#day27 Accountability & Abstinence.

Zero.

Houston, we have liftoff.

You haven't done this before. Ask, using my name, and you will receive, and you will have abundant joy. John 16:24 NLT

Gabe had been familiar with my behavior when I would depersonalize, although he didn't call it that. To him, I had just learned to not take anything seriously- to a fault. Right now, I was right fucking there. 

Last night I'd thought that God had turned up the volume on the difficulty. Today, I'd realized he was only beginning to turn up the volume. It was like he was setting up that fucking noise from the THX ad you'd see at the beginning of movies. 

Since I couldn't picture God, I pictured Frat-boy Jesus doing it. 

Jesus seemed like a pretty loving guy. The Church Gang had said that it was 'Cool to be rude by God' but they'd said I'd probably better not word it that way. If it was cool though, I imagined Jesus smiling as he blew out my eardrums with this noise. 

You know, not like literal noise, but fuck that noise kind of noise.

My values were 1) being a good Christian, 2) being a good dad, 3) being financially stable, 4) being mentally healthy, 5) being honest, and now I had a sixth one. 

Sort of. Six had only somewhat begun developing. We'll get back to that later. 

Oh, it could be actually holding up those values. 

Brief interlude. I remembered what really got me to 'have faith' or 'start believing'.

You've all got to be pretty sick about hearing about this fucking girl,

actually not fucking because apparently fucking meant to express contempt, anger, or surprise.

Let me rephrase.

You've all got to be pretty fucking sick of me fucking talking about this... girl.

Thumbs up from all around in the classroom.

If you didn't know yet, what had really got me believing in anything was seeing everything from the Devil's side, basically.

Hell came and grabbed hold of me by the balls, I eventually caved under the pressure several times, however on the stipulation of a pseudo-invincibility I'd bargained for in exchange for eternal torture, the whole suicide thing wasn't working.

Now, if you hadn't known yet either, some people called me pure evil, and even Danny had thought I was the Devil himself at one point. Its honestly kind of sickening how I would almost blush at those words before.

I tempted people. I turned alliances, friendships, relationships on one another. I sowed seeds of contempt. I sowed seeds of rebellion. I sowed seeds of depression. I led people into what they might've thought would be a bed of warmth to only find bitter cold. 

Once, a friend even called me like this:

"Hey man, I need to be around someone right now. I'm really depressed and I think I might kill myself."

"Oh really?" I said.

"Yeah, I'm out here and... I don't know if anything is holding me back now. I think I just need someone to talk to, or something."

"Well that sucks, man. Do you need me to call you a hospital? 'Cause I can do that. I'm not going to sit around with you being depressed, though. I've got shit to do."

"Are you serious?"

"Do I not sound serious? If you're going to kill yourself, just fucking do it, don't waste your time calling me. If you actually don't want to kill yourself, let me know and I'll send you a fucking ambulance. I'm not going to save you. Sound good? Bye."

Or at least that's what I remember when I think about it. It might've just been:

"If you're going to kill yourself, do it. You'll probably feel better anyways. Otherwise, you're just being a whiny bitch."

So yeah, that's only one itty-bitty example of what I'd do. Get off on doing, to an extent. I got to be pretty familiar with how people worked. How their heads worked. Tempting someone, getting someone to do something you wanted, had a few simply interchangeable puzzle pieces that if you knew how to use, bang. You've got it.

Free will though, I couldn't change that shit. Free will is what people choose their faith or God with. The pieces of the puzzle had to fit. 

Getting someone to hate someone or something? Easy. 

Getting someone to think something bad was actually good? Easy. 

Getting someone to do something bad because it would feel good? Easiest.

 I'd taken in pride in convincing someone who had gone to a Catholic school their entire life that adultery was actually a highlight to the life of their own and that it would be selfish to want their spouse to not commit adultery because why rob them of the sweet experience? 

Honestly, I'd thought it was complete bullshit. I'm one for monogamy, as fucking hypocritical as that statement (coming from me) is. The Catholic, though, really embraced the thought. I had to, too, to get them to believe it, but it was fucking crazy. 

It led me to think that The Devil had actually a fairly solid moral compass. You know, aside from being evil. I know he's evil, now. You can't tempt people to do evil without knowing what good was. 

Anyways, I ended up doing it a lot without even trying to. That is, until one day, 

that one fucking day, when Steven had been a little, jealous bitch, and I was on the phone, but

before I'd gotten off the phone with her, she'd been so confused as to why she'd lost her job.

I'd instantly said things that meant to inspire contempt, suspicion, conflict, and leave the table wide open for judgment. You know, what most people want to feel when they get fired, right?

"But I didn't do that, it just doesn't make sense-" and so on.

I tried again. They're bad. I've heard they're... shady. They can't be trusted. This doesn't surprise me.

"But I just don't get it, I don't think they would do that-"

It was super weird. I didn't feel annoyed or ignored but it felt like whatever I was saying was simply a no-go, an 'operation invalid', an Error 404: File not found. I tried one more time.

For sake of accuracy I can't be certain of what was said. Bottom line is, this girl was not going to hate these people or even fathom they'd have done such a thing at all. 

I smiled to myself because it was refreshing. Weird. Different. 

Words are the blood of consciousness. My words had been venom, and something had fucking shielded her from my tainted blood. 

I took a few things away from that conversation, too. Oh! I 'd almost forgotten.

Steven had been a fucking prick, too. He'd known as much that she'd called me more or less because she'd lost her job where I'd worked before I'd lost my job too. He assumed she was upset, and when she and I's conversation had progressed to whatever the fuck else there was to talk about, he, being bored, and like some naughty kitten wanting attention he began to throw a fit, loudly saying things about the loss-of-job topic and very obviously trying to upset her. 

Nothing. It didn't work at all. She didn't get what he was doing, even though she could clearly hear what he was saying. 

I wasn't sure if she had just never met someone with slightly sociopath tendencies or dense. 

I knew it wasn't dense, which is why I was confused. Later I realized it hadn't been that she was dense, it was that she had been shielded. 

By Christ. By God. 

Since I had been seeing, feeling, and hearing all sorts of Hell lately, and whatever fucking words were said to be permeated me entirely, I really took an interest in the whole Christ thing. She had talked about it a lot, and I started liking it. Not because she had been talking about it, otherwise I'd have gone and converted to Christianity the last time I... ehem, never mind.  

Not because she had been talking about it, but what she had said and felt and thought because of God. 

For the record, it must've been the most fruitful and shortest friendship (I only consider a mutual of knowledge as to another's existence as friendship if the two engage in regular and consistent communication) I've ever had. The next runner up had been the girl who was dying of cancer and told me how much of a dick I was on Valentine's Day for being with other girls.

To my defense, I had never met this girl, she'd called me to have phone sex, and I don't even think she actually had cancer. Either way, at the time I took it pretty harsh.

It had been the shortest because I messaged her like a dog begging for food, almost gotten into a fight with one of her coworker's boyfriends at her job, randomly and in a drunken stupor !?!?PROFESSED MY LOVE TO HER?!?!, then went back on it and said that it was simply what I told everyone, and proceeded to be a weird fucking nut-house for a tad more. Interestingly enough, I'd thought what I had said to her had been the same lovey-hands-y weird drunk bullshit I said to everyone else. Oh boy. No it was fucking not. Dear God, please forgive me. Dear ME, please forgive me. Dear Christ, please forgive me. Dear Everyone, please forgive me.

No, but for real. God, please, please, please forgive me for that. That was weird. Being lustful, I'll admit, is hard for me to really repent for sometimes. Same as not honoring my mother and father or sorcery or stealing. But being weird, I really want to repent. I really want forgiveness. Also, I really want to repent for the other things, too. I've been doing good about the sorcery bit, same with stealing, I haven't stolen anything for a while now, I'm trying to honor my parents even though I really don't know or care what they're doing, but the lust part... Yeah. I'm feeling like David right now and I'm trying to fucking stay away from couches and anything that happens to have a vagina and two legs. Oh yeah, and a face.  

Fuck, God. I'm sorry, I'm sorry I'm such a narcissistic, drunken, egotistical, stupid prick. Please forgive me, please help me meditate on those honorable and commendable things, memorize those Bible verses, not continue to sin, please. Help me find the Bible verses that are going to help me stay abstinent and free of the pull from the desires of the flesh that were born of lust. 

Zero. If you have no idea what I'm talking about right now, I'll give you a hint. It went like this. 

Twenty. 

Six. 

Ten. 

Five.

Zero. 

Abstinence was going to be one Hell of a... thing to keep me from sinning. 

In Bible study the night before, I'd cracked a joke about what Manny had told me about turning away from sin but making sure you'd be turning away from sin to Christ. 

"Yeah, it wouldn't be good if you were in a situation where a girl is like, 'Hey, I'm so horny, I need you to have sex with me,' and you responded by going, 'Not today, Satan! I'm going to go get drunk instead!"

As horrible as it sounded, and as much of a joke it was, it was definitely something I'd done before. 

Several times.

We came up with the idea that sometimes you really did just have to take yourself out of certain situations to avoid sin. Or, if you were pretty confident in avoiding the sin, than to avoid being a dick. Even if you were being a dick in the hopes of being saved by Jesus. 

I liked the scripture we'd read, 2 Samuel 11-13, a lot better when I woke up because I'd supposed it clicked in my a head a little better while I slept.  

Oh, you want to hang out? Well, I feel I must be doing this thing for the good of myself and mankind, and last time David decided to not go do his work like everyone else, he ended up knocking up someone else's wife and killing them! See what happens when we don't do what we are called today? Not today, Satan. Not today.

I left out the Satan, part, because most women took a bit of offense to that. 

Really though, anything that called you to sin was to be avoided. 

For me, that meant I had to avoid women, gay men, fast food, restaurants, browsing my phone on the toilet, Target, gas stations, anything containing gluten, and occasionally popular music and movies if I was feeling really weak. 

I'd prayed for help last night, asked my fellow dudes from The Church Gang to help me out and pray for me, too. Save me from sin, God. God doesn't work his hand up your ass like a puppet. Its a relationship, not a dependency. 

Luckily, all of that prayer had worked. I had woken up feeling sin and guilt free. 

Just fucking kidding. I woke up feeling like a stupid, ignorant, blasphemous, heretical, hypocritical, empty, and did I mention stupid? Yes, stupid.

I ought to start keeping score. I was addicted to sin in all forms. I needed to hold myself accountable. So far the only way I was doing that was through... oh shit. Nothing was. 

More and more people were asking and beginning to learn why and what had really made me wander into their Church and Bible Study. To be a good Christian and be honest, I couldn't lie. And in all honesty, I was fucking afraid of being told to fuck off by a group of the nicest people I'd ever met. 

Also, it wouldn't be the complete truth unless I told them about the, you know, whole Devil thing. 

That kind of sounded like, Hey! Burn me at the stake! If this was, like, several hundred years earlier, and probably less than that, I'd have been so fucking dead. 

Now, every time someone asked me, "What brought you here?" or "What's your story?" I felt like I was King David, on his way from his rooftop after staring at Bathsheba naked to have his goons go bring her to him. My answer, even when dead-on honest, had Uh-huh that's exactly right and I'm fucking ridiculously guilty written all over it. 

"So... whatcha doing there, King David?"

"Oh, nothing, you know, just, checking out the... roof."

"Why are you trying to have a married woman come over?"

"Oh, you know... to... ehem... check out the... roof."

I forgot which line he finally admits he has sinned, after banging a married woman and killing her husband, and he really just puts it out flat, like, "Forgive me, for I have sinned against the Lord."

It gave me hope, honestly, that dudes who were... David-like, actually had a chance at salvation even though they were total douches. So, yeah, hope was good, but it didn't change how guilty I felt. 

So far we were at Zero days abstinent, 

Zero days sober,  

Zero days accountable, (because today didn't count if it was the first day)

and it felt like I was about to play a game of monopoly, about to roll and head off from Go! for the first time in a game I'd been playing for years but without actually knowing the rules.
It was like I was now playing Monopoly with Jesus Christ (in Alpha-Omega frat uniform), God, and the Holy Spirit, and they all really wanted me to win because until this point we'd all been sitting at the table and they'd been watching me aimlessly roll the dice, invest in frivolous properties, and not paying attention to any of them or how the game was supposed to be played, like a...

Monkey trying to hump a doorknob. I don't recall where I'd heard that, but its how I assumed they saw me at this table where they patiently waited for me to stop being such a jackass. 

When I realized they had all been watching me, waiting for me to finally crack open the Manual and learn how to play the right way after twenty-two years, how did I feel? 

Forgive me, God, I love you, Christ, forgive me, Holy Spirit. Somebody put this on a t-shirt for me. 

GUILTY AS FUCK!

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