Wonderful, Weird, & Witchy

 I often look back at my life and analyze how I grew up. Did we have food in the house? Yes. Did we have clothes and a roof over our heads? Yes. Did we occasionally go on family trips? Yes. I go down the list and everything seemed fine, except... My dad punching holes in the wall when he was angry, my mother being frequently absent and not calling, my older sister beating the shit out of me and taking what she wanted because she could. Yeah, these are not healthy people. We didn't sit down to talk about our issues. My dad would give us gifts and hoped that smoothed things over, and continued to scream or throw a tantrum when things went wrong. My mother would see this and be dismissive, wouldn't do anything about it. My older sister lived in fear of our dad, and I suppose took her anger out on me. There I was; quiet and keeping to myself in my room. Escaping in my video games, my art, my books, etc. I always felt trapped. I always felt like I couldn't do anything. I thought...

This is going to push a few people's buttons and I completely respect if you don't agree with my opinion. Just please abide by the group guidelines and be nasty in the comments. For a lot of us here, religion is why we turned to witchcraft. We wanted to escape judgement and persecution for who we are and what we believe in. A lot of us have loved ones that beat "The Fear of God" into us both emotionally, mentally, and physically and we're permanently traumatized by it. My own grandmother is a person like that. The woman who was supposed to guide me and spoil me, also threatened to beat us with her cane and sprayed us with holy water when we did something she didn't like. It stems from the control issues that I mentioned in a previous article. She wanted us to be good people and go to Heaven when we died, so she tried to "beat the good" into us. You can see how that would mess some up pretty badly. I still have not forgiven her for a lot of that, ther...