If you work hard you'll have a successful life

God exists and watches everything you do and loves you while threatening you with eternal damnation.

When I was a little kid, I asked my grandfather what the bumps in the middle of the road (the reflectors) were for. He told me that it was so blind people could drive. It made perfect sense to me, and I believed that for longer than I should have!

"you're not going to carry a calculator with you everywhere"

"Girls desire a knight in shining armor to come sweep them off their feet!" — my pastor

For the longest time, I struggled because I was told all my life what a "woman's purpose" was, and my desires never lined up with that. Felt like a freak because I never desired romance, sex, or partnership with a man (or anyone else, for that matter). If that was my purpose, was I supposed to will myself to want that for myself? Was I doomed to be alone forever? Was I wrong to want to pursue adventure and things that I wanted?

If my desire ≠ God's desire (which was apparently union with a man at some point in the future), then my desires were.. wrong. Maybe/probably even evil.

So I fucked up my life trying to follow that and fit into that mold. I did things I never wanted to do because it was the "right thing" to do in the eyes of God.

After I escaped, I never really recovered. But.. I discovered a lot about myself.

I did bearded dragon rescues & fostering, I got into cosplay, learned how to sew stuffed animals, got some mental health care, rekindled my love for nature.. all by myself. I learned to love me and not base my worth on what other folks believe I should do or how I should behave. I don't have a partner who gets to dictate my personality. I got to grow on my own.

I'm still coming to terms with.. a lot of things about myself, but now I'm able to grow freely instead of being confined to such a small pot.

Don't let people define who or what you are, or what your purpose is in life. Only you get to do that. It's both terrifying and freeing, but you can do this.

get a good education and work hard and you will be rewarded.

• all colors can be made from red, yellow, and blue
• how an airfoil works
• language is immutable
• you won't always have a calculator in your pocket
• infinite growth is sustainable

That republicans are better on the economy. Nah it turns out they consistently screw it up by every measure.

That I'd never have a calculator in my pocket

That I'd get more conservative as I grew older

That you should base your diet on carbohydrates, and minimise fat intake.

I was raised christian so basically everything I was ever told was an absolute lie.

Basically everything my mother ever said. I repeat a lot of it back to her now, and she always asks, “where did you hear such absurdities?”

That if a racoon saw you swimming, it would swim out to you and sit on your head and drown you.

My fully adult mother actually feared this was something that could happen to her children, and she warned us of this “danger” every summer when we were young.

When you grow up everything you write will need to be in cursive.

Me parent convinced a few of friends that the ice cream truck only played music when it was OUT of ice cream

Christopher Columbus set out to prove that the Earth was round after eating an orange or something and that's how jesus discovered America

Police are there to help

Over thirty years ago, I told a friend of a friend “Australians come from Australia, Romanians come from Romania, therefore Canadians come from Canadia”. She’s been calling it “Canadia” for thirty years.

We’ve been together for ten years now, and she’s just found out that it’s not called “Canadia”. Boy am I in trouble.

Everything's gonna be ok.

Trust me, I know what I'm doing.

You'll understand when you're older.

" you can be whatever you want to be"

Some that others have already said (hard work = success, trust cops), and off the top of my head:

• That my ultimate goal in life is to find a husband, and carry and then raise children (people don't stop saying it once you grow up, you just hopefully learn that they're full of shit)

• That "blood is thicker than water" and that your family will always be there for you/want what's best for you

That turning on the light in the car at night was illegal because it would cause a glare on the windshield.

I believed this into my mid-20s when my husband corrected me with a fuckton of teasing and incredulity.

I was told they'd always be there for me. Then my dad passed away a few years ago.

I still miss him.

Grandma adopted a puppy when I was probably 8 or 9. It got parvo. I remember going to her house and asking where the puppy was. She told me that he was sick, so he had to stay outside and I couldn't go outside for the same reason. When I would ask where the puppy is, she would tell me that he's on the side of the house where I couldn't see him. This went on for a long time, I never saw the puppy again and eventually forgot about it entirely.

A decade or two later I found out that my grandma had spent thousands of dollars trying to keep that puppy alive, but parvo took it anyways. She was very upset about it's passing and instead of having me go through it too, she lied to me about it until I completely forgot about it.

God is real.

That chocolate milk comes from brown cows.

When I discovered the truth, I learned an important lesson about betrayal.

We're all equal.

To borrow from Animal Farm, "We're all equal, but some are more equal than others".

Sitting in a hot tub as a kid will make you infertile.

Totally an old wive's tale. I looked it up when I was an adult and found out I had been deprived of tons of hours of hot tub time.

Almost everything I was taught about nutrition later turned out to be BS

That people are stupid because they don't have access to knowledge.

That truth is absolute. It's very much subjective. Much in the way right and wrong are subjective.

Life is complicated and things don't fit into perfect little boxes.

We don't lick other people.