[ SECRET POST #2010 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2010 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.


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02.
[Panic! at the Disco/One Direction]


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03.
[Mad Men]


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04.
[My Princess]


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05.
[Questionable Content]


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06.
[NCIS]


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07.
[Okami]


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08.
[la brigade chimérique]


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09.
[Ally McBeal]


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10.
[SS Omega]


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11.
[Final Fantasy XIII]


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12.
[A Song of Ice and Fire]


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13.
[Heroes]


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14.
[Salma Hayek and Cote De Pablo]


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15.
[True Love, "Holly's Class"]


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16.
[Star Trek TNG]


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17.
[Final Fantasy VII Crisis Core]


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18.
[Katawa Shoujo]


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19.
[US Women's Gymnastics]


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20.
[Legend of Korra]


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 042 secrets from Secret Submission Post #287.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 2 - posted twice ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[countess_k]

I know nothing about your culture beside what's in your secret, but reading the secret and your replies gives me an eerie feeling of cult like excommunication. Please correct me if I'm wrong, like I said I know nothing about what actually happened but if you felt unhappy with your family's restrictive customs, stood up to them and were driven out because of that, it's not your fault. IMO a family should never use the comfort and love it represents as a tool to control its members, and threaten to take it away if they don't abide by the (sometimes outrageous) rules set by its elders.

[(Anonymous)]

I didn't defy traditions. I did something stupid, I was arrested, the police searched my stuff and investigated my relatives. I was a stupid kid, and when my uncle called me out, instead of apologizing for scaring everyone and putting some of my younger cousins in danger of being taken by CPS, since they look for any excuse to take our kids, I shouted and acted like an idiot. He threw me out, and I had to go live with my mother's family until I had a job, etc.

My uncle claims he can't trust me now, and that I don't deserve the shelter of the family until I can prove myself a responsible adult.

We really aren't a cult. We're just isolationist, for the most part. We interact, there's just a very clear line between us and everyone else. We've always been this way. People just see us that way because we're so different from the norm. I'm not kidding when I say the anthropology department beat a path to my door. (I started at college two years ago) Outsiders are insanely curious, because we seem so weird.

I've missed birthdays, and my sister's wedding, and the birth of my nephew, all because of my own mistakes. I just want to be forgiven and go home.

[countess_k]

Sorry for the misunderstanding. I work as a crisis line volunteer and there are just too many stories of young people defying cult-like families and getting excommunicated. Still, even if you made a mistake, it sounds like you've learned from it. A person that age is prone to doing a couple of stupid things so it should be understandable. Maybe you could talk to your uncle and explain the situation. Tell him you are older and know better and that you appreciate the culture very much. Maybe the reason he's still so strict is that he thinks you don't care for the family tradition and keeping you away is his way of protecting it. I've learned in situations like this, lack of honest communication is the thing that hurts both sides the most.

[(Anonymous)]

I can see how it looks, especially if you've dealt with stuff like that.

My uncle and my sister practically raised me. To him, it was a betrayal. The police were not exactly gentle when they ransacked our camp, and my uncle was furious with me, as he had every right to be.

I think after I get my degree, maybe he'll see I've become responsible. I've stayed on the Dean's List, I've worked for volunteer organizations, I've stayed out of trouble, etc. I just don't know how I'm going to do two more years of this loneliness. I'm going insane, I feel like.

[(Anonymous)]

I second countess_k advice. Your uncle needs to see that you're a responsible adult now, and see that you are more in control of yourself now.

I do agree, however, that it's not okay for families to hold affection and love hostage to punish their children in this way, whatever the traditions they're following. It's the only thing in your situation that truly doesn't sit well with me.

[(Anonymous)]

Unfortunately, it's the consequences I have to face. It's not that I'm not loved, I'm just not trusted.

CPS took me once when I was young, after my dad passed away, because my mom claimed my education was being neglected. (Total lie, I breezed through my GED when I was 16 and was easily accepted into a college) They took all of us until the investigation was done. The whole family was terrified it was going to happen again, and it was my fault. The fact that anyone spoke to me at all after was amazing.

So it was a pretty big mistake. The family takes priority over an individual, and I was judged bad for the family, at the time.

[(Anonymous)]

OP, I've been reading this and am sorry you're having such a rough time. I've never (that I know of) met anyone from a culture like yours, and the glimpse of another world is intensely interesting. Honestly, I'd guess that some of the rabid curiosity of people like myself is coming from a certain kind of envy; a lot of us seem to feel as if we'd like to be something other than what our culture wants and expects us to be, and the notion that this might be possible is tantalizing, and somehow scary, too.

What I am wondering -- and I hope you'll forgive my utter ignorance here, and the fact that you must get asked this, like, every single day -- is, what is the place of a college education in your culture? What I mean is, in my world the idea is that you're supposed to get a good job, settle down, buy a house, have a "stable career" (if there's even such a thing anymore) and all the trappings of what our culture deems to be "success."

It seems clear from your posts that your family values education and that your achievements will have the same kind of responsible-person connotation, but as you're traveling, I don't suppose that settling into a conventional career will be an option. So I'm curious as to what your culture's expectations are. Just to be clear, I am not implying that there's no reason for someone from your culture to get a college education. I'm just the product of a very standard-issue way of looking at college and the benefits thereof, and interested in thinking a little differently.

[(Anonymous)]

Well, it sort of depends on what's needed, if you choose to go to college. A lot of people who go to school among my family are mostly going for trade, unless they learn it from an older person. I can't speak for other families.

Some go for education, so they can teach our kids, or focus in a subject that could be taught. Most of my family isn't college educated though, they're tradesmen. Three of my aunts make jewelry, they apprenticed in that. One of my uncles is an electrician, and he was teaching some of my cousins that. A lot of them do construction too.

For us, it's more about being a functioning whole. We need to be able to keep moving, and bring in money, and take care of ourselves. So becoming a paramedic, or a nurse, that's important. Knowing how to teach. Having a trade that can make money.

We just don't really think like outsiders. Home is the family, not a specific place. "Settling down" isn't really a thing. You get married, you have children, but you're still part of the family, and you still contribute.

Oh, no, normally people ask much ruder questions. "Do you have an arranged marriage?" is a common one.

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you so much. I ... the arranged marriage thing wouldn't even have occurred to me, so I'm kind of boggling about that.

Is it difficult to get work in skilled trades if you're moving around a lot? I'm in something of a skilled trade myself, and it's taken me four years in my new home city to put down enough roots to have anything like a reliable client base, because people tend to distrust newcomers. I can really see it being a challenge, in the midst of this wider culture that equates "good, reliable work" with "has been in business in the same spot for X number of years."

I'd imagine that the internet (Craigslist, Etsy, etc.) make it significantly easier to find work or sell your work while not having a permanent address. I can definitely see why you'd have a wi-fi connection. And the idea that home is your family rather than a spot on the map? Makes perfect sense to me.

I hope you get to go home soon, and thank you again.

[(Anonymous)]

I think people watch too much television, is my only way of rationalizing it.

I don't know how difficult it is. I guess because we know people, my family members get in on jobs with locals. I'm not really involved in that, since I never learned one of the trades. But they never seemed to have a problem.

I know everyone who does jewelry and art works through the Internet now. Etsy is brilliant, really, practically a godsend.

Thank you for trying to understand. Most people just make the "But..." face.

[(Anonymous)]

Racism against travellers. Still the only acceptable prejudice it seems.

[(Anonymous)]

Well, you know, choosing not to live like everyone else, and keeping our culture preserved, that just makes us a bunch of crazy people who can't be trusted to raise our own kids and take care of ourselves. We must be thieving grifters.