u/TypicalAlbatross911

but I know I can’t. I know I’ll probably almost break down right then and there. I hate it so much…

I also know even if I do make it through the service I’ll feel like I “have” to go or else God will hate me.

im not particularly Christian anymore but I just want the community, the vibes. dress up kind of nice, the ability to go somewhere and hear a nice message about God and go how feeling good about it.

but deep down I know I can’t, o shouldn’t had I probably won’t. I just so desperately wish I could without it shattering my mental peace

I’m debating between these two options, originally one was what I was going with but I’m kind of unsure at this point which would be better

1. move to a city that has a good bus system, is reasonably walkable in certain areas but I’ve never even there, don’t know anyone in the city (some family lives about 40 minutes away in the second city option) and doesn’t particularly have a lot of job opportunities for my industry.

2. move to a city where I have some family but doesn’t have good bus system. I could definitely use uber and I’m sure my family could help me out if I needed a ride somewhere and they had the time to do, i would likely get a remote or hybrid job and grocery delivery which covers a lot of what I would need transportation for.

im not really sure which one I should do, any suggestions? I want to be close to them so these are really the best choices I have

I guess without going into great detail about it, o had reconnected with a family member on my dads side of the family and they seemed to really care about me for some reason.

during this time my mom didn’t really know how much I was talking to them and I didn’t tell her because she had started trash talking them the second we made contact (it was during a family emergency if that make that make more sense).

anyway I was an adult at this point and knew I didn’t have to say anything but they were blissfully unaware of how much my mother hated them and told me to “tell her they said hi.” So, I did and broke the news to her.

now most people, even my father, were excited that I was meeting my long lost relative. But my mom seemed almost “defeated.”

her reaction was so strange and honestly a bit off putting.

she then would ask me about said relative and their family (kids) and act super forced excited. thankfully she after a few months never brought it up again and I continued growing closer to my family.

fast forward one night I was laying in my bed not sleeping and trying to figure out why I felt like this person cared and loved me so much more than my other family members when I realized that it’s because my mother never really gave me the unconditional love she claimed she did. And I also came to realize that she was a narcissist.

around That time also my family member started to become more of a mentor to me. Supporting my interests, helping me understand things like how to get a job (both of my parents are unemployed) and above all sharing with me the biggest successes and failures of their life. They told me about their struggle with addiction and how they were trying to rebuild their relationship with their kids after that and my brain short circuited because someone was actually admitting they weren’t perfect right now? Not blaming everyone else for their issues but actually taking accountability.

Thats when I decided to ask them for help getting out. I scripted out my message and the second I was physically moved out of my mothers house I asked them for help.

and I was emt with compassion and understanding like I’d never experienced before.

they were there for me through my anxiety, grief and brain requiring.

I mean, they even uelled at my dad for being a flying monkey.

but I wonder in all of that how my mom saw it coming. I mean she had to of seen it, but I think she knew she couldn’t stop it. I could see the actions of the other person clearly breaking through her words of distain.

o guess it doesn’t really matter to me now, but is there any “code” to how she just knew?

hey yall, I’m 21, little more on the masc side . looking for a girlfriend who wants a long term relationship. hit me up if interested 😀

I was fortunate enough to have parental figures post cutting off one parent and choosing to grwy rock the other to death.

but it’s made me more angry towards my parents because they do much for me and expect literally nothing in return.

like they’re actually there for me, care about me. allow me to be myself, actually encourage me to do that. not constantly being like “oh well I did this for you” actually they’ve never done that.

it’s amazing… it makes me realize that how could my parents have not given this kind of love?

to an extent maybe they didn’t know how to. but to another extent I think they just never really loved me. maybe they loved having a child but they didn’t love

I look at old pictures of myself and don’t even see “me” I see a sort of prop. It was all just a performance. I look completely unrecognizable now, because I am free to be me.

anyway though, I guess it’s just insane to me how my primary parent growing up would take out their frustrations by screaming at me, then love bomb me, never listened to my feelings, or made it somehow my fault I felt a certain way, blamed their negative feelings on me, constantly wanted me to fail unless it was something that made them look good.

now I have a parent who listens to me, remembers what I tell them. Actually cares, offers guidance. Doesn’t judge me when I don’t know things, or when I I fail. They celebrate the successes no matter how big or small. They aren’t gaining anything from it either. They have kids of their own but somehow find the time and energy to parent me too.

im so happy to have that and to experience the things I missed out on now. But it just makes me so upset still. I don’t even care about all the other ways they wronged me, allthe things they did that hurt me.

but to be fair I think I am probably stronger because of it. It’s what’s brought me and my one chosen parent to being as close as we are and I’m happy about that.

when I go to Aldi I often see these pouches and at first I thought it might be those applesauce things so I looked and no it is in fact baby food. but they’re pretty cheap and honestly I have thought about picking a few up just for when I need a quick refuel I just just squeeze and go.

how’s the texture/taste/nutrition? I feel weird buying it as a 20 year old single childless woman but… eh

given the whole stereotype with priests I think it’s safe to say this is obvious but is the church enabling abuse a “thing?”

what ultimately led me to leave was that I cut off an abusive parent. I thankfully had other people in my life who were supportive of this decision but of course I went to my church for support and they absolutely tore me to shreds for it.

my priest was at first semi supportive and offered counsel but when I told him I wasn’t going home for Christmas he kind of just dismissed my reasonings and told me I needed to reconcile in the next four days so I could go home for the holidays.

he and my best friend told me that they were “worried” about me. I don’t even know what they meant by that.. my friend also made a point to tell me that I was wrong and would bring the subject up constantly even though I’d made it clear I didn’t want to talk about it. I think at this point she’s dropped it but not without a fight.

there were other incidents, I wanted about FOCUS the other day but I don’t think I included that part of my hatred for the organization comes from my missionary spending 3 whole hours trying to convince me not to leave discipleship because I just didn’t believe I had the mental energy to devote that much time to my faith and lead a Bible study and do all the other stuff they required us to do for the group. I told her about my situation and she was like oh yeah I get it you’ll be fine. Like no I don’t think you do actually… this is literally tearing my life apart right now.

anyway, them encouraging me to stay in a bad situation for the sake of family or whatever really opened my eyes to see just how dysfunctional most Catholic families are. But I guess that’s just what happens when you have 12 kids 🤷‍♀️

edit:typos

given the whole stereotype with priests I think it’s safe to say this is obvious but is the church enabling abuse a “thing?”

what ultimately led me to leave was that I cut off an abusive parent. I thankfully had other people in my life who were supportive of this decision but of course I went to my church for support and they absolutely tore me to shreds for it.

my priest was at first semi supportive and offered counsel but when I told him I wasn’t going home for Christmas he kind of just dismissed my reasonings and told me I needed to reconcile in the next four days so I could go home for the holidays.

he and my best friend told me that they were “worried” about me. I don’t even know what they meant by that.. my friend also made a point to tell me that I was wrong and would bring the subject up constantly even though I’d made it clear I didn’t want to talk about it. I think at this point she’s dropped it but not without a fight.

there were other incidents, I wanted about FOCUS the other day but I don’t think I included that part of my hatred for the organization comes from my missionary spending 3 whole hours trying to convince me not to leave discipleship because I just didn’t believe I had the mental energy to devote that much time to my faith and lead a Bible study and do all the other stuff they required us to do for the group. I told her about my situation and she was like oh yeah I get it you’ll be fine. Like no I don’t think you do actually… this is literally tearing my life apart right now.

anyway, them encouraging me to stay in a bad situation for the sake of family or whatever really opened my eyes to see just how dysfunctional most Catholic families are. But I guess that’s just what happens when you have 12 kids 🤷‍♀️

edit:typos

hi yall, I wanna start trying to work out more. I have only recently started eating enough food to feel okay generally but I’m curious if anything helps with getting enough cals for working out?

I usually try to work high calorie things like nutrition shakes, peanut butter and a little oil here and there into my diet on top of my typical meals which are usually basic carbs protein and fiber, probably not “enough” for someone my height/age though. I drink a lot of milk also and have considered getting some whey power to mix in for a good post workout drink. I’ve never tired it though so idk if I’d even like it. usually I mix my shakes in with coffee to hide the weird flavor lol.

any advice welcome

I’m entering my 4th year of college, my first year I joined the Catholic campus ministry group and became Catholic. I was a practicing Catholic from March of 2024 to March 2026.

a big part of my reconversion was that my schools parish brought in FOCUS missionaries and they pretty much completely ruined the vibe for me.

I eventually started hanging around the group less until eventually I also left the church. I didn’t talk to any of them for months. they weee still constantly trying to get me to come to things, telling me that they missed me and whatever.

the other day I saw the campus minister while out and about. we hung out and he took the opportunity to talk to me about how wrong it was to leave the church and whatever whatever, I’m sure you all have gotten similar speeches from people…

the thing about that though was he gave me the same speech for leavinf the church that one of the missionaries had given me for leaving their discipleship group. so I really just could not take him seriously, not that I was going to anyway.

since it was the summer they had actually chilled out with inviting me to stuff but then they started right back up again, presumably he told the missionaries and now I’ll never catch a break

asked someone for advice and didn’t really know what to tell me. it seems like a weird experience to have. at this point though I’m tempted to just not respond to them at all until they get that I’m not coming back and give up. Will they ever give up? who knows, honestly I don’t care.

i grew up evangelical and I left that world to get away from this kind of crap but this is way worse than anything they could’ve cooked up over there.

I guess if anyone has advice I’ll take it, I also just needed to rant about it.

so for some basic context I grew up very conservative evangelical and when I went off to college about 3 years ago I became Catholic. about 5 months ago I left the Catholic Church and haven’t looked back. I deconstructed my faith and have been slowly rebuilding my understanding of God since then.

today I walked over to campus from my apartment and just decided to go hang out in the building that has been basically taken over by the Catholic group for most of the day. well the campus minister also ended up being there for a few hours, which is chill we usually vibe and have a good time. even though I knew what was coming, nothing could’ve prepared me for it.

after a bit of normal things that most people do when they’re hanging out. he said something about the new priest at the church. honestly I feel like he was baiting me with this rather than making conversation because of the way he said it… it prompted me to totally out myself because I said oh I didn’t know he was gone or something like that because I liked the old priest a lot.

It was after that he said “so you haven’t been going“ almost like “aha I got you.” And I was like yeah no I haven’t. So then he asks me why I left and whatever and I tell him the overall reasoning, being I didn’t believe it was true and the thing that made me leave which was that tfying To be a good Catholic was giving me so much anxiety and I didn’t feel like it was leading me closer to God At that point. If anything it was taking me farther away.

ao he then goes off about demonic forces, Satan and ”the actual” voice of God. He even inserted About how he’d tinvited me to a series of talks he gave in “discerning spirits” which even being religious at the time I thought did not sound like something I wanted to go to.

anyway, it made me kind of angry. In the moment I just smiled and nodded and let him say whatever he felt like he needed to say. But underneath I was really kind of angry and really sad. The worst part in my opinion is that he walked away thinking he planted a seed in my mind that will make me return but in reality it just pushes me farther away.

i also really could not take him seriously because someone else had given me the same speech just because I wanted to leave a group that was kind of like a Bible study, except their lectures were hours long and they would not let it go. I’m sure he won’t let it go either but at least I think he’s not going to beat the dead horse.

it really just makes me upset though, I think because when I became Catholic I got a similar response from the people at the church I was at then where it was like “oh but are you doing what God wants you to do? Well I don’t think you are? Why don’t you come back and just ignore how you feel? It’s the right thing to do.” like do you really not think that God is everywhere all the time for real or something? because if you did you wouldn’t be so attached to your l it the corner of beliefs.

im so done with people, truly I’m so tired of this. I want to go to church again but I’m afraid because of these experiences.

I don’t get why people think gaslighting is gonna bring more people “back to the church” in reality it’s not, obviously it’s going to do the opposite. I know even if I told him this he wouldn’t get it because he can’t see that. from his perspective it doesn’t look that way.

I was emotionally abused by my narcissistic mother growing up and so overall I know how to deal with people like this however she is SO PERSISTENT

so basically we have lived together for a year now, we have two other roommates. she is increasingly more annoying to me when the other two aren’t around probably because she needs attention and I’m the only way to get it.

her main thing is she “wants us to do stuff together, be more than just roommates.” She claims that I “never spend time with her” and that I spend all the time with the other roommates which I do spend time with them but I also say no to them too sometimes cause like idk I they don’t get pissed off when I need alone time or to do something other than whatever they’re doing?

a lot of times that I leave my room she will start talking to me and won’t shut up and just follows me around talking about some nonsense. She doesn’t respect my boundaries. I hate being touched and I’ve told her this a thousand times but she still touches me all the time. She even started twerking once and proceed to rub her butt on my leg… thankfully another roommate was present and yelled at her to stop and she eventually listened. She once grabbed my head while I was trying to make food over a boiling pot of water and I got so mad (a rarity for me) that I threatened to “punch her in the fucking face” if she didn’t stop and guess what she didn’t stop. I was so scared that I was going to black out and start swinging after that… she also makes weird comments about how she’s going to make us “gay for her.” She’s accused me of calling her a sex offender because I said “she doesn’t know what no means” after she wouldn’t stop being weird to me.” After that she insisted that I apologize and came into my room without my permission to again harass me about apologizing to her which made me super angry. The most angry I’ve ever been in my life… she also played the victims to our other roommates who thankfully beleived me when I told them what actually happened. She later apologized and said that she was being harassed by a guy so she was just sensitive, like that justified it. I mean yeah I felt bad for her but I also was still super pissed… she has done more things but I’m just gonna leave it there. Every time she inserts herself into my space to get attention or whatever she ends up getting mad at me and storming off. o just don’t know what to do. I don’t want to be around her at All.

My therapist told me to just tell her I don’t want to do stuff with her which would be a good response if she were a reasonable person but she isn’t.

does anyone have advice on how to handle this?

when I started college 3 years I decided to go on a journey to “find my faith.” I was raised Baptist with a donor machine, conservative, nondenom. I sent an email to someone at my school asking for a list of churches and contacts and they referred me to the Catholic campus minister and a local pastor.

I sent messages to both asking about events/services etc. I went to an event for the Catholic group and went to the pastors church. he asked if I wanted to meet to discuss things with my faith and I agreed. I was surprised at how “objective” he seemed and asked him more questions as I explored.

my thoughts on the church werethat I liked it generally but at the time the idea of a progressive co itch freaked me out. i was unsure at the time but later found out via looking at their website that they were in fact that. it was also much smaller than I was used to. I’d grown up in a megachurch and there were maybe 30-50 people at that service. it was less modern and trendy which I liked but again freaked me out a little at the time. also one of the other pastors came up and talked to me which REALLY freaked me out. id just never had that happen before 😂 also generally i think he was kinda socially awkward which again, freaked me out.

anyway this was all like 3 years ago. and I only went once. I was going to serve on their tech team because I did that in my church growing up and wanted to continue it but I didn’t because well I only went once.. so that’s a little awkward.

the only real reason I didn’t go back was because the experience was so weird to me. honestly I think it was mostly the awkwardness with the one pastor and the fact the church is “progressive.” I then became Catholic and was Catholic for the past two years until I left the church a few months ago.

since then I’ve deconstructed my faith, come out and am trying to reconstruct a healthier view of God. I suddenly have the desire to return to church but I’m just so scared to do so.

I reached out to a Unitarian church but I dont drive and live really far away.

im debating if giving this one a second go is worth it. I guess at least I somewhat know what to expect from it. there are other churches in the area as well, but I’m so overwhelmed by the options...

does anyone have any advice?

I’m flagging this as NSFW jsut because it’s about sexuality. it won’t be too explicit

anyway, basically I emerged from the closet as lesbian recently and I FREAKED THE FUCK OUT. like I mean I went through all the feels. especially with my religious upbringing I had a lot to work through. someone told me that I need to take a chill pill and just take my time to figure it out. They helped me unpack everything but said it would take a bit to process it, and they were definitely right.

I went through stages of shock, because it took me 20 years of life to realize this. I went through mourning, that I’d never be able to return to the versions of faith I’d once known, I would have friends who wouldn’t be coming to my wedding and that my relationship will be seen as “weird” or wrong by many people. I grappled with the fact that God doesn’t hate me and isn’t leaving me behind in the rapture. I grieved the life I thought I’d have back when I was still religious, being in a traditional marriage with a bunch of kids that we homeschool on our farm or whatever and force to go to church every week.

all of this was just floating in my head, weighing me down. Until yesterday. When I was shall we say engaging in some self enjoyment and had the biggest release ever. And afterward for whatever reason everything just felt “right.” I felt perfectly fine and okay and at peace. for the first time I felt like I was doing something right in life.

I don’t know why but after that I just felt okay with it and actually excited to not feel hopeless about my romantic future again.

I guess for some context I (20f) and my best friend (20f) have been friends since we started college a few years ago. we met at a religious event and our friendship mostly revolved around that. We also went through a traumatic friend group breaking up type of situation that really solidified our friendship. anyway things were fine and we were inseparable until more recently

I went home over The last summer, realized how shitty my parents are and decided to cut them off. I started therapy, adopted my aunt and uncle as chosen parents and started to better myself. I eventually left the religion and just kind of started to free myself from religious trauma that I had.

well my best friend told me throughout all of this that she couldn’t support me cutting off my toxic family, me leaving the faith and the straw that broke me - I found out that I am gay.

so yeah, I get that she can’t support these things because of her religious views. I get that it’s solely her religious views holding her back. But honestly it just feels so unfair to me. I don’t want to continue this friendship anymore but we live together so that’s not really possible. I can’t tell her how upset I am because well she just won’t get it. She thinks it’s perfectly possible to love someone even if you “disagree with what they’re doing.”

after having people fully support me I just don’t want this conditional “support” any more. I know not all religious people are like this, my uncle told me he specifically chose the church he goes to with the thought in mind that one of his kids if they find they are lgbt that his church will accept them. I don’t even know if my anger is justified at this point but I’m not even mad at my friend. I’m mad at the world that thinks this kind of belief is okay.

its such a small thing and I feel like I shouldn’t be upset about it but also that’s just it, it’s a small thing… I’m probably just rambling incoherently at this point but I don’t know what to do

this is such a weird question ik and probably not particular the sub for it but how do you all do it? I can’t stand the feeling of stuff on my face, aside from water maybe. I hate washinginf it with soap on the shower cause like then I have to rinse it off and that involved dunking my face into running water which o don’t likey

I (21f) came out to my best friend (21f) and it went alright all things considered. everything was great except she said she “couldn’t support it.”

i knew going into this that it would be the case. but I guess o just didn’t know how much it would hurt. I have other supportive people in my life. even people who are Christian, that just aren’t conservative like my best friend. idk I didn’t expect it to hit so hard.

I guess I’m like what is the real problem here? if I liked dudes we’d be fine but I don’t. god made me this way and so doesn’t it make sense that god would have someone for me? anyone have a similar experience? I’ve just been sobbing for the past couple hours...

yeah this is kind of terrible… but for some reason I just really want justice to be served to those like me who suffered because of their upbringing in this church.

basically, it’s a megachurch but it is out in the middle of nowhere so unless you live in the area you have probably never heard of it. the last time I was aware of the member count it was 3,000.

it’s nondenom, Baptist with a smoke machine. very conservative. like I mean very conservative. the main pastor isn’t too crazy but there are several pastors and one of them openly mocked trans people from the stage by mockingly going “I’m a woman today” in the middle of his “sermon” after they showed a video making fun of people sharing pronouns and stuff… idk it was weird.

I know it could’ve been worse. I don’t think it was THAT shady but honestly it just horrifies me to think there are still kids going there, having purity culture and homophobia shoved down their throat. Brainwashed into believing men and women being alone together in public is going to end in some spicy thing happening… Being told they’re going to hell for swearing. There wasn’t any real scandals that I was aware of but something is just giving me “the ick” about it all honestly and given how many people there were in leadership it seems like there must be some cover up going on there. I also swear they took down some the negative reviews they had on Google. Maybe I’m just tripping but I swear someone called out the homophobia and related stuff but I just looked a bit ago and didn’t see it. Anyway I know I’m just being petty but honestly I’m so mad...

edit: fixed typos. I am pissed and wrote this through red lol

i realized a month before I moved out that my mother was a narc. she of course noticed immediately and started acting differently toward me. my step dad had already been being more antagonizing than usual for a little bit before this so i do wonder if she saw it coming.

but I recall them just acting straight up weird the last bit I was there. of course constantly starting fights, I could see the true colors singing through.

my mom who had always been overly affectionate pretty much completely stopped showing me any affection at all.

recall my mom asking “what’s your plan for the next 5 years of your life” which was weird cause she couldn’t even remember what my major in college why did she suddenly care about what I wanted. I grey rocked and said I don’t know, also I didn’t I mean I was just trying to make it out of there alive.

the weirdest thing though was I recall going downstairs and opening the fridge to get some lunch or something and my step dad walked up behind me and just put his hands on my shoulders and we just stood there for like a solid 30-45 seconds. my entire body tensed up. we said nothing. I just stared straight ahead at the fridge until her let go and went on as o was. maybe a reaction was expected? I have no idea but it was so odd.

I think his behavior towards me was weird than hers. I never did anything to him. hers was just normal narc behavior. he’d guilt trip me (even after she provoked me to yell at her) that I didn’t love her enough or whatever. he just stomped away after the time she yelled at me cause I sat and stared at him in silence trying to figure out how stupid he was after he said “and how are you going to fix this?”

they also had this rule where you would call out people breaking rules but not say who did it. I guess for example if someone left food crumbs on the counter but it’s like 3 people live here we know who does what I want to know if you have beef with me cause I ain’t changing anything if I don’t know I did it. tbh I think it was a cover so they could pin stuff on me.. but whatever…