![Crying or Very sad :cry:](./images/smilies/icon_cry.gif)
I was a 15-year-old girl, hugely digging one of my favorite bands at that time, Stratovarius; this mighty band meaning sort of a world to me. I had naturally bought all of their albums for myself and even managed to see my "heroes" playing live once back in the day, too. I just loved how this band sounded like; Timo Kotipelto having one of the greatest voices I had ever heard in my life.
At the age of 15 I was naturally living with my parents who were, more or less, quite heavily religious people. They live in a small town that is a strongly religious area in general, and that´s where I have spent all my childhood, too.
One day my father came to my room with some unknown man, who obviously was strongly religious person as well - and both of them started pointing with their fingers this and that is ´Devil´s work/music´, taking away lots of things from my room that were so precious to me. Two of those things were a huge "Destiny" -poster and along sleeve shirt of Stratovarius that were burned to ashes (amongst other things) by my father and this other ´religious freak´. I was devastated, thinking there´s something badly ´wrong´ in me as I liked so much Stratovarius (and I still do) as I was told by both my father and this other ´religious crackhead´ that I was possessed by demons by listening to Stratovarius. Being at that ´fragile´ age 15, under influence of heavily religious parents and their religious friends, I was constantly fed by them how I was possessed by some sort of demons from Hell if I listened to this or that music, or simply kept some band posters on my wall that THEY thought they are symbols of the Devil.
All this affected to my mental state quite drastically and caused me atmostphere of panic in my later years.
Now I´m 22, living in other city outside of straight influence of those religious people and yet still making my mental recovery. My parents have ever neither realized nor undertood ´til this very day that it was THEM who caused me all these symptoms of being mentally out of balance, driving me to a deep state of depression by feeding their own religious views to me for many years. Don´t get me wrong as I still love and care for my parents - I do, but how I am going to tell them some day that Stratovarius isn´t ´Devils´s music´ so that they could possibly understand me that I wasn´t possessed by demons when listening to them? What if they refuse to hear me out what I have to say to them?
I´d appreciate if I heard some of your opinions/comments for my story as your opinion means a lot to me and will surely make me feel a ´better person´, without feeling guilty for supporting ´Devil´s music´ as my parents always want to put it that way...
![Sad :(](./images/smilies/icon_sad.gif)
Thanks for everyone for reading this altho I´m not sure whether this was the correct forum to make this post out for?
"All for one... one for all..."
~ DestinyGirl"