A dear friend recently spoke of one of those, "you know what they say"s. She said that "they" say, "an abuse victim will often say to her abusers, 'I'll show you, I'll hurt me.'" She warned me against this.
When I think about where the trajectory of my life has taken me, I know a good many people who would say that this is exactly what I've done. I feel the judgements, though they are rarely voiced to me (because I'm not "safe" to confront... DAMN RIGHT). But I know Christian community, and I know what you're saying. That's part of what depresses me about it... that there's very little authenticity in your responses. So much of it is guessable, because apparently, ya'll gots everything figured out, brah. Life is so simple when you're a Christian. Or a Calvinist, or a Dispensationalist, or whatever dogma you hold most dear.
I refuse to shut the religious voice out completely though. Or the "faith-filled" or whatever stupid term we have to use in order to communicate that you got a big spiritual boner for Jeebus. As much as I can deal with post-traumatic triggers and episodes, I continue to read your blogs, your comments, your prayers, alongside all the atheist or agnostic ones. I don't have much patience for the highly simplistic faith that I described above. But I find a beautiful faith in those who refuse to be simplistic. I also find a beautiful doubt there.
And on that point I find atheist, agnostic, and believer to be alike.
It makes me think that doubt and faith are an essentially human experience. Which is not saying anything too new on the state of humanity, I understand. But perhaps I am just experiencing it as new.
Part of me gets offended at the assumption that I might be hurting myself as a way to get back at my abusers. Haven't I spent hours in therapy trying to rewrite the unhealthy patterns I learned because of abuse in hopes that I would not hurt myself and others anymore?
Well yes, but the sad fact is that I have a lifetime of rewriting to do. I am eternally impatient at the fact that my childhood has unapologetically shaped who I am and I cannot escape it.
I suppose the accusation that I am being reactionary is fair.
And I submit that it would be dishonest to be anything other than that. Sure, sure, I can comfort myself with "new" gospel truths, you know, the nice stuff, about Jesus loving me and tralala but it does not rewrite the old stuff.
Can anyone understand my reluctance to take on a new dogma after all the shitty "truths" I once believed, adhered to, submitted to, with every ounce of my being?
It's a painful question for me to ask, and it's a painful admission for me to say that at 25 years old, when I am asked what I believe, I say that I don't know, or maybe I do know, or I'm in a period of transition, or that what I believe changes with the wind, or that I just have no good answer and all my life I've believed that my answer to that question determines my fate, my standing with God and humans, and so I'm A LITTLE FUCKED UP ABOUT IT.
It's just kind of hilariously tragic when all someone wanted was a simple answer.
As "they" say, for the abuse victim, nothing will ever be simple again.
Friday, January 25, 2013
Friday, January 4, 2013
More blogging.
A few people in my day have said that I should have "a blog or something" to express my (many) opinions. I always say, I've got a blog, but heavens knows I don't use this blog to it's maximum capability. So here goes. I'll try to blog more and see if that changes anything. Boom.
I've been getting a lot out of reading blogs and other things (like news articles, books, and the like) over the last year or so. Since I've thrown the idea of daily devotions completely out the window, I guess I've replaced it with reading up on cults, religion, misogyny, child abuse, spiritual abuse, etc. Every time I'm caught reading something, I hear jokes about "light reading" or questions like, "is that for school?"
No, I read up on terrible things that happen in the world because I can relate. That is my story.
Yesterday I had some kind of post-traumatic emotional breakdown that my friends who've escaped Christian Culture totally understood, and everyone else was befuddled by. I essentially was struck with the question, "what if I'm wrong about everything? What if I've taken too many liberties, what if I've gone too far? What if when I die I end up in a dark and lonely place forever?"
Now, I've been snotty to G-d, God, god, the Divine Being, whatever you prefer to call him/her/it. I've told him, if he wants to condemn me to hell for eternity because I didn't get all my theolojizzing (thanks Stephanie Drury for that lovely term) just right, well fuck him, see you in hell. I'd rather live a life of intellectual honesty and emotional health than to submit to abusive theologies in order to make it out of Satan-land.
But two nights ago, I laid awake in bed, afraid for my eternal soul. They say hell is where you're without God and that's the worst torment. There's nothing good and lalala. Well, my relationship with God has been with an abusive God so I don't really want him around right now, and if all He is is a giant sack of tool then I don't really want him around ever. But if hell is really where all good is gone, where I have none of my loved ones with me, then it really would be eternal torment.
So I lay awake and thought about how awful that would be. Then I went through my mantra - I refuse to be influenced by fear. To submit to shitty ideas merely because I'm afraid. Even in the blessed Holy SO NEVER WRONG OR TO BE QUESTIONED scriptures (I'm a little angry today, deal with it), there is a beautiful passage that says:
"There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love."
So if God is big-jerk up there, my last ditch effort to justify my journey is throwing that verse in his face. You said it goddy-god. I'm going to hold you accountable to your words because I'm assuming you're an adult? My education tells me you had to have been around at least 6000 years...
Oi.
Ok, connecting train, here we come. I went through my mantra, I shut the fear out of my mind, I went to sleep after playing this car game I'm obsessed with on my phone. It's embarrassing.
The next day I felt the need to talk about the instance. As I posted, gchatted, and facebook chatted with caring friends about it, I broke down.
I guess it was an oops. I really try not to suppress emotions, but you get damn good at hiding things even from yourself when you've grown up in a spiritually, emotionally, and physically abusive environment.
I am afraid. I cannot recite my mantra and be rid of the fear. The mantra is good, and I'll keep it, but it does not get rid of the fear of being dangled by a string over the fiery furnaces of hell by an angry God. (Read Jonathan Edwards' sermon when I was around 11 or 12? SPIRITUAL ABUSE.) And you know the fuck what?
I'm not raising my children to be 25 and sobbing because God might cast them into hell. It's messed up. I already hear the rebuttals - you should be afraid of moving cars and that will keep you safe yadda yadda. Well, I KNOW what a moving car can do. I DO NOT know what life after death is and no one does. So in the past few days, I've been shaken to my core because of a fear of the unknown. And you can drive yourself mad with that. God knows, an entire group of people who call themselves devout regularly do!
I've been getting a lot out of reading blogs and other things (like news articles, books, and the like) over the last year or so. Since I've thrown the idea of daily devotions completely out the window, I guess I've replaced it with reading up on cults, religion, misogyny, child abuse, spiritual abuse, etc. Every time I'm caught reading something, I hear jokes about "light reading" or questions like, "is that for school?"
No, I read up on terrible things that happen in the world because I can relate. That is my story.
Yesterday I had some kind of post-traumatic emotional breakdown that my friends who've escaped Christian Culture totally understood, and everyone else was befuddled by. I essentially was struck with the question, "what if I'm wrong about everything? What if I've taken too many liberties, what if I've gone too far? What if when I die I end up in a dark and lonely place forever?"
Now, I've been snotty to G-d, God, god, the Divine Being, whatever you prefer to call him/her/it. I've told him, if he wants to condemn me to hell for eternity because I didn't get all my theolojizzing (thanks Stephanie Drury for that lovely term) just right, well fuck him, see you in hell. I'd rather live a life of intellectual honesty and emotional health than to submit to abusive theologies in order to make it out of Satan-land.
But two nights ago, I laid awake in bed, afraid for my eternal soul. They say hell is where you're without God and that's the worst torment. There's nothing good and lalala. Well, my relationship with God has been with an abusive God so I don't really want him around right now, and if all He is is a giant sack of tool then I don't really want him around ever. But if hell is really where all good is gone, where I have none of my loved ones with me, then it really would be eternal torment.
So I lay awake and thought about how awful that would be. Then I went through my mantra - I refuse to be influenced by fear. To submit to shitty ideas merely because I'm afraid. Even in the blessed Holy SO NEVER WRONG OR TO BE QUESTIONED scriptures (I'm a little angry today, deal with it), there is a beautiful passage that says:
"There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love."
So if God is big-jerk up there, my last ditch effort to justify my journey is throwing that verse in his face. You said it goddy-god. I'm going to hold you accountable to your words because I'm assuming you're an adult? My education tells me you had to have been around at least 6000 years...
Oi.
Ok, connecting train, here we come. I went through my mantra, I shut the fear out of my mind, I went to sleep after playing this car game I'm obsessed with on my phone. It's embarrassing.
The next day I felt the need to talk about the instance. As I posted, gchatted, and facebook chatted with caring friends about it, I broke down.
I guess it was an oops. I really try not to suppress emotions, but you get damn good at hiding things even from yourself when you've grown up in a spiritually, emotionally, and physically abusive environment.
I am afraid. I cannot recite my mantra and be rid of the fear. The mantra is good, and I'll keep it, but it does not get rid of the fear of being dangled by a string over the fiery furnaces of hell by an angry God. (Read Jonathan Edwards' sermon when I was around 11 or 12? SPIRITUAL ABUSE.) And you know the fuck what?
I'm not raising my children to be 25 and sobbing because God might cast them into hell. It's messed up. I already hear the rebuttals - you should be afraid of moving cars and that will keep you safe yadda yadda. Well, I KNOW what a moving car can do. I DO NOT know what life after death is and no one does. So in the past few days, I've been shaken to my core because of a fear of the unknown. And you can drive yourself mad with that. God knows, an entire group of people who call themselves devout regularly do!
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