i remember when i was 12 or 13 or so and my best friend who was 17 or 18 ish had decided she no longer believed in god. things had been particularly unfair for cheryl. truly. it's a fucking miracle it took that long for that crisis. and we walked over the fairmount bridge in hyde park and she screamed, middle fingers in the air, at god. and i was so confused. not really about the rage which for a couple of irish catholic girls in a third generation town was kind of a big fucking deal but it was the lack of logic. why scream at someone you don't believe in? what the fuck sense does that make? but also, and so much more importantly, she was so angry at him for letting her down. and that - that was so foreign to me. god didn't let you down. how could god let you down??? because god wasn't there to do anything for you. if shitty things happened to you it was because you weren't good enough. you didn't try hard enough. you didn't have enough faith. shit, maybe you were just a piece of crap person for that matter. so what was this disappointment in god? the hubris was astouding.
my own crisis came years later when i fell into the pool and was drowning. a few weeks before the deacon was getting us ready for confirmation had told us that anyone with a mortal sin went to hell. unbaptized babies? oh well. which i suppose was more honest than creating some purgatory just to make yourself sound like less of a psychopath. so there i am a competition swimmer, lungs filling with water and i'm trying to decide if i have anything worth burning over and what kind of prayer i need to prepare to keep myself from losing my soul (i was 35 before i realized that "pray the lord my soul to take" meant that you prayed god took your soul to heaven and not that you prayed you weren't separated from your soul when you died; needless to say i never found nursery rhymes comforting). when i finally got out and turned back to my right color i decided that a god that required me to be more concerned with saving myself than saving myself could piss right off. but at no point did i think he should have helped me because that's not what he was about. years later i found the god i had heard in my heart in the pages of a book on wicca . .. still, you could ask to be able to be smart enough or wise enough or . . enough enough to get it yourself. but this kinder, gentler god/dess wasn't there to do shit for you either. so when multiple people convinced me over the last couple of years that i needed to learn to ask - from god and his creatures - the convincing took so much that when i was actually convinced i expected magic. i admit that. that's on me. i know expectations are death. but i did, i expected, yes, magic. and i expected it in threefold because i had spent so many years not asking. so many years purposefully holding myself back and tending to myself. i bought into the catholic reward system still. surely, someone who had asked so little was good enough to deserve? but when i did ask - that's when things really started to suck.
and that's all i got. no punchline. no, "but then i ate the magic bean, i believed in the pixie fairy, i loved a little harder and it all turned to rainbows . . . " nope. i desperately need to get back to where i tended to myself, expected god to withhold and called it a fucking day. maybe there is another way but how the fuck much can one human vessel go through. maybe once i regroup. idk. i will say, i think cheryl believed all along but it's hard to admit that maybe he isn't going to help you. or maybe his idea of help is just going to be more pain.
and yes, i believe we all agree to the mission, as it were but i also believe i was, to some degree, swindled into being here. because he/they believe i need to be and i really don't want to be. all my regressions to the in between space are of me saying "i ain't going back" i think i was convinced it would be okay because my father would be here and my friend gideon would be here. i was told or told myself - you won't be alone. but now they are both gone and even when they were here there was enough separation to make it a source of pain and conflict.
they understood me. and adored me. i'm not everyone's cup of tea. that's not some pity party. that is something i know because people have been saying that - directly. into. my. face. - with no compunction, for as long as i can remember. but having these two unique and funny and fiercely intelligent men see me, actually see me because lots of men like to make up a version of me based on bits and pieces until they see something that doesn't match with it, and to be able to feel them love me made it bearable to be in this shithole where most people are dung clumps.
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