My family and Facebook. Another rant.

Over the years, and I’ve documented much of this on my blog, I’ve had to deal with the religiosity of my family of origin and also that of my extended family. About 5 years ago there wasn’t anything in my life that caused me to claim my atheism. I didn’t believe in god and prayer and the religious nature of my family didn’t bother me. I guess I didn’t care enough to really notice. Then my father got very sick and died four months later. During his fight to live the religious craziness hit a crescendo. I felt I was among children with their wishful thinking and irrational requests.

Also during this time I was involved in an email list that my father had started up with our extended family. Everyone except me is super religious and conservative. It was about a month before Dad’s death that my sister was involved in a minor roll-over accident which she reported to the family via the email list. Now my sister is no dummy so I was surprised that she attributed the mildness of the accident to God/Jesus. Everyone agreed except me. I think I wrote something to the effect that God should have interfered about 30 seconds sooner to avoid the accident all together. Oh the shit storm that followed!

It wasn’t that bad I suppose, mostly reminders about mysterious ways and all, but one cousin was offended in the most profound way. The only way I can describe what she did to me through emails was what Xians call “witnessing.” This cousin, who I’ll call Janice, ended the brief exchange (which was filled with misspellings, bad grammar, and all text being capitalized) by blocking my emails to her with a statement that read “Since I have to have the last word I am now blocking you from answering me.” I wish I was kidding.

My father died the next week and the confrontation I had with her at the wake was ugly and disgusting. It was also orchestrated by her to get the maximum amount of Christian righteousness for herself front of my mother and her mother. In my silence, out of respect for my father, the Christians did damage to my good reputation.

I must add that I’ve never been close to my mother or father. It’s been a strained relationship ever since I can remember. As much as I wanted to be close to my sister, she has taken advantage of me for years and after my father died there was no reason to let it continue. She’s made it very clear she wants nothing to do with me now and I’m ok with that. My mother feels the same way. She has remarried, moved to another state, and is happy being closer to her new family than to her own children in TX. Whatever.

But this essay isn’t about my sister or my mother. I’ve withdrawn from them in a big way and they no longer have the power to make me feel small. This is about Janice, my super religious, fundamentalist, ultra-conservative, Christian whack-job cousin. She has blocked me on Facebook and I think she’s told my other relatives to ignore me as well. I feel victimized by her all over again. My lesson when I found out: I don’t like my family and I wish I could disown them.

There’s a happy ending to this story. I gathered all the names of those relatives who can’t find it in their little Christian hearts to friend me or at least make an effort to contact me and I blocked them. All of them and I felt good doing it. Now they won’t see me and I won’t see them. Out of sight, out of mind. Ahhhhh.

The world of Tina is right again.