being drug in church (proverbially speaking)

I left my church. At least I kind of left. But basically, I did. I left my church. Not "the" church, just my own. I've been putting off writing about this because I don't want to revisit it. I don't want to relive those moments. I was upset, hurt, pissed, humiliated, and felt thrown away all in the span of like two minutes. The only reason I'm writing about this now is because the pastor called me this week, out of the blue.

I was at work and saw he was calling. Now that I mention it, he had called during quarantine and thanked me for continuing to give to the church. Then he called again and I screened the call. AKA I didn't answer. So when I saw he was calling, I looked up and saw my boss. They already know everything that had happened. I guess now looking back I answered because I felt like it was safe. They completely understood my reasoning for leaving. So I said "it's my pastor," and then I answered.

At first it was "I was just calling to say I missed you." And then I was like wtf, in my head. But I didn't respond. And he said "you don't..... Wait. Let's do this like a book. My thoughts will be regular sentences. My words will be quoted. His words will the quoted and italicized. Let's go. Also, not all of this is verbatim so the quotes are just to make it easier to read and understand. Ok, now let's go.

"Hello?"

"Hey. It's Pastor"

Okaaaay. "Hi." Awkward laugh.

"Hey. I was just calling to say I missed you. We missed you."

Wtf. Okaaaay. "......."

"You don't have to say anything. I just wanted you to know that." (Then he goes on about how he's learning to do stuff at the church. People he's met. The stuff they are doing online, etc.)

"Well, I just wanted to say that. Wanted you to know Pastor ___ and I miss you. We love you."

Awkward laugh. "I love you too. That will never change."

Here's where things got weird. He started blabbering then. About how I need to "end my hiatus. How he's been hurt by people in the church before. How would it be if he just decided to take a break? "Sometimes you need to put on your big girl pants" And I'm just like what the entire fuck is happening right now. I have spent this entire week at the steering wheel of my car. (Get ready for another analogy.) I'm basically just finding a way to actually come to terms with me not being able to control everything. All I can do is steer myself through life and try to avoid the potholes. Low and behold, a freaking POTHOLE CALLS MY PHONE. I'm trying to let him in, let myself hear from him. And then his mouth gets away from him like nobodies business.

I can't even tell you what he said after that. I just let him talk. I could kind of tell he realized he'd said too much but by then he was too late. And he just kept going. So I guess I just tuned it out. I don't even know how the call ended. I do know I didn't say much of anything after that. Except for bye. As soon as I got off the phone, my first thought was "is this what's it's like when you break up with someone?" Do they call you in the middle of a random day and just be like "I miss you, I hurt you, but you should come back." What? What even is that?

So in order for you to have a chance to understand any of this at all, here's the story.

I went to the church to do a thing on my off day. I was judged for not actually coming to the service later that day, by the lady pastor. To my face. While at at the church working on my off day. For free, too mind you. And I'd been working on the project since Friday evening up until this Sunday morning. I wait until she leaves to roll my eyes, write it off, and get back to work. I just wanted to hurry up and finish so I could go pick up breakfast and relax. Well I didn't get a chance to because it took my hours to finish. I'd also spent that entire week, running to and fro the pastor's house to work night shifts while they went on vacation. Which she was paying me for. So I'd finally finished after hours of working and went to the door to the sanctuary to get her. I wanted to hand off this finished project, collect my money for the week, and head off. She took it upon herself to call me out.

She told me I wasn't dressed appropriate to be at church. That's not how women or girls should dress. Then she's gathering my money and looks at me to ask did I understand that? "Bitch" was my first thought. No is what came out of my mouth. And she took it upon herself to "teach me" why I shouldn't dress like that and how if I'd come to the women's group I would be able to understand that. My second thought, "fuck you too." She handed me my money and told me to leave out the back. She told me to leave out of the back of the church I'd grown up in. Leave out the back of the church I'd sang at, volunteered for, worked at, put on events for, helped kids at, spent weekends at. She told me to leave out the back of the church I'd given my all to. I don't even know if I' looked at her. I just took the money, turned around, and left out the back. I was pissed. I'd never felt so many emotions at once.

Then after skipping church, and avoiding their calls, they wanted to have a meeting. I went. It was geared towards me being too young to understand, how  my weight affected what I could wear and get away with, how women should dress to not get men's attention, how this and that is appropriate and that and this is inappropriate. this is how things work, I'm too easily offended. Then it was interrupted (the person who butted in didn't know) and knocked off kilter for about an hour. Then they all started talking about another job that I needed to take on at the church. During a meeting about trying to get me to come back to church, they literally starting plotting what I can do on my return. Halfway through my now interrupted meeting. Come to think of it, I was upset in the moment at the person who'd come in. I'd gotten over it after because there's no way he could've known what was going on or the importance of the meeting. But now, I'm upset because the pastors knew. They both knew why we were there and they let this interruption go on for at least an hour without trying to shut it down.

When that person left, I took that interruption and worked it to my advantage. I took over the meeting and shut shit down for a change. It wasn't that literally bad-ass though, more figuratively. I told them how I felt, why I didn't care what people thought, why their reasoning was both off and wrong, and how they needed to understand what I had on was not offensive in the now. They'd known me all my life and I don't understand how they thought me, a very quiet, mild-mannered and basically most of the time bland person, could be dressed in a way that she said (during the meeting!) "she could take me to a street corner and show me someone dressed the same way." Then she went into victim-shaming, saying how women who dress that way are inviting men to do things to them. And how God said we should dress this way. So I called her out for victim-shaming and told her how she interpreted the scripture in a way that supported her opinion. God didn't literally say "this is how you should dress." And I told them it's not my job to control men's eyes. They should be teaching men to walk their path and keep their own eyes on God. Not to teach women to be basic, invisible and bland in order for men to walk the straight line. Fuck that shit.

They didn't even see it coming. He'd come to turns with us understanding things differently and I was ok with that conclusion. She on the other hand double-down and basically called me a whore with that aforementioned comment. She couldn't even sit still she was so pissed. She talked herself into the ugliest person I'd ever seen her be. And I just let her. All the while, he's trying to get her to stop talking. While he was trying to close the meeting, she was blabbing, and he was like "come back to church, even if you sit in the back." And I politely said probably not gonna happen. She had the audacity to text me during the meeting to hurry up so we could leave. She probably meant to text that to him but she'd sent it to me. The meeting was over and I was done.

I was done because it's not the first time she'd crossed me. She's gotten on my nerves multiple times, but she's offended me before over text. A comment was made about my hair and how I should wig it up or perm it down in order to be accepted. But this, this was too far. There is no way I'm staying at a church led by someone who loosely told me that I'm a whore. The beliefs they presented to me about how women should be did not and do not line up with my own. I'm not bringing people to the church to be taught something I don't believe. I'm not inviting people to be led by someone who went for my jugular. They put down dogs for less. I'm not doing it. My life-long pastor called herself trying to drag me and there is no way I'm leading someone to that slaughter. God with be with me always, but I will not be with that church.