Defining Moments (Unfinished)

Searching madly through countless memories I fail to find one that could amount to a “defining moment”. In all the eighteen years that I have been living and breathing, nothing seem adequate enough to stand out. Then I realized, there is not always going to be a moment that changes everything. Some may be as lucky, but others it takes a series of events to make a change that redefines what you are living for. Those events, for me, happened to start a few years back while I was still in middle school.
        I have had the pleasure of being raised by two wonderful people who were unaware of the challenges they faced. Growing up in the church, and always taught to love your neighbor, I was surrounded by childhood hypocrisy and complex answers for the simplest questions. It was my life for the longest time. Parallel to this, I was raised to think for myself and always follow what I thought was my path. Never did my father believe that the life lesson he had taught me would soon conflict with the faith he had raised me in. Honestly, neither did I until I became one of the outcasts at a church filled with false pretenses and cliques that swarmed like a plague. We were all just a bunch of newly grown teens thrust into a world of stereotypes, a desire for higher social standing and a subconscious need to only befriend those that were like you. It all would have worked out great, if there were only more like me. Three years of this led to three strikes etched out of loneliness, buyers remorse and a feeling of abandonment by those who I had only just stopped having playdates with a few years before.
 It all reached a peak as I made the change from middle schooler to high schooler and the separations become broader and more permanent. Not only did I begin to feel completely shut out of a group that had preached acceptance, but I began to learn how different I was from what the church said I was supposed to be. I rebelled in every way possible, completely boycotting the place that had pushed me out. Often I sat waiting for the outreaching hands that promised to never let me go astray only to find that none wanted to try and find me. This group of people had gotten me to believe that they wanted to know who I was, that they wanted to be my friend, and that I was meant to be here. But I met no mouth eager to speak about why I left, no ears willing to listen. So I did what I thought was best and told my parents how I saw the world.
        “Oh it’s just a phase, you’re rebelling against what we taught.”
        “I’ll pray for you,” though no one said “I’ll talk to you.”
        Once my father found out, the met my words with anger. My mother simply attributed it to “having the desire to be different than [my] parents.” Yet even now, my parents remind me that while they are proud that I’m following what I want to believe and being who I want to be, they wish I had chosen a different path.