Growing up in the craft has been a hardship. I have often thought that my faith is a wrong sort of thing for me, and no matter how hard I try, I can’t quite quell that feeling. However, I know what the issue is: So long as I am unhappy with myself, I shall forever be unhappy with my lifestyle. That’s why I’ve attempted to change it recently.

In elementary school, I didn’t realize that it was a bad thing to go around saying you were Wiccan or a witch. In my opinion and the opinion of my coven and family, it still wasn’t and isn’t. However, because I was ignorant to the ways of other traditions and peoples feelings towards witchcraft, I gladly embraced my religion, and was devout as any Catholic. It was only when people started teasing me and bullying me because of what I said that I realized that not as many people were nicely open minded as I had once hoped.

Still, I refused to hide my beliefs, for I was always taught to be proud of who I am and everything in my life. Yet, the teasing only became worse.

“If you’re a witch, then why don’t you turn me into a frog?!” comes to mind often when I think of this subject. Movies and media have always played witched up to be cruel, evil enchantresses who are mostly ugly and turn people into things. I am much like the Shinto-Buddhists of Japan, who only truly believe that the great spirits are those of the Earth, and that people can become great spirits, but only through enlightenment and acceptance of all things around them. That’s why recently I began calling myself a Shinto-Wiccan-Buddhist. Buddha taught us to worship the Earth because it was what nourished us and cared for us all through life, and with his open mind, became enlightened. Obviously, the people that I went to school with were nothing like Buddha.

Continuously through my schooling, I have found it hard to be out of the Broom Closet. As I came out as Bisexual, even more people shut themselves off from me, and as I reached middle school and found poseur-witches and fluffy-bunny-pagans, I found it increasingly hard not to keep to myself about the whole subject. I was irritated by the gothic-poseurs that paraded around in my faith, but I gave them the benefit of the doubt, and kept my mouth shut.

However, now in high school, I am in a rural area where most people have never even heard of witches, and Harry Potter is not an acceptable Sunday Night Movie. I have learned to hide my faith from many people, even my close friends, only ever really being discovered by the poseurs who spot the pentagram that I often have hidden under my shirt. I cannot seem to keep hidden and play Christian here, mostly because many people around me are highly religious and want to get into discussions of faith with me or around me.

All through my life, I have heard, “Do you believe in God?” and every single time, I have felt obligated to ask, “Which one?” I cannot be happy hiding myself in the dark around people I want to trust, and I have had many hard times coping with the way I was raised, but I wouldn’t trade it for a thing.

I thank the Gods and my parents for allowing me the right and privilege of seeing the world through a different view, and being able to look past the stereotypes to attempt understanding my fellow humans.

~~Kodama
08/03/2004