"Call me,"
had been the signal to shut my phone off.
Sorry, Kristen.
~Carnivorous Cats~
My left forearm looked as if it'd been used as a shield to fight off a relentless onslaught of cats whose claws had never before seen clippers.
There I was, that fateful night, out far past my bedtime, wandering in the woods.
The moonlight played with the wind and trees to create monsters and mythical beasts in the corners of my eyes, but little did I know the real danger lurking all around me.
I could hear the hoot of owls, the flutter of wings. Nothing out of the ordinary, I'd been here many times. If I'd listen carefully enough, I could hear the soft skittering of mice as they cautiously crawled beneath fallen leaves and logs to avoid becoming late-night snacks.
The mice. It must've been the mice that had attracted them, the smell of their weak, tiny flesh that had led the bloodthirsty kittens to those woods.
Tripping over a broken branch, I landed hard on my spine against a hollow log.
The skittering had grown ever louder, and now it had been paired with what sounded like faint whimpering.
I slowly turned my head around to find that the hollow log had become home to what looked like dozens upon dozens of mice. Why, of all places, they had chosen such a conspicuous place to call home, had been beyond me.
I turned my foot over from beneath the branch it had been caught on.
Ouch.
There was a lot of blood. Not more than I was used to, but enough that I had become nervous.
Mice don't live in logs. In fact, I had no idea where mice typically lived, but mouse habitat regularities were beyond the point.
They weren't nesting. They were hiding.
The log I was now lazily resting on, nursing my bloody ankle, had somehow seemed like a good hiding spot.
Suddenly, twenty-six glowing yellow eyes slowly crept mere inches from the ground towards me.
Fuck, I thought, slipping myself another pill. This isn't gonna be any good.
I scorned myself for having such poor English, even in my imagination.
The mice behind me whispered their desperate pleas for help. I could've ran. I was used to running with sore ankles and torn ligaments, bloody feet and the like; I could've turned a blind eye to the genocide that nature had begun to orchestrate before me.
As those glowing eyes grew nearer and nearer, I saw what terrible threat came before me. Thirteen kittens, all of cute yet menacing shapes and sizes, baring their teeth and claws, hungry for their prey.
Not today, Satan. Not today.
I quickly grabbed the branch that had tripped me with my good hand- my right hand, the one I'd learned to write with- and broke it free swiftly. I looked for something else, some other device to use as a shield but to no avail.
Dammit. There would be no defense against these kittens from Hell-
Well, really, they probably weren't from Hell, they were probably only from several different owners who had abandoned them, and were hungry, and only taking their natural part in the food chain-
BUT TONIGHT , these were vicious Hell-cats and I, great defender of the innocent mice of the forest, would be their great defender!
I turned behind me, to let the mice know that I'd be guarding them,
and that's when I'd realized the mice were already gone.
Now, it was just me and the kittens. Hungry kittens. Evil kittens.
I fought bravely, and like any veteran I was proud for the cause of which I fought, but not proud of what I did.
I thought of mounting one of the kitten's heads on my branch-staff-sword, decorating the wood with their feline claws.
Nah, I decided. Leaving my arm looking like a used cutting board had been enough.
Let me assure you, that is exactly what happened. It had not been me, trying to create an elaborate design in my forearm with a knife, and then becoming so frustrated in the difficulty of designing something that I simply sliced away at my forearm.
Self-harm was a stupid term, in my opinion. Scarring yourself for attention was deplorable. Cutting yourself because you thought it looked pretty was psychotic, but there was something beautiful about it. Besides,
how could you condone tattoos but not the cutting of unique designs into one's skin? Have you some hatred for blades in an affinity towards needles?
~Reminiscing~
When Kristen (not the Kristen I'd apologized to earlier in this post, but the beautiful skeleton Kristen) had originally seen the scar I'd left on my wrist (because I'd been convinced that Stefany, being from El Salvador, and having claimed she'd had gang family members, had sent someone to kill me) after deciding that after drinking a bottle of Crown Maple and a bottle of Snakebite Whiskey I needed to bring a meat cleaver with me into the darkness of the night to go meet Peter (at a park less than three-hundred-yards away), and I'd accidentally stumbled and slit open the top of my wrist, leaving blood all over the carpet, house, kitchen, and eventually being stopped by the police after falling down on the way to the park several times,
...and the award for the longest run-on sentences goes to...
Where was I? Oh. Yeah. Kristen. She'd slapped me, slapped my wrist, looked me in the eyes and said,
"No."
Or maybe not, "No," maybe closer to, "I swear if you ever do this again..."
Damn.
I can still see her eyes, hear her words, feel her hand in my hands.
Consider this; whatever woman you might marry, might spend the rest of your life with, might fuck for no good reason other than to get off, might have some mad, hopeless romantic thinking about her for years after he'd seen her, felt her, been with her, and consider her touch, even if not sexual, to be the closest thing to real, pure happiness he'd ever felt?
Or, in this day and age now, she'd ever felt?
How fucking creepy is that?
Kristen had been right, though. She'd said several things. One, that she and I could not be good together, because we were both so incredibly co-dependent and toxic that we would ultimately lead one another to untimely graves. Two, that I could not live life with any substance, alcohol, prescription medicine, or even cigarettes, because I was quickly addicted to anything and every thing that could even remotely become satisfactory in negative circumstances, and she'd been right about that again. Three, that she and I had to stop talking, and unless I had listened to her I would fail, and even if I did listen to her she didn't believe she or I could ever really handle being together.
Again, she'd been right.
~Present Day~
I'd finally gotten to see another picture of Amelia. She looked beautiful. Happy. Full of life. Everything I wasn't.
I looked like I was dying, and I wasn't even getting to see the little creature of boundless joy grow up.
I'd finally came to understand why fathers abandoned their children or left or whatever fucking lies their mothers had put into their heads to get them to stop thinking about why dad wasn't around anymore.
It was bloody impossible. You either sell your soul to someone who isn't God, and if that didn't make them the Devil I don't know what did, and in selling your soul to someone like that then what good of a father were you at all? Unless you had money enough to buy your child, after spending out your ass to get thebitch pregnant, you were fucked either way.
I was happy Stefany was happy. I was happy Amelia was happy. I was grateful for them both. I was not, grateful, however, that I'd felt I was the one to carry the weight of all the responsibility of being an adult and a grown up on my shoulders. Let me tell you why.
Or, I could not tell you why, because that sounds like judging. Instead of doing that, which my fleshy wicked self really wanted to do, I'm going to crack open the book of Psalms that I missed out on Saturday.
~Back to the classroom~
Okay, values. What are our values?
Being a good dad.
Being a good Christian.
Being financially stable.
Being mentally healthy.
Being accountable. That's a new one!
Oh yeah, and being Honest.
Now, lets look at how I've been holding up.
Being a good dad? Oh my God, please forgive me. If there was any one of these values I was absolutely failing at, it was this one.
Being a good Christian. I already knew the answer. That's why I'd felt like such garbage lately. I'd been giving into desires of the flesh like it was my job, engaging in extramarital sex, like I'd sworn to God and myself I wouldn't, gotten drunk several times, which was not only technically illegal for me to do at the time but reprehensible and a sin, and stolen way too many fruit-by-the-foot's than I reasonably should have from Emily's cabinet. I'd judged Stefany, deeming her to be wanting nothing but sex when she'd finally started warming up to me, I'd judged Stefany when she started texting me from a different phone number to avoid having her parents talk to her about talking to me, and I'd judged Stefany again when she'd mentioned she'd be going to the library and that she'd wondered what time I'd worked.
You know, from the sound of it, I really did fancy her, considering how harshly I judged her. Ew.
There I go again, judging the idea of liking her. Judging the idea of marrying her. I'd been sad when she hadn't said much to my cold-excuse-for-an-invite-to-Church, but then again, I was awfully hard to warm up to when I was as cold as I was.
Oh yeah, and I'd told Steven to fuck off, never speak to me again, and if he did I'd call the police and file a restraining order, and then even threatened to tell his job about him playing hooky because he had made an honest (but stupid, nonetheless, BUT THERE I GO AGAIN JUDGING) mistake.
I'd sworn like a sailor and cursing was a sin, and apparently when I'd asked Merry to forgive me the other day she'd thought I'd been asking forgiveness for hexing her.
Shit, (Dear God, I hope some charity in your name gets a quarter every time I swear) that'd been what felt like months ago!
To be honest, I couldn't even remember now what I'd asked her to forgive me for. It was kind of weird.
I really needed to stop talking to her. If only her name had been Dreary Chaotic Me, who lived on Gruesome Lane, my literary obsession would've been zilch.
Isn't that right, class?
More thumbs up. They were a silent bunch. That, or they were all so speechless at how terrible of a Christian I had been in the last... what was it, week and two days?
I glanced over at my Peace Tea. "Natural flavors" "No Colors Added" "Made with Peace, Love and Happiness™"
Sounded like a whole bunch of lies to me. Tasted good, though. Just like evil.
Wow, I really did have terrible tastes. Anyways!
So far we'd scored 0 for 2, and the game hadn't even reached half time.
Financial stability? Well, I'd been paid roughly four-hundred and fifty dollars on Friday (this is Monday) and spent two-hundred and fifty on rent, which would've left me two-hundred dollars.
I only had thirty dollars left. What the hell had happened to the other-
my heart palpitated quite unnervingly
-one hundred and seventy dollars? I'd spent easily twenty-five at a sandwich shop, idiot, twenty-five on cigarettes, even bigger idiot, fifteen on more sandwiches, idiot! idiot! idiot!, ten on Spotify (how could one live without music?), fifteen on liquor, idiot, and... Oh yeah. Another thirty dollars on supplements from Shag. 25,50,65,80,90,105,135... and there it was. I'd spent the rest on energy drinks and McDonald's.
0 for 3, ladies and gentlemen.
Mental stability. You know, there are things that happen that make you want to beat around the bush instead of saying what you actually know you need to say, and often times those things can, you know, sound quite foolish right?
I'd told Stefany two days after telling her that I didn't want to have any more extra-marital sex with her that I'd had extra-marital sex with someone else.
I'd compared my daughter to drugs because unlike drugs, prescribed drugs, Amelia was not there for me every morning. Coming from a father, that idea was sickening.
I could feel Gabe scorn me from whatever beyond he'd gone to, being that to my knowledge he hadn't been faithful.
There was a bit of Truth to be told here; I was mad. Mad to the very extent of the word's definition. In my most rational moments I was only madly coherent, however, at all times, places, and sense, I was mad. Hell, I'd even near come to tears asking if it made sense to pray for the dead in the last Bible Study I'd gone to, thinking about how I'd found Gabe in the tunnels where he'd told me he'd feared I would become lost too.
Oh, and when I'd been helping paint Brad not Bradley's new house, I'd popped Xanax to cope with being near Merry, which didn't make any rational fucking sense at all, and then when pizza had came I'd immediately gone to the restroom and made myself vomit it all back up.
I didn't even remember how I'd gotten home that night. Hell, I can assume that Pete or Manny had driven me, most likely Pete, but either way, I hadn't remembered a bit of it, so it can be assumed that whatever I'd said on the car ride back had been incoherent babbling or insensible nothings.
All one in the same, we have scored 0 for 4.
Being accountable. This was a new one to me. To me, being accountable only meant being the one to say, "I did it!" when someone was furious and asked, "Who did this?!"
In a wild guess, I'm assuming that's not what it means. To the Google I go.
AH. Oh. I wasn't sure if I was accountable or not. It meant to be the one to justify actions or be held responsible for them, or to explain why the actions were made, but to also be understandable.
Understandable.
Technically, the only person who remained in my life who could even remotely begin to understand how I justified my actions was my therapist, and as for the people outside of my life (who had ran away, for very justifiable reasons) were Kristen (the pretty, wicked one), Kelsey (the one who had probably been the one I'd taken the most for granted and treated utterly horribly), Danny (who I had many quarrels with but also very many deep, disclosing and disconcerting conversations with) and Gabe (who was dead). Peter accepted me, but still understood that most of my decisions were so outrageously ridiculous that it only made sense to either turn a blind eye to them or simply laugh along with me.
Responsible.
One of the bits of this definition was capable of being trusted. While I'm not going to tell you not to trust me, I am going to say that I often put myself on whose side is winning, and certain things told to me in confidence only remained in confidence if I really liked you. Unfortunately, more often than not that disposition of favor hung on a very thin balance, and didn't take much to overturn.
In doubt, I'd say 0 for 5.
~Complacency?~
Honest? 0 for 6. There were still quite a few things I haven't told you and wasn't telling you, whether out of pure shame... nope. It was shame. A whole lot of shame.
I suppose that whole repenting thing had to be to the world, the God's Church was the world, right? I needed to face humility and repent for my sins in order to be saved and not face eternal hell-fire, right?
Forgive me, Father, for any innocent eyes and ears that are about to be tainted by these next words.
Kids, go to your rooms. Dad needs to talk to himself again.
Trust me, this isn't mockery, but you need to laugh at the pain sometimes, because I can't believe I'm actually putting this out there.
Also, please, friends, pray for me that I not become complacent in this moment of bittersweet honesty.
I am the Tiger Woods of watching porn and beating off for hours upon hours.
I've got over a hundred pages of favorites on my go-to porn website.
The most time I've ever spent beating off? Roughly say, oh, eight or nine hours.
Yeah, friction burns didn't bother me. I've gotten used to them. I've been this way since probably freshmen year of college.
Study for a solid six or seven hours, work out for a solid two, then calm myself down by beating off until I wasn't a raging beast of testosterone.
I'd tell myself I was doing it to do other people a favor. When I didn't beat off, I was Mr. Compliment. Not in a gross way, but wow did I begin to notice the little things a whole lot more, and WOW did I sure become a lot more vocal about it. I'd stand up taller. Feel a little cockier. Sharper. Math made a lot more sense and shot in quick calculations in my head. The only bad part about it?
Everyone, and I mean everyone, annoyed the living Hell out of me and it was so hard to not tell everyone how big of a shitwad I thought that they were. I mean, cleverness is one thing, but I could come up with jokes that were just so dirty and rude that even the people who found them funny would say, "How?!" between laughter, "Why?!" I had a lot more self control. So much self control that it scared me sometimes. I felt a lot more violent. A lot more possessive. Beating off made it easier for me to be, eh, you know.
Passive.
~Contemplating~
Masturbating had been the sin that had stuck with me the longest and would be surely the hardest to get rid of for good. Honestly, I feared I would have a heart attack if I stopped, sometimes. I'd started humping couches when I was three and used masturbation as a form of self-medication until I found drugs and then when the drugs would give me stomach aches I'd still use masturbation to cure the stomach ache.
No wonder girls in school must've thought I was a player; I must've had the look on my face that I was getting off whenever and wherever I wanted and didn't need anybody else for it. Truth is, I was. Not with pussy, though.
Sorry, God. It's probably a sin to consider... Vaginas? Pussies? I'm not sure. The whole Christianity thing had put a spin on sex that I was not familiar with. Catholic's, the Church I'd grown up in, basically skipped the whole thing altogether it felt like. It really was the, 'SIN, sin, SIN, Monday through Saturday, come in on Sunday and be renewed, have a bite of holy toast and some bloody wine and you're good to go!'
I could've gone farther but for the sake of the few good Catholics (there I go again, Judging), I ought to stop. Also, for my own sake. I mean, Hell, I'm trying to repent and save my soul here. I can't judge. What am I even thinking?
Truth is I didn't even think I could make it through the night. I didn't think I could make it through the next day. I didn't think I could make it through the next four hours.
God, I'm sorry, but I swear I'll stop after just this one more-
No. I'd been saying that since I was ten-fucking-years old. I had to stop, I knew it was wrong, I knew I was a dog for doing it, and I knew I had to stop if I ever wanted to have any of this self-control shit because this time I was doing it for God. I was doing it for Jesus.
I mean, eh- rephrase that. I was not doing it for God, I was not doing it for Jesus. Okay, wait, that still sounds like I'm doing it for the wrong reasons, but I'm not doing it... Ahh!
I'm not going to masturbate for Jesus!
For Jesus, I am not going to masturbate.
Frat-boy Jesus looked about as disgusted as Steven Stifler did in that lesbian scene in the second American Pie.
But I thought, I hope Frat-boy Jesus is proud. 'Cause this is for him.
What I missed Saturday in Church
Psalm 5. A Psalm of David.
That is definitely something I have not done or ever do. Noted.
dishonoring my mother and father ,
I still haven't come to terms with thinking that one isn't okay yet.
If you, God, are your Church, I can see this one. Because they're pretty awesome. By definition, awe-inspiring. However, I'm still struggling with the whole reverence thing. I lost my reverence back when I lost my respect for everyone. That's why I chase after the women where I still think I see purity. Huh.
Yeah, this is where I always butt-heads with Jesus and God and the Holy Spirit because that straight way is looking awfully lonely for me. Maybe casting out that fear is what he wants. Dammit. It is. Its got to be. He wants me to not be afraid. Too bad I can't hit my GPS like, "You Siri, send me where Gods' trying to send me," considering God's got time as a destination in his four-dimensional universe. Tricky. Very tricky. I almost just swore at the Lord. Forgive me.
Ah-ha! That's me. I'm so guilty. There is nothing reliable in what I've said. I've got chaos of all kinds of destruction in me. My favorite thing is taking things apart. Look! I'm taking apart this Psalm right now. My throat is an open grave. Words are the blood of consciousness, remember? That's why the righteous shy away from me. They can smell and feel the death. See what I'm doing too? I flatter them with my tongue. Silver-tongued. These guys have got to be so cautious around me. Then again, they seem pretty well protected.
Blegh. Why'd I have to be so wicked? Meh.
I don't like this one. I've been punished. I have fallen by my own schemes. I have been driven out. I repent, God! I repent! I'm not trying to rebel! Will you let me back in?
Yeah, these Church Gang are real good about this one. They say, "Praise God!" like I say, "Hell yeah!" Its so ironic its funny in the most sadistic way. Boy, oh boy, do they boast Your name, God. They praise it like it's... your name? Ha. Maybe one day I'll get there. I can't imagine it. Wildest dreams type of thing. Can't knock me for trying though, can you?
Maybe once I was righteous and that's why I was surrounded with favor like a shield... I remember those days. I remember how I let the evils of this world cast that aside and turned my back on you, God.
Romans 3:13
13 Their throat is an open grave;
they deceive with their tongues.
Vipers' venom is under their lips.
Next
had been the signal to shut my phone off.
Sorry, Kristen.
~Carnivorous Cats~
My left forearm looked as if it'd been used as a shield to fight off a relentless onslaught of cats whose claws had never before seen clippers.
There I was, that fateful night, out far past my bedtime, wandering in the woods.
The moonlight played with the wind and trees to create monsters and mythical beasts in the corners of my eyes, but little did I know the real danger lurking all around me.
I could hear the hoot of owls, the flutter of wings. Nothing out of the ordinary, I'd been here many times. If I'd listen carefully enough, I could hear the soft skittering of mice as they cautiously crawled beneath fallen leaves and logs to avoid becoming late-night snacks.
The mice. It must've been the mice that had attracted them, the smell of their weak, tiny flesh that had led the bloodthirsty kittens to those woods.
Tripping over a broken branch, I landed hard on my spine against a hollow log.
The skittering had grown ever louder, and now it had been paired with what sounded like faint whimpering.
I slowly turned my head around to find that the hollow log had become home to what looked like dozens upon dozens of mice. Why, of all places, they had chosen such a conspicuous place to call home, had been beyond me.
I turned my foot over from beneath the branch it had been caught on.
Ouch.
There was a lot of blood. Not more than I was used to, but enough that I had become nervous.
Mice don't live in logs. In fact, I had no idea where mice typically lived, but mouse habitat regularities were beyond the point.
They weren't nesting. They were hiding.
The log I was now lazily resting on, nursing my bloody ankle, had somehow seemed like a good hiding spot.
Suddenly, twenty-six glowing yellow eyes slowly crept mere inches from the ground towards me.
Fuck, I thought, slipping myself another pill. This isn't gonna be any good.
I scorned myself for having such poor English, even in my imagination.
The mice behind me whispered their desperate pleas for help. I could've ran. I was used to running with sore ankles and torn ligaments, bloody feet and the like; I could've turned a blind eye to the genocide that nature had begun to orchestrate before me.
As those glowing eyes grew nearer and nearer, I saw what terrible threat came before me. Thirteen kittens, all of cute yet menacing shapes and sizes, baring their teeth and claws, hungry for their prey.
Not today, Satan. Not today.
I quickly grabbed the branch that had tripped me with my good hand- my right hand, the one I'd learned to write with- and broke it free swiftly. I looked for something else, some other device to use as a shield but to no avail.
Dammit. There would be no defense against these kittens from Hell-
Well, really, they probably weren't from Hell, they were probably only from several different owners who had abandoned them, and were hungry, and only taking their natural part in the food chain-
BUT TONIGHT , these were vicious Hell-cats and I, great defender of the innocent mice of the forest, would be their great defender!
I turned behind me, to let the mice know that I'd be guarding them,
and that's when I'd realized the mice were already gone.
Now, it was just me and the kittens. Hungry kittens. Evil kittens.
I fought bravely, and like any veteran I was proud for the cause of which I fought, but not proud of what I did.
I thought of mounting one of the kitten's heads on my branch-staff-sword, decorating the wood with their feline claws.
Nah, I decided. Leaving my arm looking like a used cutting board had been enough.
Let me assure you, that is exactly what happened. It had not been me, trying to create an elaborate design in my forearm with a knife, and then becoming so frustrated in the difficulty of designing something that I simply sliced away at my forearm.
Self-harm was a stupid term, in my opinion. Scarring yourself for attention was deplorable. Cutting yourself because you thought it looked pretty was psychotic, but there was something beautiful about it. Besides,
how could you condone tattoos but not the cutting of unique designs into one's skin? Have you some hatred for blades in an affinity towards needles?
~Reminiscing~
When Kristen (not the Kristen I'd apologized to earlier in this post, but the beautiful skeleton Kristen) had originally seen the scar I'd left on my wrist (because I'd been convinced that Stefany, being from El Salvador, and having claimed she'd had gang family members, had sent someone to kill me) after deciding that after drinking a bottle of Crown Maple and a bottle of Snakebite Whiskey I needed to bring a meat cleaver with me into the darkness of the night to go meet Peter (at a park less than three-hundred-yards away), and I'd accidentally stumbled and slit open the top of my wrist, leaving blood all over the carpet, house, kitchen, and eventually being stopped by the police after falling down on the way to the park several times,
...and the award for the longest run-on sentences goes to...
Where was I? Oh. Yeah. Kristen. She'd slapped me, slapped my wrist, looked me in the eyes and said,
"No."
Or maybe not, "No," maybe closer to, "I swear if you ever do this again..."
Damn.
I can still see her eyes, hear her words, feel her hand in my hands.
Consider this; whatever woman you might marry, might spend the rest of your life with, might fuck for no good reason other than to get off, might have some mad, hopeless romantic thinking about her for years after he'd seen her, felt her, been with her, and consider her touch, even if not sexual, to be the closest thing to real, pure happiness he'd ever felt?
Or, in this day and age now, she'd ever felt?
How fucking creepy is that?
Kristen had been right, though. She'd said several things. One, that she and I could not be good together, because we were both so incredibly co-dependent and toxic that we would ultimately lead one another to untimely graves. Two, that I could not live life with any substance, alcohol, prescription medicine, or even cigarettes, because I was quickly addicted to anything and every thing that could even remotely become satisfactory in negative circumstances, and she'd been right about that again. Three, that she and I had to stop talking, and unless I had listened to her I would fail, and even if I did listen to her she didn't believe she or I could ever really handle being together.
Again, she'd been right.
~Present Day~
I'd finally gotten to see another picture of Amelia. She looked beautiful. Happy. Full of life. Everything I wasn't.
I looked like I was dying, and I wasn't even getting to see the little creature of boundless joy grow up.
I'd finally came to understand why fathers abandoned their children or left or whatever fucking lies their mothers had put into their heads to get them to stop thinking about why dad wasn't around anymore.
It was bloody impossible. You either sell your soul to someone who isn't God, and if that didn't make them the Devil I don't know what did, and in selling your soul to someone like that then what good of a father were you at all? Unless you had money enough to buy your child, after spending out your ass to get the
I was happy Stefany was happy. I was happy Amelia was happy. I was grateful for them both. I was not, grateful, however, that I'd felt I was the one to carry the weight of all the responsibility of being an adult and a grown up on my shoulders.
Or, I could not tell you why, because that sounds like judging. Instead of doing that, which my fleshy wicked self really wanted to do, I'm going to crack open the book of Psalms that I missed out on Saturday.
~Back to the classroom~
Okay, values. What are our values?
Being a good dad.
Being a good Christian.
Being financially stable.
Being mentally healthy.
Being accountable. That's a new one!
Oh yeah, and being Honest.
Now, lets look at how I've been holding up.
Being a good dad? Oh my God, please forgive me. If there was any one of these values I was absolutely failing at, it was this one.
Being a good Christian. I already knew the answer. That's why I'd felt like such garbage lately. I'd been giving into desires of the flesh like it was my job, engaging in extramarital sex, like I'd sworn to God and myself I wouldn't, gotten drunk several times, which was not only technically illegal for me to do at the time but reprehensible and a sin, and stolen way too many fruit-by-the-foot's than I reasonably should have from Emily's cabinet. I'd judged Stefany, deeming her to be wanting nothing but sex when she'd finally started warming up to me, I'd judged Stefany when she started texting me from a different phone number to avoid having her parents talk to her about talking to me, and I'd judged Stefany again when she'd mentioned she'd be going to the library and that she'd wondered what time I'd worked.
You know, from the sound of it, I really did fancy her, considering how harshly I judged her. Ew.
There I go again, judging the idea of liking her. Judging the idea of marrying her. I'd been sad when she hadn't said much to my cold-excuse-for-an-invite-to-Church, but then again, I was awfully hard to warm up to when I was as cold as I was.
Oh yeah, and I'd told Steven to fuck off, never speak to me again, and if he did I'd call the police and file a restraining order, and then even threatened to tell his job about him playing hooky because he had made an honest (but stupid, nonetheless, BUT THERE I GO AGAIN JUDGING) mistake.
I'd sworn like a sailor and cursing was a sin, and apparently when I'd asked Merry to forgive me the other day she'd thought I'd been asking forgiveness for hexing her.
Shit, (Dear God, I hope some charity in your name gets a quarter every time I swear) that'd been what felt like months ago!
To be honest, I couldn't even remember now what I'd asked her to forgive me for. It was kind of weird.
I really needed to stop talking to her. If only her name had been Dreary Chaotic Me, who lived on Gruesome Lane, my literary obsession would've been zilch.
Isn't that right, class?
More thumbs up. They were a silent bunch. That, or they were all so speechless at how terrible of a Christian I had been in the last... what was it, week and two days?
I glanced over at my Peace Tea. "Natural flavors" "No Colors Added" "Made with Peace, Love and Happiness™"
Sounded like a whole bunch of lies to me. Tasted good, though. Just like evil.
Wow, I really did have terrible tastes. Anyways!
So far we'd scored 0 for 2, and the game hadn't even reached half time.
Financial stability? Well, I'd been paid roughly four-hundred and fifty dollars on Friday (this is Monday) and spent two-hundred and fifty on rent, which would've left me two-hundred dollars.
I only had thirty dollars left. What the hell had happened to the other-
my heart palpitated quite unnervingly
-one hundred and seventy dollars? I'd spent easily twenty-five at a sandwich shop, idiot, twenty-five on cigarettes, even bigger idiot, fifteen on more sandwiches, idiot! idiot! idiot!, ten on Spotify (how could one live without music?), fifteen on liquor, idiot, and... Oh yeah. Another thirty dollars on supplements from Shag. 25,50,65,80,90,105,135... and there it was. I'd spent the rest on energy drinks and McDonald's.
0 for 3, ladies and gentlemen.
Mental stability. You know, there are things that happen that make you want to beat around the bush instead of saying what you actually know you need to say, and often times those things can, you know, sound quite foolish right?
I'd told Stefany two days after telling her that I didn't want to have any more extra-marital sex with her that I'd had extra-marital sex with someone else.
I'd compared my daughter to drugs because unlike drugs, prescribed drugs, Amelia was not there for me every morning. Coming from a father, that idea was sickening.
I could feel Gabe scorn me from whatever beyond he'd gone to, being that to my knowledge he hadn't been faithful.
There was a bit of Truth to be told here; I was mad. Mad to the very extent of the word's definition. In my most rational moments I was only madly coherent, however, at all times, places, and sense, I was mad. Hell, I'd even near come to tears asking if it made sense to pray for the dead in the last Bible Study I'd gone to, thinking about how I'd found Gabe in the tunnels where he'd told me he'd feared I would become lost too.
Oh, and when I'd been helping paint Brad not Bradley's new house, I'd popped Xanax to cope with being near Merry, which didn't make any rational fucking sense at all, and then when pizza had came I'd immediately gone to the restroom and made myself vomit it all back up.
I didn't even remember how I'd gotten home that night. Hell, I can assume that Pete or Manny had driven me, most likely Pete, but either way, I hadn't remembered a bit of it, so it can be assumed that whatever I'd said on the car ride back had been incoherent babbling or insensible nothings.
All one in the same, we have scored 0 for 4.
Being accountable. This was a new one to me. To me, being accountable only meant being the one to say, "I did it!" when someone was furious and asked, "Who did this?!"
In a wild guess, I'm assuming that's not what it means. To the Google I go.
AH. Oh. I wasn't sure if I was accountable or not. It meant to be the one to justify actions or be held responsible for them, or to explain why the actions were made, but to also be understandable.
Understandable.
Technically, the only person who remained in my life who could even remotely begin to understand how I justified my actions was my therapist, and as for the people outside of my life (who had ran away, for very justifiable reasons) were Kristen (the pretty, wicked one), Kelsey (the one who had probably been the one I'd taken the most for granted and treated utterly horribly), Danny (who I had many quarrels with but also very many deep, disclosing and disconcerting conversations with) and Gabe (who was dead). Peter accepted me, but still understood that most of my decisions were so outrageously ridiculous that it only made sense to either turn a blind eye to them or simply laugh along with me.
Responsible.
One of the bits of this definition was capable of being trusted. While I'm not going to tell you not to trust me, I am going to say that I often put myself on whose side is winning, and certain things told to me in confidence only remained in confidence if I really liked you. Unfortunately, more often than not that disposition of favor hung on a very thin balance, and didn't take much to overturn.
In doubt, I'd say 0 for 5.
~Complacency?~
Honest? 0 for 6. There were still quite a few things I haven't told you and wasn't telling you, whether out of pure shame... nope. It was shame. A whole lot of shame.
I suppose that whole repenting thing had to be to the world, the God's Church was the world, right? I needed to face humility and repent for my sins in order to be saved and not face eternal hell-fire, right?
Forgive me, Father, for any innocent eyes and ears that are about to be tainted by these next words.
Kids, go to your rooms. Dad needs to talk to himself again.
Trust me, this isn't mockery, but you need to laugh at the pain sometimes, because I can't believe I'm actually putting this out there.
Also, please, friends, pray for me that I not become complacent in this moment of bittersweet honesty.
I am the Tiger Woods of watching porn and beating off for hours upon hours.
I've got over a hundred pages of favorites on my go-to porn website.
The most time I've ever spent beating off? Roughly say, oh, eight or nine hours.
Yeah, friction burns didn't bother me. I've gotten used to them. I've been this way since probably freshmen year of college.
Study for a solid six or seven hours, work out for a solid two, then calm myself down by beating off until I wasn't a raging beast of testosterone.
I'd tell myself I was doing it to do other people a favor. When I didn't beat off, I was Mr. Compliment. Not in a gross way, but wow did I begin to notice the little things a whole lot more, and WOW did I sure become a lot more vocal about it. I'd stand up taller. Feel a little cockier. Sharper. Math made a lot more sense and shot in quick calculations in my head. The only bad part about it?
Everyone, and I mean everyone, annoyed the living Hell out of me and it was so hard to not tell everyone how big of a shitwad I thought that they were. I mean, cleverness is one thing, but I could come up with jokes that were just so dirty and rude that even the people who found them funny would say, "How?!" between laughter, "Why?!" I had a lot more self control. So much self control that it scared me sometimes. I felt a lot more violent. A lot more possessive. Beating off made it easier for me to be, eh, you know.
Passive.
~Contemplating~
Masturbating had been the sin that had stuck with me the longest and would be surely the hardest to get rid of for good. Honestly, I feared I would have a heart attack if I stopped, sometimes. I'd started humping couches when I was three and used masturbation as a form of self-medication until I found drugs and then when the drugs would give me stomach aches I'd still use masturbation to cure the stomach ache.
No wonder girls in school must've thought I was a player; I must've had the look on my face that I was getting off whenever and wherever I wanted and didn't need anybody else for it. Truth is, I was. Not with pussy, though.
Sorry, God. It's probably a sin to consider... Vaginas? Pussies? I'm not sure. The whole Christianity thing had put a spin on sex that I was not familiar with. Catholic's, the Church I'd grown up in, basically skipped the whole thing altogether it felt like. It really was the, 'SIN, sin, SIN, Monday through Saturday, come in on Sunday and be renewed, have a bite of holy toast and some bloody wine and you're good to go!'
I could've gone farther but for the sake of the few good Catholics (there I go again, Judging), I ought to stop. Also, for my own sake. I mean, Hell, I'm trying to repent and save my soul here. I can't judge. What am I even thinking?
Truth is I didn't even think I could make it through the night. I didn't think I could make it through the next day. I didn't think I could make it through the next four hours.
God, I'm sorry, but I swear I'll stop after just this one more-
No. I'd been saying that since I was ten-fucking-years old. I had to stop, I knew it was wrong, I knew I was a dog for doing it, and I knew I had to stop if I ever wanted to have any of this self-control shit because this time I was doing it for God. I was doing it for Jesus.
I mean, eh- rephrase that. I was not doing it for God, I was not doing it for Jesus. Okay, wait, that still sounds like I'm doing it for the wrong reasons, but I'm not doing it... Ahh!
I'm not going to masturbate for Jesus!
For Jesus, I am not going to masturbate.
Frat-boy Jesus looked about as disgusted as Steven Stifler did in that lesbian scene in the second American Pie.
But I thought, I hope Frat-boy Jesus is proud. 'Cause this is for him.
What I missed Saturday in Church
Psalm 5. A Psalm of David.
1 Listen to my words, Lord; consider my sighing.
Sounds like something I'd say.
2 Pay attention to the sound of my cry, my King and my God, for I pray to you.
I haven't actually cried in a while but I probably wasn't praying to God. Now I am. I'm wishing he'd hear me, I know he hears me, but I'm betting he's waiting for me to walk the walk since I can talk the talk.
3 In the morning, Lord, you hear my voice; in the morning I plead my case to you and watch expectantly.
4 For you are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil cannot dwell with you.
Flashbacks to every morning I've started the day by either fucking, jacking off, taking a couple shots, getting high, I still haven't come to terms with thinking that one isn't okay yet.
5 The boastful cannot stand in your sight; you hate all evildoers.
I can be pretty boastful. Even now, when it comes to sin. I called myself the Tiger Woods of Jacking Off. I need to rethink my sense of humor.
6 You destroy all those who tell lies; the Lord abhors violent and treacherous people.
Oh. So that's why I've had so much 'bad luck'.
7 But I enter your house by the abundance of your faithful love; I bow down toward your holy temple in reverential awe of you.
If you, God, are your Church, I can see this one. Because they're pretty awesome. By definition, awe-inspiring. However, I'm still struggling with the whole reverence thing. I lost my reverence back when I lost my respect for everyone. That's why I chase after the women where I still think I see purity. Huh.
8 Lord, lead me in your righteousness because of my adversaries; make your way straight before me.
Yeah, this is where I always butt-heads with Jesus and God and the Holy Spirit because that straight way is looking awfully lonely for me. Maybe casting out that fear is what he wants. Dammit. It is. Its got to be. He wants me to not be afraid. Too bad I can't hit my GPS like, "You Siri, send me where Gods' trying to send me," considering God's got time as a destination in his four-dimensional universe. Tricky. Very tricky. I almost just swore at the Lord. Forgive me.
9 For there is nothing reliable in what they say; destruction is within them; their throat is an open grave; they flatter with their tongues.
Ah-ha! That's me. I'm so guilty. There is nothing reliable in what I've said. I've got chaos of all kinds of destruction in me. My favorite thing is taking things apart. Look! I'm taking apart this Psalm right now. My throat is an open grave. Words are the blood of consciousness, remember? That's why the righteous shy away from me. They can smell and feel the death. See what I'm doing too? I flatter them with my tongue. Silver-tongued. These guys have got to be so cautious around me. Then again, they seem pretty well protected.
Blegh. Why'd I have to be so wicked? Meh.
10 Punish them, God; let them fall by their own schemes. Drive them out because of their many crimes, for they rebel against you.
I don't like this one. I've been punished. I have fallen by my own schemes. I have been driven out. I repent, God! I repent! I'm not trying to rebel! Will you let me back in?
11 But let all who take refuge in you rejoice; let them shout for joy forever. May you shelter them, and may those who love your name boast about you.
Yeah, these Church Gang are real good about this one. They say, "Praise God!" like I say, "Hell yeah!" Its so ironic its funny in the most sadistic way. Boy, oh boy, do they boast Your name, God. They praise it like it's... your name? Ha. Maybe one day I'll get there. I can't imagine it. Wildest dreams type of thing. Can't knock me for trying though, can you?
12 For you, Lord, bless the righteous one; you surround him with favor like a shield.
Maybe once I was righteous and that's why I was surrounded with favor like a shield... I remember those days. I remember how I let the evils of this world cast that aside and turned my back on you, God.
Romans 3:13
13 Their throat is an open grave;
they deceive with their tongues.
Vipers' venom is under their lips.
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16th Monday, October, 2017 20:40
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