Everything was about what you wore

Attending an apostolic pentecostal church was not the easy breezy. Yeah, you can't wear makeup, cut your hair, wear jewelry, etc. But the effort still had to be at 100 percent. It was absolutely exhausting, and to this day I don't know how I kept up with the image for that long.

Everything was about what skirt, blouse, and heels that you had on. Not to mention the crazy updos that every girl wore on their heads. I hadn't cut my hair in 6+ years and now I had to wear it in a cute updo that was next to impossible for me to do. Even the handbag that you had was looked at all the time.

As a young girl, I would want a purse just for church, not for playtime like I am sure every other young girl would. No one sat there and told me that these things were expected, but it was better to just keep with the style and not risk getting stared at. I knew I wasn't being myself, and I got down on myself for it every day.

I just wanted to be normal

I know that it's okay to be different, I had always known and been told that it was okay to be different. Yet, I wanted to be my OWN kind of different. It got me down when people would just ask me, "Why do you wear skirts all the time?"

In P.E. I couldn't do some of the things that my classmates got to do, all because I was in a skirt. Sometimes, I would get called out by the teacher, and she would ask me why I was wearing a skirt or dress when every kid took a "specials," schedule home on the first day.

I didn't even know what the appropriate thing to say was. Should I tell them that I believe that a woman should always wear skirts a quarter inch below the knee to ensure modesty?

Or should I tell them that I was simply not allowed to wear pants? The worst thing about the skirts rule was when it got cold, you still had to wear them. I would get my classmates asking me all the time, "Aren't you cold?"

I truly just wanted to feel normal, I didn't want to wear pants to "fit in," I wanted to wear pants so that I didn't stick out so much. This made me a very angry person, I just didn't understand.

Bottom Line. People were fake.

I truly think that there were some genuinely wholesome and just all-around great people that attended the church that I did. It quite literally could all just be in my head like my mother had told me all my life, but there were some really fake people that I went to church with. There were people who had money, there were the people who didn't.

There were the people who had money and gossiped about the people who didn't. I remember walking into the restroom all the time and hearing older women gossip about this lady or that one. I would get women who would talk to me, a child at the time, about other women in the church. I questioned all the time, is any of this real?

I thought the church was for the good guys. There was so much drama behind the scenes, adults think that children can't understand what is going on, but I took everything that I saw, in.

I felt like there were no good people or bad people, I truly believed for the longest time that everyone was a bad person behind the scenes no matter what and it really ruined how I viewed people in the future.

I felt pressured to do things that I didn't want to do

If there is one thing that I remember the first time that I attended this Apostolic Pentecostal church, it would be how shocked I was. The energy that these people put in to worship.

There was the usual clapping, arms raised, and singing. Yet some people were next level. There would be people who ran around, people who screamed, people who just bawled, people who would just pass out on the floor.

There was so much sweat, tears, emotion. I didn't understand it the first time that I went. As the years went by it was just the norm, it was all I knew.

I remember thinking that I wanted to raise my arms up, but they felt so heavy. I wanted to cry the tears, but I felt so blank. To be quite honest, I just wanted to stand there and sing.

I remember one night a lady coming up to me and grabbing my arms up and pushing me to go to the alter where half the church was at, but I just did not want to. I felt like I had to have all this energy, all this emotion, to worship "correctly."

I just never felt comfortable, if I was going to worship, I wanted to do it my way. Feeling pressure as a young child made it so much easier to believe that it was okay to be pressured into just about anything.

There was judgement everywhere

Everywhere I looked someone was always staring at someone. Someone was always talking about someone. Bad or good, people were always talking about what someone was wearing.

I just didn't understand, I thought to myself, if this is a church, why are we talking about Susan's handbag? I felt like I was getting stares when I had woke up late one morning and didn't feel like coming to church all dolled up.

Eventually, I just gave in to people and thought it was better to just put all the effort I could. The church made me feel that if you cut your hair, painted your nails, had piercings, wore makeup, you were just a bad person.

For the longest time, I was one of the most judgmental and snobby girls that you would have met.

It wasn't that I just thought I was better. To be quite honest, I was just jealous of the girls who could have makeup, jewelry, and a simple thing such as a haircut.