I was born into a white supremacist, anti semitic cult. My grandfather has his own article on the Anti Defamation League. Brothers and I were so removed from regular society we didn't realize how insane it all was until maybe 10-12. For reasons that aren't super relevant so they won't be elaborated, dad's side of the family where all of that is fell apart about 12 years ago and I haven't heard from most of them ever since.
My two brothers and I all went different directions. One kneee jerked into basically becoming a poster child for the left and lives with another man in another state. The other is a full blown NEET who wants nothing to do with God, the government, or anyone else who could possibly tell him something to do other than what he wants to do. And I—well, I became Jewish in early adulthood. I have managed to maintain a relationship with the former, but the latter wants nothing to do with either one of us.
When I discovered that, even more than just the visible hatred that dad's side of the family practiced, but that the entire calendar they and most of our world use is completely different than the one in the bible, it shifted my entire perspective on everything. I have not celebrated a birthday, Christmas, or any of the stuff the normal public does in five or six years now. I gave that all up on the principle that, even with the holidays that aren't idolatrous, that whole calendar exists because an empire systematically annihilated every Jew who wouldn't give up their customs and practice this new mixture religion called Christianity, and its new holidays. And every time something else comes up, I get more polarized than the time before, because my dad still has yet to understand my wishes to separate from my old way of life.
Passover begins tomorrow night at sunset. I didn't grow up with this holiday, I had to learn how to observe it as an adult. What is supposed to be a solemn time of reflection on liberation, feels like its own special form of slavery. My entire life before my early 20s was a lie. And most of the world is still engrossed in similar lies. And there gets to be so much resistance in the workplace, in the family, in all of my spheres of influence, that I begin to wonder if maybe it's just me being lied to now, and if I've only taken on this way of life as a knee jerk repentance for anti semitism I never chose to inherit.
Every time a holiday comes up, whether one I do or don't, it winds up being a time of mental agony from the perception of complete alienation from everyone else, and I'm tired of it. I'm tired of being angry at the world, angry at God, and angry at myself for things I can't change.
I'm thankful that my son won't have to go through the pain and suffering of that that I have, because my wife and I have been doing it with him from the time he was born and it's all he knows. But my luck is such that, just like me with my family, he will grow to hate this way of life, and look at me no different than I look at dad's side of the family.
Sometimes, I wish I could have remained ignorant, because the suffering I've inherited after coming to a knowledge of reality has been immeasurable and indescribable.
My two brothers and I all went different directions. One kneee jerked into basically becoming a poster child for the left and lives with another man in another state. The other is a full blown NEET who wants nothing to do with God, the government, or anyone else who could possibly tell him something to do other than what he wants to do. And I—well, I became Jewish in early adulthood. I have managed to maintain a relationship with the former, but the latter wants nothing to do with either one of us.
When I discovered that, even more than just the visible hatred that dad's side of the family practiced, but that the entire calendar they and most of our world use is completely different than the one in the bible, it shifted my entire perspective on everything. I have not celebrated a birthday, Christmas, or any of the stuff the normal public does in five or six years now. I gave that all up on the principle that, even with the holidays that aren't idolatrous, that whole calendar exists because an empire systematically annihilated every Jew who wouldn't give up their customs and practice this new mixture religion called Christianity, and its new holidays. And every time something else comes up, I get more polarized than the time before, because my dad still has yet to understand my wishes to separate from my old way of life.
Passover begins tomorrow night at sunset. I didn't grow up with this holiday, I had to learn how to observe it as an adult. What is supposed to be a solemn time of reflection on liberation, feels like its own special form of slavery. My entire life before my early 20s was a lie. And most of the world is still engrossed in similar lies. And there gets to be so much resistance in the workplace, in the family, in all of my spheres of influence, that I begin to wonder if maybe it's just me being lied to now, and if I've only taken on this way of life as a knee jerk repentance for anti semitism I never chose to inherit.
Every time a holiday comes up, whether one I do or don't, it winds up being a time of mental agony from the perception of complete alienation from everyone else, and I'm tired of it. I'm tired of being angry at the world, angry at God, and angry at myself for things I can't change.
I'm thankful that my son won't have to go through the pain and suffering of that that I have, because my wife and I have been doing it with him from the time he was born and it's all he knows. But my luck is such that, just like me with my family, he will grow to hate this way of life, and look at me no different than I look at dad's side of the family.
Sometimes, I wish I could have remained ignorant, because the suffering I've inherited after coming to a knowledge of reality has been immeasurable and indescribable.
