Most of my memories of my childhood revolve around me being moulded. My mom often says she saw me as a project and tried to raise me as a Princess but as I matured, I became too defiant to be considered Princess-worthy.
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As a child, there were rules I was meant to follow through to adulthood. I was expected to not have a relationship with certain tribes and religions, and not behave in certain “ungodly” ways. However, it almost seems like I picked up the mental list written for me and did everything I was told NOT to do.
The hardest one for me was the aspect of dating certain tribes. My family always made it clear what tribes I was expected to avoid without actually telling me why. I was left to figure it out by myself.
I became quite open-minded at some point and decided to not care so much about where a person came from and simply dwell on my emotions so I had relationships with different people, regardless of tribe.
On my own, I began to notice patterns that existed between certain people of a particular tribe. I noticed how poorly they treated me after they found out I wasn’t from their tribe and how they never hid their desire to be with someone from their tribe.
I eventually began to avoid these people, forced through experience to obey my parents. However, that didn’t stop me from exploring relationships with other tribes that my parents also told me to avoid because I needed to understand why.
I’m firmly against judging an entire group by the traits of a few people. Although I still have my reservations towards firstborns and for some reason light skinned guys, I’ve more or less been open-minded.
Unfortunately, I’ve never had the chance to be with a person who wasn’t raised Christian. This is highly due to my environment and the absence of non-Christians around. I’ve always wondered what it would be like to exchange experiences of growing up with a completely different doctrine.
At the moment, I’m still in a relationship with a person who’s from a tribe that my parents forbade and contrary to what I expected, my parents are quite okay with it. It almost seems like on their list of forbidden tribes, there are some less forbidden than others.
My cousin recently told my mom about a partner of hers who’s also from a forbidden tribe but my mom was entirely against it. She was so blunt that she outrightly said no one from our tribe is allowed to marry from there. I, however, told my cousin to do what makes her happy. We can’t and shouldn’t be held back by decisions made by people who most likely no longer exist.
I have no doubt that there are reasons behind these rules. From my experience with breaking them, I’m sure there are a number of great reasons behind the rules too. They were formed with good intentions. But I’ve always loved creating my experiences rather than living through the experiences of someone else.