Religion - Part Two of a Conflicted and Contradictory Series

my relationship with religion while growing up was one of profound alienation. i simply never felt a sense of god's place in my life, except as a dysfunctional father figure whose love was conditional on my obedience to his will. i've always had an independent streak, so that way of viewing the world didn't appeal to me at all. in the midst of the sound and fury of a whole congregation of adults crying and writhing in religious ecstacy (i attended a southern baptist church for a number of years), i felt that i stood apart from them.

a lot of it had to do with the drum beat of messages from the church regarding the subservient role of women. i resented the increasingly intrusive interest in my body as i neared the age of puberty. i had enjoyed a lot of freedom as a tomboy, but as i approached adolescence, i sensed a subtle change in attitudes that both infuriated and pained me deeply.

the only word i can think of to describe it is 'distrust.' i started to get comments about my shorts being 'too short.' although i was still very much a child and not very much aware of any sexual awakening at the time, the authority figures in my life seemed to hold the unspoken attitude that i might turn into a whore any minute. my body had been up until that point simply the place where my self lived. when it became the means by which my self was defined, it was an unwelcome shock.

i didn't tell my mother that i'd begun menstruating until six months after my first period. my entrance into womanhood was tinged with shame, fear, and self-hatred. i was devastated by the arrival of menstruation because i felt on some level that it meant i had crossed a line of innocence into sin by virtue of a natural biological phenomenon. now, i know that my reaction was a rejection of what a whole lot of people wanted me to believe womanhood was about.

my mother didn't really help things much. we used to fight a lot because i didn't didn't like wearing bras. she never outright said it, but i knew perfectly well that the unspoken question was -- what will people think? i also knew well that the unspoken answer was 'a whore.' she probably didn't see it in those terms, but i knew what she was afraid that other people would.

when she tried to talk to me about menstruation, it was with the attitude one has when broaching a delicate and vaguely shameful matter. she was also really nosy about it, so by the time it actually happened, i was so desperate for some little piece of mental and emotional privacy, so sick of her controlling, vaguely negative attitude towards the changes in my body, that not telling her was the only kind of rebellion i could muster.

i think she knew that i kept it a secret because afterwards, she stepped up the questions, but i held firm to my privacy, and eventually she backed down.