Last fall I entered college. I was anxious and excited and happy and scared to death. My memories of high school weighed heavily on my mind. I dropped out of high school at 15 years old, because, even with my yearning to learn and my fascination with everything around me, school was, for me, a painful experiment in human ethics. You see, I went to school in a small town in south eastern Kentucky, where people who are the smallest bit different are treated as outcast.

When I was thirteen, I had the audacity to go against the grain and not think that the Persian Gulf War was justified. I had the gall to not want to supporting the killing of other human beings for "'God' and country" or the tearing apart of the planet and wrecking of the atmosphere by high tech explosives that spread their odorous fumes, pillowing smoke and death to Mother Earth and to innocent people, who just happen to inhabit a country that is under the rule of a dictator, who they cannot control. For this, I was harassed by students and teachers and made to feel somehow less than human because I thought differently than that of society and I had the courage to stand up and say so.

This was the beginning of my search for a deity, a truth that I could believe in. I hadn't believed in any kind of higher power since I was about six years old and couldn't grasp the concept of going to a place with murders because I said the word fuck. I snapped. I needed something to believe in, something to give me faith and hope that life gets better and you don't remain the same forever. There had to be a chance for a better life. There had to be something other than pain. I began to study. I read everything I could find on religion. I found one religion which fairly interested me, Hinduism. Not so much all the parts, but the part about reincarnation, and the female pieties. Goddesses! Wow a woman God! I began to really believe in reincarnation and this Goddess became a deeply embedded concept in my mind.

At thirteen, I still had some Christian concepts of what evil was embedded in me, but I was well on my way to being pagan. I never said anything to my parents about the idea right away. They knew I was atheist. Mom pretty much accepted it when I told her and even made Dad not taunt me with their deeply Christian beliefs. The reason for her help was I had just came home, after spending my thirteenth birthday hospitalized for depression, when I told her my long held belief that there was no God. As seventh grade wore and the taunts became louder and stung just a bit more and I felt all alone in a world full of morons, I began to "pray", not to "GOD" you understand, but to the heavens that it would all just end and that I would come back happier in my next life. I had few things in life that made me truly happy: my family, my growing collection of Bloom County books, my television, my friends, my poetry and now my religion? I had a religion? YES! I DID! I believed that I could come back in another life as a happy person.

I became quite accustomed to my new religion. No, I didn't believe in a god, but I did believe their was something bigger than me; a higher consciousness. After a while I told Mom, who scoffed and said something about "the Lord Almighty", but left it at that knowing my delicate state. After I was almost accepted back into mainstream society, due to my outrageous dressing style and jewelry (I looked like a refugee from some bad acid trip of the 60s, with my tye dyed clothing, mood ring and peace symbol) and the school fashion swung remarkably toward my direction, the tormenting taunts from students and teachers became small whispers. "One last thing before we forget she is different" must have been one of those whispers because upon arriving at school the next day I found this HUGE flag with a yellow ribbon painted on my locker. I had ripped several stickers of the kind off over the months prior, but this I couldn't get rid of. It was like a fist to my gut. I began franticly marking through it with a black marker, but could not rid myself of it. It was like someone had taken my beliefs, my thoughts, and my soul and put a tattoo on them that said, "War is right!"

I ran into the class and demanded to know who did it. Everyone had seen it, but remarkably no one had the guts to say it was them, but just looking around the room I knew who it was. It was the boy who taken joy in tormenting me throughout grade school. I went up to him and demanded to know why he had done it. He said that I was going against God by not wanting this war. I told him that I didn't want to believe in a war-loving god and that, in fact, I didn't believe in his god or any other. I told him that the any God that allowed him to be such an ass hole was not worth my time and that he would come back as the slime on a snail if karma did it's job. To which he replied with a resounding, "Oh yeah? Well, bitch you are going to hell for not believing in God!" I told him that I was not; that I was going to be reincarnated like I had been many other times and like he had been many other times. I went on to say that if on the off chance I was wrong and there was a hell and he was going to heaven, then I would rather go to hell. He stood there with his mouth open for a minute before the chatter of the classroom began as everyone damned me for being different again. A few people ran out of the classroom on their way to spread the joy of being able to taunt me again to other rooms.

My eighth grade year went by pretty quietly, except rumors of my being a "witch". Mind you, I hadn't even heard of witchcraft outside the rumors that echoed in the mountains about ugly old women who had special powers to harm you. I shrugged it off and life went on. The whispers were once again whispers and I was happy for the most part.

As a freshman in high school, the witch rumors gave way to the vampire rumors simply because my tye dye became solid black clothes and I was seen reading vampire books on occasion, mixed with the latest Stephen King books. Somehow, my religious beliefs found their way into the high school and I had a whole new set of tormentors, who didn't back down when out witted.

I became physically ill from the torture of a select few and my body refused to let me go back after a while.

I found the real religion of Witchcraft eventually and studied a while before thrusting off the Christian ideas of evil. After this happened, I realized I could enfold all my beliefs that I felt so strongly about that I withstood torture for into one word: pagan.

I moved away from that small town and I have been a practicing witch since I was 17 years old and even told Mom when I was 18. I am fully out of the closet. That is what worried me when I began college. The rumors of my being a witch were true this time. Would I hear the echoes of the ghosts of my past in college? Would I find anyone who accepted me as those few friends did? What was in store for me? Could I handle going back after almost five years?

The answer to those questions became immediately clear once I started college. Except for a bumpy start in Algebra the first semester, my grades were okay. I found several pagans on campus, but by far the people I met outside the Pagan Student Union, the ones I met in classes and at the dorm (mostly Christians and atheists) are the ones who I share cherished memories with and hope I have the pleasure of knowing for eternity. I learned this year that, while some kids grow up learning how to hate because of differences, some kids grow up learning how to love because of the differences. While some kids grow up hating their differences, some kids grow up learning to embrace their differences. While some kids grow up to be vicious adults who are rabid in their hate for people who they perceive as different, some kids grow up.

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