The sheltered life

I've recently learned that growing up in a sheltered home could yield good benefits and horrible consequences as well. These horrible consequences consist of awkwardly embarrassing moments when someone asks you a question about something that your sheltered, innocent mind has no idea what it is. Next thing you know, you answer with a scrambled sentence of words that don't make sense and you're being laughed at. It's a horrible feeling and being raised in a home where we never missed a Sunday school class, I definitely went through these awkward moments when you realize that you are different and you all of a sudden become obsessed with growing up and becoming more knowledgeable about things your parents would be shocked to hear you thinking about. And unfortunately, out of all the kids living in our house, it was the worst for me because I was the oldest kid living in the house and had no one to teach me the slang and the 'dirty' words and what everything meant. The rebelious side of me actually sometimes hates that I grew up in a sheltered home. I love my family and my parents are doing an amazing job raising 4 kids and a new grandchild. I just sometimes wished that I wasn't so sheltered. I've had morals and guidelines imprinted in my head for so long and now, those morals are being challenged. The things I've grown up learning-smoking kills, drinking is bad, don't have sex until you're married-these ideas are now being challenged on a weekly basis. It's hard not to give in to the pressure when your best friend starts smoking or when everyone around you is having sex and blowing it off like it's not a big deal. Or maybe when someone starts to tell stories about when they got hammered over the weekend and wound up running from the cops and it was 'one of the funnest times of my life'. It's hard to want to keep your morals safe and not want to compromise them. This has become one of the greatest struggles in my life. I always thought that I could be strong and not ever give into any temptation. I always knew that I would just turn the other way and 'just say no'. However, that gets harder and harder to do every day. The only thing keeping me from doing it is knowing that the guilt and shame will overtake me. I know that I'll breakdown and feel so guilty. This is the worst part about growing up sheltered. It just sucks when all of your cousins that are your age are bragging about doing the same things that I've been trained never to do. It makes me think, 'why did I have to be the one who grew up in the sheltered home? Why couldn't I have been the one that was raised to not care?'. Out of all of my family, I can safely and accurately say that my family is the only one that was raised differently. Therefore, we are different from the rest. I hate feeling this way. It's my rebelious side starting to seep out to show it's ugly face. I feel bad because I want to experiance the 'bad' side. I want to just live for a day without regret and without the feeling of guilt nagging at me. I just want to be 'bad' for a day. Just so that I know what it's like. I'm curious. And like they say, "curiosity killed the cat". It's hard for me to be strong anymore. I becoming weaker day by day and I hate it. I wish I was strong enough to hold up. I wish I was strong enough to just be able to fight back.


Listening to: Death Cab For Cutie