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Jul 11, 2020 at 10:03am
#3355873
Edited: July 11, 2020 at 10:04am
Missed Independence
by A Non-Existent User
Prompt: What is the most independent thing you have ever done?


Answer: Get Free of my Dad

I had false starts. I grew up in a very strict household that I looked forward to escaping. My senior year of high school, I worked at McDonald's and started using my money to buy household items. I even started buying my own copies of the religious books (Compendium and Encyclopedic reference materials usually reserved for the head of household). When my Dad asked me why I was buying all these things, I told him that I planned to move when I was eighteen. He said, "You aren't moving." I backed down and everything I bought became a part of the household.

I "ran away" when I was about twenty-four or twenty-five, but ultimately came back home. When I was twenty-six, I decided. I was working two part-time jobs, one where I was making $7.25 per hour and one where I was making $9.00 per hour. I signed up for community college and signed the lease on an apartment I felt I could afford. It was $399.00 per month. The plan was to for me to move into the apartment in September of that year. I didn't tell my Dad at first because I thought he would talk me out of it.

Finally, I told my Dad because I couldn't see how to simply disappear without him knowing about it. I planned to keep my two jobs and my school was in town. I had personal things that I wanted to take with me. I told my Dad I was moving, not to rebel but because I wanted to live in a place where I picked the curtains. I wanted my own mop and broom and have the phone be in my name. I told him where I was moving.

It was a grubby little place, but I felt like I could handle it. I didn't plan to live there forever. I even picked a congregation to attend because I was moving out of my congregation's territory and the church says that you're supposed to attend in your assigned territory. The people in the new congregation were nice. Some of them knew my Dad, but not as well as they knew him in my home congregation. It was freeing in a way to be in a new place where I wasn't Brother Jones' daughter.

For a while, I attended the new congregation. I liked the people, but still didn't like the religion. My plan was to fade away from the church once I was out of my Dad's house. I could plead work and school and just be "not-at-home" when the Elders came to make Shepherding Calls on me. I signed the lease in July for September, so I was still living with my Dad, but freedom was close enough to taste.

Meanwhile, my Dad kept driving me around and showing all these gorgeous apartments in nice neighborhoods that I couldn't afford. Twenty-six years old is past the "Bloom of Youth". I don't think at that point that he thought I was going to move out and go crazy. I do think he thought it would reflect badly on him if I couldn't afford a nice place. I started to get scared that I would let my Dad talk me out of moving.

That's why, when my older brother came to town and tried to talk me and my younger sister into going to another state with him to be with my Mom who was recovering from breast cancer, I went. I quit my jobs, broke my lease and forgot about school. I wanted to see my Mom, whom I hadn't seen since I was seventeen and hadn't lived with since I was eight. (My Dad got custody of me, my younger brother and sister. My Mom got custody of my older brother.) But I also wanted to be free, and I got too scared to think I could stand up to all my Dad's reasons to stay or wait and I'd end up living with him forever.
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Missed Independence · 07-11-20 10:03am
by A Non-Existent User

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