"Why are you so bitter?"

"Why are you so bitter?" is what a christian asked me the other day just because I peacefully explained why pagans are so upset with the attitudes we experience from the "righteous." I was instantly infuriated. "Bitter"? I'm not bitter. Bitter was the stage I went through after breaking free from christianity and learning all the tactics they had used on me to keep me ignorant and compliant. "Bitter" is not how you describe someone who just wants to explain the other point-of-view to clear the air so we can stop jumping at each other for enjoying the same freedoms to which we are all entitled. I realize, however, as I did so long ago that anyone who doesn't agree 100% with a christian is "bitter," "persecuting christians," "evil," "anti-christian," and "ant-god." 

I have tried so hard for a few years now to plant the seed of camaraderie between christians and non-christians in this country. We are in a lot of trouble and this animosity we show for each other is dividing us more. We can't be strong if we keep pushing each other away because of our differences. This country was built on differences and on the understanding that we are all free to embrace our own differences in order to come together when necessary to defend each other from outside forces threatening those freedoms. Something about standing united and falling when divided comes to mind.... 

But I am done. I can't do it anymore because it feels like I'm the only one trying in a nation of 314,000,000. 

It all boils down to vanity. One simple thing to overcome that will save us all, but we just won't do it. We have to be right, we have to be better, we have to know more, we have to be prettier, we have to be richer, we have to be a bigger victim, we have to be more offended so we can complain about not being less offended, we have to have something every minute of every day to whine about and blame others for. 

The minute someone comes before us with their own vanity, it's war! No one has the right to think their religion is better than mine! No one has the right to think their career is better than mine! No one has the right to express their Constitutional freedoms more than me! No one even has the right to complain when my freedoms infringe upon their freedoms! They should just leave the country because my ego is more important than their ego! 

We are all entitled to the pursuit of happiness, and no one has the right to take that away from another or infringe upon the happiness of another. That is the very foundation of our laws. But in this country, when someone speaks up about their happiness being trampled upon, they are told to leave the country and live where there are no freedoms. 

And we keep fighting and keep telling each other cruel and vicious things because, simply, it makes us feel good about our own path in life. Christians don't tell people they are sinning because God told them to. They do it because it solidifies their own way of life that they find themselves questioning from time to time. Atheists don't tell religious people they are stupid and uneducated because there is any truth to it. They say it because it helps them drown out spiritual yearnings they haven't been able to connect with and feel inadequate before those who have. Pagans don't tell christians they aren't a real religion because most of their beliefs stem from paganism in the hopes of waking them up and helping them escape their closed-minded prison. They do it because it feels good to have something to lash back with when they are told they are going to hell. 

We don't mock each other in an attempt to educate. We mock each other because it feels good to push others down beneath us. And if someone doesn't like it, we tell them to leave this country because it isn't big enough for all of our egos anymore. 

I have tried so many times to reason with christians and non-christians, trying to make them all understand that we are destroying this country that gives us the freedom to believe what we want and say what we feel. All the while, I have been called a devil worshiper, fake pagan, moron, sinner, and all manner of things. The worst and final straw was seeing my daughter try the same kind of peacemaking gesture in a class of christians and being told the same things. 

That's it. I'm done. Tear yourselves apart for all I care. Destroy this country because really, since this is what America has become, what's the point in keeping it anymore? The one thing I will NOT let anyone do is hurt my child.