NOTE: After a lot of thinking and consideration, I have decided to make this entry public. My reasoning for making it private in the first place had nothing to do with being ashamed and/or embarrassed of who I am.  To be fully honest, I was afraid that my Mom, Dad, or both would somehow find this entry and be upset with me for what they read. Neither of them has ever really gotten the full story from me before.  I mean, telling your parents something they don’t want to hear isn’t easy. Especially not me. I always care SO much what my parents think of me, and I knew they would not like it one bit.

So, anyway…I’ve finally decided that if, on the off chance, they stumble upon this entry, it’s okay. I am who I am. I think I’m a pretty decent person at this point in my life, so going through everything I’ve gone through and making the choices I’ve made (bad and/or good) must’ve paid off in some sort of fashion. Right?

Soooo, I’m making it public. Of course, I hope they won’t stumble upon it, but if they do…well, at least they know I’m at a good point in my life right now.       

As I mentioned over on my Opera blog, I’ve been having a nagging feeling to write about something. Anyone who has known me for a fairly long period of time may have noticed a few changes taking place along the way. The amount of foul language has almost stopped (almost), I’ve become more optimistic, I listen to my gut more, and I’m basically more of an all around more positive and helpful person. There actually is a very good reason for all of this. The reason is what I’ve been compelled to write about. So that’s exactly what I am going to do…

My Dad came out to Oregon for a visit last year around Halloween time. In case you don’t already know, I am quite the Daddy’s Girl. I enjoyed his visit so incredibly much. While he was here, he and I had a few very deep conversations. The conversations always seemed to lead to the discussion of whether or not there is a higher being out there somewhere.

Actually…please allow me to back-track a bit with some Karen history. I was raised by both of my parents until I was 13 years old at which time my parents divorced. They shared custody, so I remained close with both of them and they remained friends. My brother, who is five years my elder, and I were both raised without any sort of religious beliefs whatsoever. Honestly, I cannot express how thankful I am to my parents for their choice to handle things that way. They decided when my brother and I were young that we both had the right to decide for ourselves what our beliefs would be. That level of respect is not often found and not one day has gone by where I haven’t appreciated it. My mother has always said that she is Christian, although none of us ever attended church. A person need not attend church to be a Christian, so that was okay. Church isn’t for everyone.

My Dad? Well, he’s always had somewhat unconventional beliefs. He’s never denied that he believed in some sort of higher power. He just never really placed his beliefs in any sort of structured (for lack of the proper word which I cannot seem to think of) religion. He’s always read books which he’s bought from the Metaphysical or Occult section of the book store. He’s studied Tarot, Runes, Aliens…basically any kind of subject you can find in those sections of the book store, he’s studied it in depth. His library is pretty impressive.

So now that you know how I was raised, I will tell you about my journey along the way. When I was in 5th grade, my family went on vacation and we stayed in a hotel. As in every hotel in the U.S., there was a Holy Bible in the night table. It had a sticker on it that said that it was okay to take it…which is exactly what I did. Over the course of the next few months, I read it in almost its entirety. A pretty big feat for a 10 year old. Upon completion of the Bible, I found myself questioning EVERYTHING and EVERYONE. After much internal debating, I decided that I couldn’t, for the life of me, understand why so many people would follow a book full of such tales. It didn’t really jive in my brain. For example…a burning bush? Water into wine? My initial thoughts were, “Oh, puhlease! Riiiiiiiight!” I basically looked at it like a big fairy tale. I am not tooting my horn in any way, shape or fashion, but for a ten year old, I was fairly mature. I decided that Christianity was a manmade belief system created for weak people – for people who needed structure and were looking for something to make them feel better about life, and more importantly, death.

I stuck with that Atheistic way of thinking until I was about 14. I had bought a witchcraft book from a Hastings book store. I studied it in depth and thought it was pretty cool, but wasn’t exactly for me, either. Soooo…the journey continued.

At about the age of 17, I came to read a book by Aleister Crowley. I finally felt somewhat interested in something. After reading the book, I thirsted for more info…which led me to a copy of the Satanic Bible. I read the Nine Satanic Statements in the front of the book and immediately perked up. My initial thought was something like, “Wow! This is more like it!” I read the book from cover to cover several times. At the age of 18, I decided that Modern Satanism was for me. That didn’t last too long. It was interesting at first, but I became quite bored with it within a year. I liked some of what it had to offer, but as far as I could tell, most of it was something that anyone with good common sense would already know.

Since Modern Satanism was a bust, I decided to look into Traditional Satanism. Without going into too much detail, the basic differences between the two are that in Modern Satanism, a person basically sees themselves as a God-like animal. In Traditional Satanism, a person actually worships Satan as an entity. FINALLY! Someone to look up to! (Or so I thought.) I actively practiced Traditional Satanism for a few years. I guess I was probably about 23 or 24 when I felt like I wasn’t getting much out of it anymore, so I decided to take a leave of absence from it. During that time, I declared that I was an Atheist and washed my hands of every religion on the face of the planet. I was tired of the back n’ forth BS.

Well, now on to the next chapter of my life. After separating from my daughter’s father in early 1999, I met and fell in love with a man named Marc. He was nothing like any other man I had ever had feelings for and I fell for him faster than a boulder in a shallow pond. It wasn’t long before I learned that Marc was a Traditional Satanist. After speaking with him for a while, I decided to give it another shot. I figured that I grew tired of it when it was just me, but now that I had a partner with whom I could share it, perhaps I would get more out of it. I guess I was right on some level. Marc and I practiced actively together for the duration of our relationship. We were pretty hardcore into it. To this day, I have Marc’s tattoo on the nape of my neck. Let me clarify – he had the tattoo for the symbol of Brimstone (A symbol commonly used in Satanism) on his bicep. We had a tattoo artist trace his tattoo and transfer it on to my neck. Just one more thing to share in common.

Well, as some of you already know, Marc chose to end his life in 2001. I found myself all alone once again with my beliefs. This time I was bitter, hate filled, angry….you name it. I was pissed. Rightfully so, I guess. Witnessing who you thought was the love of your life die would make the most optimistic of people angry with life.

Anyway…I ended up with the man I’m with now – Lonnie. That’s the next chapter. Lonnie came into my life as a Christian. Although we saw each other as the enemy in that regard, we could not deny the feelings of love at first sight. It was nothing either of us had ever experienced before. I was a total skeptic prior to it happening to me. My relationship with Lonnie was my first real example of everything happening for a reason.

After a couple long years of remaining a Traditional Satanist while still in a relationship with a Christian, I once again found myself feeling more unfulfilled than ever before. As I did in the past, I decided to turn to Atheism. I have no idea why I’ve always felt the need to label my beliefs or lack thereof, but I have.

Racing forward a bit, here we are over six years later. This brings me to my Dad’s visit last year around Halloween time. As I said previously, my Dad and I had several deep conversations which always led us to somehow talking about a higher power AKA God. My Dad had revealed to me that he’d been getting together with a friend of his once a week for quite some time. His friend would go to my Dad’s house and they’d spend an hour or two discussing a particular section of the Holy Bible. My initial reaction was one of not only surprise, but maybe even disbelief. Like I’ve already told you, I had decided several years prior that the Holy Bible was a fairy tale.

The discussions with my Dad generally ended with us debating whether or not things that are stated in the Holy Bible could ring true in any way. Of course, I was very strong in my denial of God. My Dad cared enough about me and my life to continue on trying to (as he saw it) talk some sense into me. To this day, I have not heard my Dad say the words, “I am a Christian”, but I think it’s something that, at this point, goes without saying.

I speak with my Dad once per week…like clockwork. I call him every single week and we talk for at least an hour. (He lives in Minnesota) Please keep in mind that his visit was only last Halloween. That wasn’t very long ago. Well, my Dad happened to mention something about December 21, 2012. If you know nothing about that date, Google it. You’ll be amazed at the amount of results you’ll pull up. It’s a pretty big day. I would list out the incredible amount of things that tell us that something big will occur on that day, but I would be here for a very long time, and my point is not to try to convince you that December 21, 2012 is the end of the world or something. I don’t even think that’s the case. I do, however, think something Earth changing will occur on that day. I am not, nor have I ever been a conspiracy theory type of person. I joke around about conspiracies sometimes due to my dislike for conspiracy theory types of mentality. So the last thing I’m going to do is jump on a bandwagon of something without studying the crap out of it…which I have done in this case.

So anyway, after my Dad told me about that date, I suddenly started seeing tons of stuff about it on TV. I’m a nerd. I watch The History Channel, The Learning Channel, The Science Channel…etc. more than any other type of channel. I loves me some comedy as well, but I am like a sponge for knowledge TV. The very night my Dad mentioned that date to me, The History Channel had a segment about Nostradamus and his prophecies surrounding that date. I thought, “Okay, it might be possible, but still. I’m not going to jump on that bandwagon with only that info!” The next night there was a different segment about the Mayan calendar and how it ends on December 12, 2012. That made me scratch my head a little. Not too soon after that, a different channel had prophecies which were foretold by a completely different person who named that exact same date. So yeah…I began to become way more interested.