• compostgoblin@piefed.blahaj.zone
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    4 days ago

    I am deeply ashamed of my religious past. I believed and said some truly horrible things. My church and school were my whole world, and it was very conservative and very Catholic.

    And so when I was a teenager, I started using those beliefs to justify projecting hatred towards women and queerness. Probably to deflect the bullying that came my way for being very clearly not a “normal boy”, in hindsight.

    That’s no excuse though, I should have done better. I’m glad that my views improved dramatically once I went to college and deconverted, but I still really regret that I certainly hurt people.

    And I still kinda long for and mourn the childhood and teenage years of the person I wish that I had been but wasn’t.

    • That_Bitch_Is_Cily@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      4 days ago

      And I still kinda long for and mourn the childhood and teenage years of the person I wish that I had been but wasn’t.

      This hits so hard. It’s one of the hardest things for me to grapple with. In hindsight, knowing that I knew better, that I knew myself better, but lacked the self-agency to hold to my convictions and fight for my true self. But that’s also a lot to ask of an isolated teen in a rural area so I try to be nice to my past self.

    • LePoisson@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      I still kinda long for and mourn the childhood and teenage years of the person I wish that I had been but wasn’t.

      I think every single human on the planet feels that way. Suppose it’s just part of growing up, the eternal trap we exist in where we know of the past and future but can only live in the present even in our minds.

      I feel like I could have been a better person too, I was kind of an asshole with a short temper - maybe I still am an asshole - but the important thing is trying to improve. It’s good you’re working towards that, I’m still trying too. Besides, I think it’d be a real bummer if we couldn’t try to improve ourselves, so hopefully humans as a whole can keep marching towards a better future.