The Graduation Of 2012
The Graduation Of 2012
11.2.20
Lauren Hemphill
Content Warnings: Toxic Religion, Pregnancy, Rape Mention, Gore, Childbirth, Vomit, Menstruation
This piece depicts part of my personal relationship with toxic religion, specifically with my time in a religious school called RCS in Loveland, Colorado. This personal piece is not meant to condemn all of RCS, nor is it intended to be a current or recent reflection of their practices. This is not a callout post. This is not intended for people to read and take it as slander or anything of the sort. It is simply a depiction of my own personal feelings and the repercussions I have suffered because of the teachings taught at the time of my attendance. This is not to be used as an excuse to belittle or bad-mouth those who work there or are currently attending this school. I have known many good people from that school, including a few of the staff who have since left to teach elsewhere. I do not condone any harassment of any sort towards those in relationships with RCS.
The above disclaimer was written when this piece was originally finished. Unfortunately, since then, I have had conversations with the current superintendent of the school, and at the moment, I am worried that the following personal recollection is indeed a reflection of the current teachings at that school. I would advise caution and dedicated research before attending the school for yourself or your children.
I graduated RCS in 2012, the jokingly “apocalyptic” class, as 2012 was supposed to be when the world ended. The trumpets were to blare, the day was to come, and the world would cease to exist.
That didn’t exactly happen.
Instead, on that graduation day, I thought I was finally free. Free of RCS, free of the people, free of the things it taught and pushed. I did not realize that what it did to me was, in a way, apocalyptic. And that the decay would go unnoticed for years.
The first piece I ever wrote on the subject was posted onto my site on March 8, 2017. If you are of a strong stomach, you can read it here. For the first time, I spoke about my nightmares and my night terrors. Something that had been afflicting me for a long time. I remember having them as a Sophomore in Portland, long before I ever stepped foot in RCS. I remember how badly they scared me, but how intermittent they were. How infrequent. How they would only happen once every handful of months.
But then the dreams worsened. Shortly after starting college in Idaho, nearly four years later, my mind turned against me. It depicted exactly the horrors I thought I was destined to endure.
It began with panic. The first dream I ever had about it started with the world ending. Everyone was fleeing, running for cover, and as I passed a home, a hand grabbed my wrist and dragged me inside.
It was the first time I had been assaulted in a sexual manner. The first time I had been raped in my own dreams. I woke in a sweat, tears in my eyes. I didn’t want to be touched, I didn’t want to be seen. I remember how much I cried that night, alone, in my bed.
That would not be the first time I was abused.
The dreams grew worse. Rape was a common, implied idea within each nightmare. Either I would dissociate from my body and pull away before I could see anything, or I would wake up after the fact, nine months pregnant, told by my family that I was married to a man. My own body was against me, and so was the world around me. No matter how much I pleaded, how much I begged, no matter my insistence that I would never have sex with a man, that the only way I was pregnant was because I was forced, no one would believe me. I was alone in my terror. I was alone with my fear of what only my body could do.
It was common to hear about what a cis woman’s body could do within RCS. That we were capable of making children, and that we were so important because of that role. That we had an obligation to “go forth and multiply.” That no one else could do what we could.
Perhaps I heard that one too many times. It was a joke within the class, that without women the entire human race would have gone extinct. We were incredible, powerful. It was like I completely forgot about my time at St. Mary’s. The all girls’ school that taught us we could be more than housewives and mothers. The school that told us yes, we are capable of becoming historians, of astronauts, of anything we set our minds to. Now I joked that women should be treated better simply because of what our bodies could do. Not because we were human beings. Not because we had minds within our skulls. Not because we had emotions and lives and dreams.
I hadn’t forgotten completely, of course. I knew I did not want to be a housewife. I knew I didn’t want to have children, I knew I didn’t want to have a husband. But I was scared of admitting these truths, of revealing them to the world. I was afraid because of the church, because of RCS, because of how I grew up.
It started with small steps at first. I admitted one day that I’d rather adopt. I, in my infinite wisdom, believed I had found a loophole around “consummating” the marriage. Having sex was for procreation, as RCS, as so many other church sermons, insisted. So if I wasn’t going to have children, then I could avoid having sex all-together. I would be free of committing such an act.
The reception was hesitant at first, but I was able to convince my relatives to believe that adoption was the route for me. I was free, I thought. The relief of knowing I would not need to commit myself sexually to a man lessened my stress for a while.
But not forever. Soon, the dreams returned. Groping hands and searching fingers found me, found my waistline. I would close my eyes, I would pull away from my body. And I would feel nothing. I would dream of nothing. Not until I woke again with tears in my eyes.
I knew, deep down, that adoption did not save me from a wanting partner. I knew it didn’t save me from someone else’s desires. I knew that a wife was supposed to submit.
St. Mary’s did not teach me to submit. Though a priest once tried to push a message upon the student body, the sermon did not stick, and most every young woman mocked it after mass. We were not the submissive type, and we would not hear of bending the knee to someone else.
RCS was different. I knew soon after entering the school. I knew during my first religion class when we were told, in no uncertain terms, that man was the head of the household, and a wife was to submit to him in all areas. That was our duty. That was our place in the world. And if I dared argue, I risked rejecting the bible completely. The lessons delivered upon our desks showed the great victories of cis men in the bible, who went out to do marvelous things, all while the women did no such acts. I sat in class and listened, with brows thickly furrowed, mouth drawn into a line. St. Mary’s religious studies taught us about the women of the bible, who fought against customs and beliefs to survive in a society that saw them as property. St. Mary’s taught us about other religions without condemnation, taught us about Buddhism, Hinduism, the difference between Catholicism and Non-Denominational Christianity. These lessons came from a place of love and openness. Mockering was not allowed. And yet, openly within the walls of RCS, we were discouraged from seeking out the texts of any other religion until our faith was strong enough, lest we be tempted. Lest we fall.
The Fall was uttered upon the lips of every teacher. Why were women given cramps, forced to bleed each month, forced to submit to a man? Because of the Fall. Before the world was born, there was Genesis, a mythos built around the writings of several authors, hotly debated by Jewish scholars. Truth, or story? Story created to illustrate and explain the world and society they lived in? If truth, why would God, a being above all else, have to rest on the seventh day? These questions were dismissed. They were not discussed. No, the fault lay upon the shoulders of the young women in class beside me, upon my own shoulders, where it weighed heavily enough for many to dip their head and submit. It did not feel right. I will not lie and say I did not believe it, that I never believed it, because I did–I looked at the words on the page without the ability to think through it myself, and listened to what my teachers were telling me. I listened to their interpretations instead of my own. I trusted them. And what they gave me was guilt.
The clothes I wore were subject to scrutiny and shame. My body, small in frame without the curves many other women were given, was not often looked upon sexually. My shirts were never too low, my pants were never too short. I was uncomfortable with the idea of ever being looked at with desire. And I knew that, depending on what I wore, I might be.
The staff pushed this harder than most other rules within those walls. As young women, a teacher once said, you are powerful. What you choose to wear can cause one of your brothers in Christ to fall. You have the power to keep that from happening. We were taught, not with whispers or muttered breaths, but with bold, confident declarations, that we, minors, were responsible if a man thought lustfully over us.
I was scared. I wore long shorts. I wore sweatshirts. I didn’t wear anything tight. I didn’t want my frame to be noticed. I held disgust for the women, the other indoctrinated peers around me, who did so. They were wrong, they were sinful, and they were at fault because of what they wore. I did not stop the shame when it came upon my fellow classmates. I wish I had known better. I wish I did not have to live with the guilt of remaining silent.
Within the home, a woman was not to speak. We were not to nag, not to antagonize. No, we were to give up our hopes and dreams and take care of the children we would, undoubtedly, birth. This was important, and emphasized. I remember a male religion teacher reminding the young women in class that when your husband says that you’re to do something with your fiances, you have to do the godly thing and submit, as the bible commands. I remember looking at him. I remember staring at him as he smiled and nodded to one of my classmates. You can’t go off to buy shoes, he said. Women aren’t always the best with their money. Just like they aren’t good with their emotions.
No other emotion has ever been used against me more in my life than anger. Perhaps my cheery disposition has caused any difference, any change, to be met with a condescending you just seem so angry. I knew my anger had gotten the better of me at RCS, a few times in fact, and I knew this fury set me at odds with many of my teachers and peers. Distinctly, I remember a student opening the bible before religious studies–in which the only religion we studied was conservative, fundamental Christianity–and turning to a verse which he read aloud. There was the declaration that women should submit to their husbands in all things, and should not question their husband in any matter. He looked up, made eye contact, and smiled. I remember biting back and saying that the verses after dictate how men should act. I said I would never submit to him, and he should stop being dishonest about his selective readings. With a laugh, our teacher would stop me, specifically, from continuing. But it was my anger that made him stop the conversation. For he, just like all the other indoctrinated boys in that classroom, had watched me with a grin.
This was not the first time this happened, nor was it the last. With laughter, as always, he would stop us after the young man told me my role was submission, but before I could say anything back, before I could defend my existence. Never once did the teacher condemn the young men. No, not even when four out of the eight young women in the class, during a circle discussion, declared that they were women, and that they believed their role was to submit to a man within their future relationships, within their future marriages. I remember a friend’s steadying hand placed upon my arm. I remember shaking it off with a scowl as the men turned to me, waiting for me and my two friends to either agree with the other students, or disagree with the bible completely. I said that I would never be in a relationship in which a man required me to submit who would not submit to me in turn. I left class furious that day. I left class furious most days. It was my anger that was used to undermine my concerns, my fears, who I was as a person. It was used to shame me into someone more pliable, kinder, softer. As I dropped the facade late in my twenties, family members I had treated with the same fake saccharine sweetness were increasingly insulted by my lack of constant smiles, my more relaxed tone, my firmer boundaries. There were growing pains.
As I hit puberty within the cage of RCS, sexual education became a common, unaddressed concern. As I bled, as I found myself more concerned about the body I was given. The words to ask these questions failed me, and the shame I and my peers received kept me silenced if I ever thought I might be safe with my inquiries. Within our abstinence lessons, we were taught how our bodies were inherently sexual, how the men could not help but look, could not help but think of us when we showed skin. That was how they were wired, the woman urged, that was why we, as minors, were responsible for what we wore, how we acted, as to not cause the fall of the men around us. I distinctly remember sitting in the back row with my classmates as the woman spread her fingers and gestured to her crotch. You are not meant to look here, and you should not be looking here. Or here–she gestured to her butt. You are not supposed to be lusting after the men in your life or the men around you. We were held to a higher standard. For us, curiosity about men’s bodies, desire over men’s bodies, was seen as sinful and perverse. But men could not help the way they looked at us.
It wasn’t until college that I learned there is a different opening to the urethra than the vagina. I did not realize my body had an entirely different opening between my legs. None of the books I was gifted at a young age depicted this. None of my teachers explained this. And being asexual, I never explored my body sexually in masturbation to find this out for myself. It wasn’t until I was four tables back in my human anatomy class that I learned this as my teacher joked about it in passing. Some women don’t even know this about their own bodies, she said, laughing with bewilderment. It’s always so surprising to hear. Shame fell upon me like a nauseous weight. I was the one she was talking about. I was the naive fool who knew so little about the body I wore.
It wasn’t until college that I learned birth control could do things other than manage pregnancies. It wasn’t until college that I learned my periods were extremely unhealthy and cause for great concern. It wasn’t until six years after graduating that I realized, with horror, what my dreams truly meant.
I dreamt of childbirth a lot. It scared me beyond measure. Each time, I almost died. Each time, it was me or the baby who got to live. I chose myself. I chose life. I did not know this child. I did not want this child. And still it spilled from my mouth, umbilical cord choking my airways, writhing mass of blood and vomit sitting upon my floor as I bit down, bit down, bit down. Eventually the cord would come free and I could breathe. Eventually I could breathe.
My therapist asked me to tell her about the dreams. She asked about how I grew up.
I never felt like my life was truly my own until I got older. There was a plan set out for me by the church. I was to go to school, I was to graduate, I was to marry and have children. RCS did not teach anything else. We were women, after all. We could cause men to fall. We could create life. These were our biggest purposes in life. I found myself, day after day, listening to the teachers explain my part in the Fall. Listen to them explain my role of submission in the household. Listen to them tell me the life God set out for me.
I heard those words again, from the mouth of a loved one. From his lips, condemnation spilled. I told him, I told everyone, that I was asexual. I told them that I wasn’t interested in getting married, I did not want children. I told them about the nightmares I had. And with calloused dismissal, the words that sit upon my mind nearly every night came tumbling forth: You are denying God’s plan for you.
In my dreams, I always woke up one day to realize what happened to me. I always awoke to find half my life had gone by. I believe that would happen to me. I believed that one day, I would wake up, and I would be married like I was told to be, and I would have children because I was forced to. My dreams did nothing but reflect those fears.
My terror of letting my life slip by bottled up in my stomach. It internalized there, all the words, all the insinuations. The teacher indications that what I was doing with my friends would encourage men to sexually harass us. How our friendly interactions, our jokes, would somehow give the men around us permission to touch, to grab. On January 23, 2020, I wrote a piece about recognizing, horribly, that my fear of waking up one day to find myself in a position where a man expected sex from me because we were married had not gone away. That I still feared I would be pushed into it. I had not taken care of the scared inner child, who still cried at night out of the anxiety put upon her by toxic religion. While reading, I came across a passage that so perfectly put into words everything that I worried for. Everything child me worried for. I got up out of bed, ran outside, and vomited.
I vomited my fears. I vomited those nightmares. I spilled my guts with tears in my eyes. I did not realize how scared I had been. How scared I still was, deep down inside, that one day my life would not be mine to own anymore, and I would be someone else’s item to have at their bedside. That one day, I would wake up with a swollen belly.
I cannot even hypothetically put myself in the position of having a child, so sick does the revulsion sit upon my intestines. It is difficult for me to see others in the world, swollen with child, and find myself glad for them. It is something I struggle with and work on, attempting not to recognize that others around me, that the church, that the school I attended, forsaw me being in the same state on their set path for my life. There are books, movies, stories I cannot participate in loving, all because I cannot handle exploring pregnancy in a narrative form. I cannot handle experiencing it in any manner. Even when those in my life told me, in the car to lunch, that one day my husband would grow tired of entertaining my writing hobby, and would want me to take better care of the children I would surely one day have. Even when whines and desires for me to have children were insisted upon when my father held my cousins in his arms. Even when comments about my future husband, about boys I might fancy, about the way I interact with men is insisted upon, analyzed, transfixed upon my forehead like a beacon stating I am willing to take anyone between my legs and fulfill my duty to “go forth and multiply.”
To RCS, to the church, to those so indoctrinated within my family, I have never been an entire person upon myself. I have always been a woman within God’s plan. And that plan has always stolen away my life.
RCS was not the only place in which I suffered abuse for the way in which I was born. But the school never protected me, never defended me. Instead, they pushed their beliefs, their lies, upon me as a minor. They told me, in no uncertain terms, that my body was a man’s, and it was built to give a man pleasure, and give a man children. I only attended the school for two years, and still, each day, I am working on healing from the traumatic lessons that were shoved down my throat.
An incomplete list of RCS teachings:
-Woman brought sin into the world by causing the fall of Adam.
-Woman suffers childbirth, pregnancy, and menstruation because of her hand in the Fall.
-Woman is to submit to man because of her hand in the Fall.
-Woman is to be submissive to man in all areas, including the bedroom.
-Sex is an act of duty for a woman, not an act of pleasure.
-Sex will hurt the first time, and may always hurt for a woman.
-Vaginal discharge occurs when a woman is living in sin.
-Woman has the power to cause men to Fall with her clothing.
-Woman is responsible for men lusting after her.
-Woman is capable of having children, and therefore must.
-Woman was designed to have children, and therefore must.
-Woman is to marry.
-Woman is not to teach above a man within the church.
-Woman is more caring and compassionate and emotional.
-Woman is built to take care of the children over the man.
-Woman will be more attached to a man after sex than he will be to her.
-Woman’s sexuality is like a roll of tape, and the more it is used, the more dirty it becomes.
-Men cannot help their sexual urges.
-Woman’s body is a commodity (illustrated clearly when a young woman’s nudes were leaked and she was pushed into missing classes and having long lectures with teachers, while her boyfriend was let free).
An incomplete list of RCS omittances:
-Growing breasts and what sort of lumps to be concerned about.
-Safe sex practices (condoms, morning after pill, etc).
-Other uses for birth control (managing period symptoms, etc.).
-Condoms don’t stop the spread of STDs.
-Pregnancy can happen during menstruation.
-Excessive menstruation bleeding and pain could be a concerning medical condition.
-Those who cannot give birth are not less than.
-Consent (including consent within marriage, what an enthusiastic “yes” looks like, and the withdrawal of consent).
-What abusive relationships look like and ways to seek help outside the church.
-That a divorce is not shameful or wrong, and is necessary to leave an abusive relationship.
-How to seek help for abusive relationships, and what hotlines to call.
-That God would not desire someone to remain in an abusive relationship, and would not be disappointed if they sought safety.
-What vaginismus is and where to seek help.
-Woman does not need to always be smiling and pleasant.
-Woman can be single.
-Woman can be a lesbian / bisexual / pansexual / asexual / aromantic / and much, much more.
-Woman can be trans / genderqueer / gender non-conforming / and much, much more.
-LGBTQIA+ topics, including what it isn’t (pedophilia, morally wrong, or unbiblical) and what it is (loving relationships, human beings in a relationship, something as beautiful as straight relationships).
-Woman can choose their lives for themselves.
While I know what I’ve experienced is light compared to the stories I’ve heard from my fellow friends and alumni of RCS, I would like to stress how alien my body can feel to me upon witnessing any specific pregnancy, push for marriage, or other situation. A recent example is that I am currently incapable of watching any playthrough videos of the most recent Amnesia game, as a big component of the gameplay consists of looking down at your stomach to check on the child in your belly. When watching one of my favorite YouTubers, Markiplier, play the first section of the game, I saw him use this feature a few times, and was hit with an out-of-body nausea. What I mean is, not only did I feel sick and deeply ill, I also felt as if I was pulled from my body. That the body I was in was not my own, and felt a great distrust for my own skin. This distrust of my own skin has happened a dozen times before, especially upon waking from the traumatic nightmares and night terrors (which are waking nightmares), where I felt as if I could not trust my body. That my body might be taken from me, and forced to go through its most basic of functions: having a child. I am incapable of consuming much media – if any at all – where pregnancy is a large aspect, due to how ill it makes me. I immediately look at my body and recognize that pregnancy is exactly what RCS wanted from me. It is exactly what my teachers saw me as: a baby incubator. I see my body through their eyes, and it is difficult to remember that it is mine and will not be stolen from me. Combined with their teachings that what I wear can justify a man’s sexual desires, and even – to some extended degree – their abuse of me, even when I tell myself that no one will hurt me in that way, I am unconvinced. If I wear something too short, if I wear something that shows too much skin, my body could be stolen, could be used, and I would be pushed into a situation that my nightmares consist of. I am on a road of learning to love my body again, and feel comfortable in all scenarios, but unfortunately, because of RCS’ pressure towards women, towards me, that I am to submit, I am to take a man between my legs, and I am to conceive a child, it has been a hard path to travel. So much of my time there has been internalized in the worst of ways, and it is my hope, by sharing this, those who have or are attending the school know they are not alone. And they know that there are people who are safe to talk to. And that the school has no say over who you are and what you become.