The System Doesnt Save Rural Kids - Tumblr Posts
One thing about growing up in the Bible Belt and very poor is that both 1. Childhood mortality and 2. The threat of Hell were very real and traumatic fears to my ancestors, so I was trained to say this classic prayer nightly: “Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul will keep. For if I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul will take.”
I’m still religious, but don’t subscribe to the fear-mongering-for-followers, especially telling *children* that God is like a scary Santa that sets you on fire if you’re naughty. Anyway. I realized today that that prayer was, in part, probably supposed to make me a little frightened, especially of the ideas of death and hell. However, a second thing about growing up super poor in the Bible Belt (aka, the land of “hillbillies neither want nor deserve public assistance”) was that 1. I knew very early that childhood mortality may very well Get Me, but 2. I honestly hoped it would. I always took comfort in that prayer. It was a relief, a plea, that God might take me away any night, and I’d be in a better place forever.
I’ve always had pretty severe mental health issues, and considered the onset of my suicidal tendencies to be ~7y/o, but today, I realized there’s never been a time I was just a happy kid. I’ve been romanticizing the daydream that all of my suffering would end One Day Soon since I was old enough to speak and remember that prayer.
It makes me kind of sad that even though my disabled, single mother fought for our lives and did everything she could for me, even taught me a prayer to 1. protect my life and 2. Protect my soul if my life was too much to ask… and yet all my days I’ve been wishing, *praying* away the life she was so afraid to lose.
My mom used to tell me that when I was only four, I used to cry and say, “I just miss the good old days.” I can only assume those Good Old Days were a time between birth and 4 when her arms still had the ability to carry me, my chronic nightmares hadn’t started, and meals were guaranteed. I have no memory now of such a time. I hope I didn’t hurt her too much by showing my misery.
I don’t know why I’m saying any of this. I guess it was just a stark realization and I need to shout it into the void.