You May Know My Name But You Don't Know My Story (%)

27 | JackHuston | War of the Wills

"Have you ever heard the tragedy of Darth Jack the wise?"

"No? It isn't a story many would tell you..."

—---------------------------------------------------------------

So my story will be long, and pretty much covers most of my life, but generally I'll be covering from the 6th grade onwards (I'm 17 now). So, my name is Jack, though I also go by John, I was born all the way back in 2004, and I was baptized into the Roman Catholic faith. I was raised by two Roman Catholic, liberal parents. There really weren't any problems with this, and I was raised Catholic. However, I always found religion to be-erm-

Boring.

I was never interested, even from a young age about what the priest had to say, or scripture, or the lessons, or all that jazz. My parents didn't even really bring us to church between the ages of 5 and 13. So I never really had the strong religious foundation. Thus it really didn't take much of a rupture to completely upend my already shaky faith at best. When I was eleven or twelve, I began questioning everything my parents told me. I began deconstructing my faith around this time as well. My parents claim it was the result of me being horrendously bullied by other students, but they of course would be wrong. They can't accept the truth. The truth being simple-

I didn't believe.

I tried to admit to them in eighth grade that I had no belief in an organized god or religion, but they ignored me, forced me to watch all these cringey christian movies. You know, the ones where they praise the Christians endlessly as heroes, and villify everyone else? Yeah, those ones. That didn't exactly help. I never once even reconsidered my stance towards Christianity or religion, in fact, these events only further strengthed my lack of belief. Then a few weeks after telling them this, suddenly every Sunday they dragged my siblings and I out for Catholic mass at a new church.

Hm. That's interesting.

Church didn't change anything. I was bored out of caring, I didn't feel anything when they told me to pray except empty darkness. As my emotions became bottled up over the next couple of years, I became more volatile, emotionally distant, and less than willing to talk to people, especially my parents. I could talk to my sisters, they listened to me. My parents? Forget about it. So there was this loop of going to church, not being able to express myself, bottling up my emotions, insecurities and, in some cases, rage. It finally erupted, the metaphorical volcano, just under a year ago. I yelled at my parents, I discounted their feelings, my eyes were full of nothing but deadpan anger and snooty sarcasm. I couldn't care what they had to say, because they didn't care what I had to say.

My parents were convinced I was a dangerous sociopath.

So the next week I was in therapy. Like, sit on the couch, and tell a random woman about your problems kind of therapy. I actually quite enjoyed it, because finally I had a place I could talk in confidence, and not have to worry about anything and everything. It took a couple of weeks before I told the therapist, clearly also a devout Christian judging by the posters on her while and the massive, heavy Bible on her desk, that I was an atheist. She accepted this, without problem, and convinced me to try telling my parents, that keeping this bottled up wasn't good for anyone. But here is something she told me just before I left that day:

"Expect backlash, do not expect them to accept this fact right away,"

I shrugged this off. Surely my parents were better than that? Right?

Wrong. I was so, so, so, wrong.

My parents, when I told them, separately, said the following lines, in some capacity:

"You are a Christian, you will be a Christian, you will go to Church, and you will get out of this phase," -Mom

"This Atheism thing? It isn't grounded in reality, you aren't believing in reality, you will see the truth soon enough," -Dad

Whoa. It took all of twenty minutes for my therapist to be proven correctly. Now, they already villify me, because I'm a right wing populist. According to mom, it is because 'I've been dabbling in Satanic arts, Republicans are agents of Satan,"

Still remember those exact words, years later. So yeah, that helps my religious beliefs-or lack of them. My parents then proceeded to take away social media, claiming that it 'allowed me to talk to adults without their supervision'. Anyone with half a brain could see through that bullshit. It was because I was annihilating their perfect little Christian family, by not agreeing with their worldview. They were lashing out, and everyone around me, who knew the truth, understood that. They later relented on forcing me to go to church, but undermined that initiative, by telling me that if I wanted to get social media back, one of the things I had to do was go to youth group, and in order to do that, I needed to go to church.

Back to square one.

But as time goes on, I fit less and less with them, and I'm already determined to cut ties with them once I go off to college. I don't agree with them in every fundamental way, and they despise me for it, even if they don't openly tell me. But with each passing day, I don't want to agree with them.

My dad thinks he is intellectually superior to everyone who hasn't gotten a college education, or anyone who isn't his specific type of Democrat. He believes that Republicans are all in a cult following Donald Trump, and that he's a mob lord who wants to overthrow the Republic and make himself king like he's fricking Sheev Palpatine.

My mom is borderline Anti-semetic, and thinks high schoolers who can't read are idiots, and calls them 'sweathogs'. Yeah, you heard that one. She also refuses to recognize most transgender individuals from what I've seen. She is a fourth wave feminist, firm believer in the #MeToo Movements, and that abortion, and the right to choose is a human right.

I think abortion is crime, I recognize transgender individuals, I think all people are equal, and as much as I equally distaste Donald Trump and Joe Biden, neither of them are mob dealers and secretly sith lords.

But since I'm a Republican, and I'm an atheist... I'm the delusional one.

As Palpatine said in Episode III, "Ironic,"

My parents recently stripped away most internet access for five days, for not doing a good job at our family business, which I'm forced to work at every day. I hate my job, and I hate my life, and I want to be out of it. But I'm trapped, and I'm stuck, and I have nothing that can help me.

That's my story, about a war of the wills. A war that is in a deadlock, that is bitter and horrible, and is completely destroying a parent-child relationship... all because the parents refuse to accept their son for who he is...

By JackHuston96.