My father. He's an overbearing bible thumper. While we were a Christian family, he got REALLY into it. To the paranoid fundamentalist extremes at times. To the point that his relationship with god ruined his relationship with his family. He did such a great job convincing me that the rapture/armageddon etc. was going to go down any time now (any time now since 1989 folks!) that it ruined my life. When you convince a child so completely that their is no future, why would he bother preparing for it? (Combine that with how rough the bullying and humiliation was in public schools for me at that time, and I couldn't come up with a good reason to take my education seriously) After all, I was absolutely sure that by the time I was eighteen in 1999, I'd have either been in heaven, or be in the middle of the reign of the anti-christ, begging for food and waiting to be executed for my beliefs, or dying of some terrible disease/being disintegrated in a nuke explosion, etc. When Y2K was a dud, I started getting into contact with reality again.
But it took until only just two or three years ago for me to fully discard my religious brainwashing. When I look back at my youth, I am filled with nothing but deep regret for the person I could have been sans all the guilt, grief, angst, hatred, superstition, and paranoia. We never got along too well at all from about the time I turned thirteen forward, due to over hearing a conversation he had with my mom on the phone about suing for custody of me, (he was bullying her every bit as much as the kids at school bullied me, and it disgusted me) but I still believed the same way he raised me to believe because of that handy fear of hell that kept me in line. We see and speak to each other, on average, twice a year. I don't go to his birthday or fathers day things, and he's stopped calling me to invite me to events at his house for other peoples birthdays and etc. as well. That ass owes me an apology, and I know I'll never get it. So screw him.
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