Introduction

I feel a need to write down what happened. To warn others? Definitely to capture the craziness of a life wasted on noble ideas. I don't know whether I am "a writer" or not (quite possibly the fact that I honestly do not know excludes me from this club as well). I do know that I want to read real life accounts rather than fiction, I prefer a true crime book to a crime novel any day because life is so much more outrageous and people so inhumane in their need to stroke their egos. I know because life presented me with much opportunity to get to know myself in my quest for spiritual values. I want to capture the contradictions and insanity, the lunacy of what I have experienced in an environment that begged to be trusted.
I want to be as honest as I can with myself and those I met. Nowadays I don't seem to meet people anymore, I don't seem to have anything to say to anybody that doesn't serve the appearance of normalcy. I emotionally avoid people, while hiding behind the traits of Asperger's. The only ones allowed into my life are family, a selected few among those, namely my husband, sons, and my Dad. Less than 10 years ago I would have honestly stated that I have a church family, people that know me well and look out for my well-being.  I was privileged to find out the truth about the environment I chose for myself. I would not have it any other way. It has come close to destroying me and I am far from being healed but nevertheless I much prefer the refound sanity over a life spent on policing myself and others in an attempt to find the will of a god who only exists in the minds of people. I do not get up on Sunday mornings to choose what I am going to wear to church - clothes that express a superior kind of modesty - , while grabbing the

donuts for Sunday school along with the correct, 400 year old translation of the Bible as it applies to modern life, to show up with a God-praising smile to participate in a choir that exhibits the modesty I am looking for in my clothing (albeit modesty of talent) , to be followed by unspeakable "special music" that cannot be applauded so as to not lift up the performer while in all reality it should not be applauded because if offends the ears of the audience if not the ears of god. Then there is the message, a long winded loudly proclaimed rhetoric that understands itself as a message from god to be applied throughout the week and life to come, one of 5 I take in that week - Sunday school, Sunday morning and evening, Wednesday night and Friday night Bible study, aka Reformers Unanimous Addiction Program, - along with daily Bible reading and memorization, all to be lived out in a tragic effort to be different from a world that is perceived to be exceedingly sinful and wicked. The gay agenda, the liberal agenda, the public school agenda, the colleges that lie in wait to indoctrinate us into a life of sin and misery, wordly music that lifts up Satan and is to be avoided like a White Castle hamburger, the guilt heaped on us for relatives that are burning in hell because we did not manage to convert them, a dash (a very generous one) of homophobia, intelligence wasting away because women need to be submissive to the men in their lives, a buffet of bad ideas crammed into minds - most of which manage to go home and live as if they never heard them, but not us, no, not us, we take them home and make our best effort to live by them, bad ideas with equally bad outcomes, until the pressure becomes so great that I crumble and fold emotionally and spiritually - truly, my spirit is broken in this great attempt to abide by the will of god. Those are not my Sundays anymore, it is no longer my life. The insanity lies behind me, all 15 years of it, but I do not wish to forget it, at least not yet, it needs to be captured like someone who runs amok with a gun, trying to harm innocent lives, because that is what it is doing to the gullible, it destroys relationships and lives and minds. I may well not be a writer, but maybe, hopefully, I am a capturer of insanity - a catcher in the rye of grandchildren and others about to go over the cliff.
Looking back I find myself unable to believe that I can neatly roll out what happened to me with a degree of completeness and coherence. Only a writer could do that, I suppose. I want to begin with what I am dubbing key moments, situations that occurred that I look back on and cringe to a greater extent. Moments that stand out and define. Unfortunately there are many of them. Insanity has a great many aspects, and writing about them is painful. My mind is running in two directions as a write, wanting to relive in order to capture - and wanting to go to the drug store to buy some liquor for the weekend, to drown out the reality of where I am today. Stephen Kind wrote some of my favorite books of his high on cocaine and booze, but I am no Stephen King, although, come to think of it, I can regard myself as a horror writer. Insanity truly must count as a form of horror to be shunned. The book Needful Things comes to mind. I read it a long time before "finding Jesus", and it is a fact that makes me cringe that I could read a book like this and then wander off into a cult and completely give myself to its teachings. Truly, some things were more needful to me than I realized at the time. The need to belong - how can someone like me, an outsider in so many ways thanks to the traits of Asperger's, possibly handle the appeal of acceptance by a god and its people, with the only thing ever coming close to this experience  being part of my Italian family for a while. Then, the insanity of a controlling relationship overrode the benefits found and I was able to walk away. Here, the acceptance and love found were unconditional, supposedly. What a small sacrifice to step beyond those key moments, moments that should have been a wake up call, when my own personal needful things were at stake.  Acceptance and love were my drug of choice for 15 years. Rationality, sanity were easily tossed aside for the benefits discovered.  While I cannot roll out the totality of my experience, I will begin with some of the key moments to illustrate and highlight where I am coming from along with some of the crossroads of bad decisions in my life.