I knew I wanted to join AmeriCorps NCCC the very second I read about it when I was 19 years old in college in a little town in Southern Georgia called Tifton.
Little did I know that dream would soon become my life and it would be the only thing I would think about from waking up early for my 7am algebra class (failed that class horribly, by the way… Who the fuck in their right mind signs up for a 7am algebra class?) to going to bed at 2am while laughing to Adult Swim and cursing my laptop for not being fast enough to play Second Life along with all the other cool kids when I should have been writing my 10 page English paper (Never wrote it… failed that class too by the way).
If you hadn’t already guessed, I was well on my way to flunking college. I didn’t know that at the time though. I was young, I was in college, and, in my mind, I had every right to fail a class… or two seeing as I did so good in school for 19 years of my life. In every nerds life, this is a turning point. A point of self realization. I learned early in life that math would hate me and I would hate it in return just as much, if not more. It’s not the failing math that surprised me; it was the fact that I failed English. It was the first time in my life I had failed any class outside of math and it was the first time I didn’t genuinely enjoy reading.
I stopped reading that year. And I stopped drawing. On my 20th birthday, I stopped believing in God. My friends threw me a birthday party which was much like a going away party because we were transferring out of the two year college scene (or, at least, that is what I planned to do). When I say “friends”, I use this word very lightly and only to let you, the reader, know that I once had a close acquaintance with these people. These people are the reason why I stopped believing in God and also probably the reason why I failed English for the first time. Yes, I’m blaming others for my down falls in life. Shoot me.
They managed to bring out my depression to the fullest extent and what was so dumb about it is that I let them. I intentionally hung around people who made me feel like shit and bullied me on a daily basis. It started off nice, like most relationships and ended horribly, like most relationships. I distinctly remember crying in my dorm room at night praying to God to make them stop bullying me, but my prayers were never answered. All throughout the party, I hear nothing but murmurs and whispers about my weight and how much of a slut I am and how big my nose is and how old I look.
“Well, your nose is too big for that hairstyle.”, she would say to my face as she sat in my dorm room using my laptop I let her borrow and they would both laugh in unison. Whenever we would talk to a guy and he mentioned anything about sex their response was always something along the lines of “Oh, we don’t do things like that. We have Christian values” while looking at me and indirectly stating “unlike her”. It was the first time in my life I had friends. My whole life, I had been an anti-social hermit and avoided people like the plague. My mom would always say, “I wish you got out more and had girl friends.” so, when college started, they basically forced me into becoming friends with these girls. For once in my life, I was normal. I had friends. And I regret it.
I was the college slut and they made sure to make sure that I knew that. I trusted the wrong guy my freshman year and ended up sleeping with him. It was the 3rd time in my life I had sex and it was my first time having sex with a black guy (it hurt like hell because his dick was so huge). It was completely out of my character, but what are the college years for? My whole life I’ve always been the “good girl” or the “nice girl” or the “quiet girl”. Why would I want to go into college with the same image I’ve had my whole life?
Newsflash: College is nothing like how they make it seem in those dumb cliche college theme Hollywood movies.
I liked him and decided to ask him out one day. We were texting back and forth. I would send a text and he would text back within a second or two. Two minutes tops. This is when I decided to ask him if he would date me and suddenly the texts stopped. He never replied back. I waited all night for his answer and cried myself to sleep that night in my dorm room. I dated an asshole in high school who ended up cheating on me. From then on, I promised myself that I would dump a guy and move on if he made me cry so I did. I didn’t want my college years to be filled with tears so I found another guy who made me happy. Of course, he got mad that I moved on and told the whole school what we did thus further proving his doucheness and further delving me into a world full being called ho, slut, and whore on the daily.
It doesn’t hurt anymore.
Outside of that, I was bullied for my religious beliefs or, should I say, my none religious beliefs. I considered myself to be an agnostic theist at the time meaning that I believed in a God, but admitted to not knowing who this God is. Everyone in southern Georgia is a Christian and, if you aren’t, they consider you to be a devil worshiper. So, not only was I a slut, I was also a devil worshiper. They (those “friends” I told you about) told me to come to their dorm room to watch a movie with them and I agreed because what are friends for? I happily walked on over to their dorm room at midnight and sat on their sofa thinking it would be another Tyler Perry movie which is bad in itself, but it was worse.
They had me watch one of those dumbass brainwashing Christian movies like Left Behind. Only people with no life watch those type of movies. I was friends with no life idiots. Before the movie started, they called me a “heathen” and had me watch the scene where the Christian characters were belittling a non-religious character. Of course, the non-religious character was evil and had no morals or care for human life. He threw tables around and acted like an animal while the Christians were pure, whole hearted good people who tried to “help” him. To make it worse, all throughout the movie, they asked me questions like “Do you hear that? Huh? Huh?!” when they mentioned scenes about going to hell and asked me if I wanted them to explain Christianity to me. They even had the audacity to get mad whenever I turned my head away and didn’t want to watch the movie because, yes, it makes perfect sense for a non-religious person to want to watch a movie about belittling their beliefs.
Why do Christians always think people don’t know what Christianity is? Christianity is one of the top three leading world religions; how would anyone not know what Christianity is? Did it ever occur to Christians that some people just purposely and intentionally choose not to believe in it?
For the first time in my life, I actually cried because my friends are so stupid.
I cried and called my mom in anger trying to explain to her the situation, but she is Christian too so it was hard for her to comprehend. Christian or atheist, Buddhist or Wiccan, we all can feel pain and we all know how we want to be treated. No matter what your beliefs are, you know right from wrong and no matter how much Christians try to cover up their bad behavior with the word “help” when they’re pushing their beliefs on someone or saying they do it out of “love” when they hate on homosexuals, they know they wouldn’t want to be treated that way.
Unsurprisingly, I was infuriated, but I didn’t show it. I didn’t flip tables over. I didn’t curse them out. I chose to not act like a wild animal like non-religious people were depicted in the movie because I knew that was how they expected me to respond. Instead, when the movie was over, I said “thank you and good night” and that was that.
