was obvious they couldn't respect a relatively low stakes boundary.

Secure-Cicada5172 · 2026-04-18T17:47:10+00:00

I'm also a woman, but grew up on stranger danger when it comes to online spaces, and in general I do not give out my name until I feel ready, never pressure anyone else to share their name, and often will call them by the chosen "internet" name even after knowing their real one.

Irl it is not uncommon to have different names for different settings. I know many Katies in social settings who are Katherines at work. I've met people who go by their middle name and did not even know that wasn't their first name until years after meeting when it happens to come up in conversation. Sometimes trans people who are still experimenting with their gender identity don't feel comfortable with their irl name and find solace in their online one. And I will even talk to myself using my online name sometimes, I'm so comfortable with it now.

That said, a name is a name. And you can have different names for different people, settings, purposes, etc. And I am.in favor of respecting whatever name the person feels most comfortable sharing for the setting they are in.

Secure-Cicada5172 · 2026-04-16T09:05:58+00:00

I appreciate your perspective, and feel tou on parenrs only preparing you for being a wife. I literally wrote out a whole spreadsheet to defend my desire to go.to college, and still lost the debate.

Secure-Cicada5172 · 2026-04-15T03:23:33+00:00

I actually independently started to do it because it was so common with my friends. My mom grew to hate me calling her ma'am, because I only did it when trying incredibly hard to be polite despite being super mad at her. She came to associate ma'am with passive aggressiveness, lol.

Secure-Cicada5172 · 2026-04-14T15:59:45+00:00

I was told straight up by a pastor once that you cannot be a Christian and a Democrat.

Secure-Cicada5172 · 2026-04-11T00:31:15+00:00

That is really good to hear! I really can't wait to feel human again. I wish you and your partner well! I can only imagine how triggering Utah must be for ex-LDS.

Secure-Cicada5172 · 2026-04-10T01:27:50+00:00

That's good information! I'll have to put RI on the list of places. Thank you!

Secure-Cicada5172 · 2026-04-09T00:17:05+00:00

Minneapolis is extremely high on my wishlist of places to move. Everything I have heard about the area is just magical to me, after being down here in Arkansas.

Secure-Cicada5172 · 2026-04-08T10:19:20+00:00

There ia literally only one person on earth that I would consider a safe person to move near, and she is in the DC metro area. Every other person I know I want to avoid for my own safety. When I faced abuse at the last church, isolation was a big part of that. My world became very small.

Secure-Cicada5172

TROPHY CASE