Strip Tease

That's what I consider this whole mad venture of mine to be, a strip tease, with an odd twist. Instead of a rowdy crowd waiting impatiently for the next piece of clothing to drop revealing the secret tidbit of delectable skin beneath I envision a very normal woman up on that stage. She could fit in anywhere, she appears to be your stereotypical soccer mom, and looks like she's got it all under control. She's apple pie, baseball, and red, white and blue all wrapped up in a sweet, comforting mom shaped package! Then she starts shedding bits of clothing that have been covering up the truth beneath...

Why she's not a typical soccer mom at all! She's the cancer hiding inside our society! She's the whole reason our nation is going down the toilet! Monster! Whore! Devil worshipper! And somehow the fact that she had the crowd fooled at first makes it so much worse than if she'd just come out on stage looking like the monster she really is. It makes them even angrier. Maybe they feel cheated out of what they expected to get? Maybe but that's not all of it. No, the bulk of their hatred comes from their fear. If she could look like one of them, if she managed to fool them into thinking for even an instant that she was normal, then deep down they fear that there might be far more of her monstrous kind out there successfully hiding! Why these monsters could be hiding in our government, churches, schools...they could be anyone!

Well I guess I've pussyfooted around it long enough and it's time to give my readers their first, solid peek at what's hiding beneath a bit of the clothes. I'm Pagan.

It happened in my late teens. I couldn't buy enough books to keep up with my voracious appetite for them! Then one day, quite by chance since I was looking in a different section completely, I found a book on Wicca. I sat in that bookstore for almost a half hour, tears pouring down my face, as I quickly scanned through the book to absorb the overall topic and feel. I felt just like that starving, shivering little child standing in the snow staring in the window at a family in a loving, warm home piling the table high with mouth watering delights but some kind soul had opened up the door and said, "Come in, sweetheart. There's plenty for all and we've saved a place just for you."

I studied and meditated, questioned and learned. I branched out to learn all I could about as much as I could in a quest for pure understanding. I learned at least some about Shamanic, Druidic, Buddhism, and more. I remember such good times in those innocent years. I even attended a protest in which people of a different religion came and shouted hateful, hurtful things at us while we sang songs about love and building bridges of understanding between us. The one thing I remember best from that day was seeing their little ones dressed in their (HOT!) Sunday best looking miserable and wilted in the heat. Worried for them I asked one of our leaders if we couldn't at least offer their children a bit of water? She put a hand on my shoulder and sadly said, "We can't. If one of those children got so much as a sniffle afterwards they'd say we put something in the water to harm them." I should've realized then. I should've run my butt into the nearest closet to hide my religion from the world but I was young and naieve. I was made brave on the notion that Wicca is a recognized, legal religion in a land that believes in religious freedom and protected by the Constitution. What a fool.

When I finally divorced my abusive spouse of more than 10 years I knew he'd play dirty because he knew exactly how to keep me under control married or not, through my children. I desperately wanted to snatch that control away from him and protect my babies. I was so idealistic! I really believed that if I marched into court and told the truth that was exactly what I'd get. I'll never forget the pure malice in his lawyer's voice when she sneeringly asked me my religion. I held my head up high as my lawyer objected on the grounds of my Constitutional rights. But it felt like everything inside of me just dropped through the floor leaving me an empty, shocked husk when the judge ordered me to answer the question.

People say that time heals all wounds. I say those that truly think so have never been wounded bad enough. Oh I share custody with my husband and have even managed to mostly fight my way free of him controlling me through the children after a few years! But nothing can ever replace the precious time I've lost with them. It's one wound that will never heal in me. You only get so many years, a limited number of hours to spend with your children and every minute is so precious! Every bit of time that slips away is time that can never be replaced! How do you cope when approximately half of even that limited amount of time has been torn away from you? Nothing can ever fix that!

The other is the wound they gave me when I stood up proud and true, innocent of any wrongdoing, but still they spat on me, ripped away my rights, shredded my confidence in people, my feelings of security in doing what's right. And one of the scariest things to me is they did it so easily! There were no courtroom dramatics, no great fuss, just a few words spoken and it was over. I sat there in front of all of them bleeding inside in shock, not understanding how it all happened.

So there's one of my secrets for you, as promised, but there's plenty more of them to come! Even more, there's worse to come still so keep your arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times, please secure any loose items, and hold each other tight!