my middle school memoir (salvation chronicles prologue)
religion, business ventures, girls, joan of arc, hair issues, video game design, fights, dreams of grandeur, geopolitics & war, letters to bill gates, pastors who love sex
dialogue improvised based on memory
all photos my own
tw: childhood trauma
this is the prologue to the salvation chronicles
one saturday night when I was 12, i converted a grown australian to christianity.
i was commanding my armies in a lengthy online game of age of empires 2. i was pretending that i was joan of arc and i was killing the english: i had a pink-covered biography of her that i loved. joan was my hero and i thought about her always.
it was around two in the morning a few days before the year 2000. i was concerned that the y2k bug would cause our house to blow up: i imagined wires dangling from the ceilings and i thought maybe power plants would just start exploding. i told a girl on aim that if anything bad happened i would come save her. but i wasn’t so worried about the y2k bug just then: just then i was in the middle of an online game of age of empires: and based on the news analysts’ prognostications it could be my last.
in the middle the map there raged an epic battle involving armies controlled by eight human players. it was a four vs. four matchup in its fifth hour.
my side included the australian. i testified to him.
“are you a christian?” i asked in the chat.
“no,” he responded. “don’t believe in god at all mate.”
i added his microsoft username to msn messenger so we could discuss his faith after the game. at church, we sometimes brought up the names of non-believers needing our prayers: they would go to hell, we were reminded, if we didn’t help them. but tonight, i would do more than just pray. i would take action and save this soul.
i let him concentrate on the game while planning what i would say to him.
by around four in the morning, the game was over. we had won this overnight saga.
i chatted on msn messenger with the doomed australian.
i told him a story my pastor told us.
an arrogant atheist went to get his haircut. the men in the barber shop tried to convince him that god loved him and would forgive him for his sins.
“come to jesus,” they told him. “and you will have eternal life. otherwise, you will go to hell.”
he laughed at them. he stormed out, got on his motorcycle, and peeled off.
just as he hit maximum speed, his bike tipped sideways. his face smashed into the surface of a metal pole.
the christians getting their haircuts had tried to pray for him. they had even warned him. but it was too late. now he is burning in hell.
“you could die at any time,” i typed to the australian. “just like the biker. had he only repented right before then, he’d be in heaven. instead, he’s being tortured by demons in hell. Just think about it. you think it’s so fun??? drugs?? sex?? just wait until you’re in hell dude. it’s a powerful thing to realize. but until the moment you die, it’s not too late to accept god’s love for you and confess your sins to jesus.”
it was a long time before he responded.
“and if i die first?”
“like i said,” i typed, “if you die first, you will go to hell.”
another long pause.
“unfortunately,” i added.
“but why?” he asked. “why would god send me to hell if he loves me???”
“he doesn’t want to send you to hell!” i said. “in fact, he loves you so much he sent his son to die for you. that’s why jesus died and suffered. so the father wouldn’t have to punish you! but if you don’t accept the sacrifice, the father will have to punish you. i mean, think about it. if you do something bad, isn’t it your dad’s responsibility to punish you? well, it’s the same with god. you’re being bad, god has to punish you, right? we all know we are bad, right? we all know we need forgiveness.”
“how can you know this?” the australian asked. “i’m a thirty-year-old man, kid. you’re 12. you don’t get it.”
he told me about some horrible things he had done. everyone in his life hated him now. he was addicted to drugs, he told me. he had been in prison for an undisclosed crime. he had treated his wife like shit. his whole family despised him.
“no matter what those people think, and no matter what you did to any of them, god still loves you, jesus still loves you,” i typed. “it doesn’t matter what you’ve done. even if you killed or kidnapped someone. even if you’re hitler and you committed genocide, it does not matter at all. god still loves you SO MUCH. he created you. you are special to him and he loves you so much. he will forgive you if you take him as your lord.”
“no, he won’t forgive me, he doesn’t love me,” he said. “i’m too evil. you don’t understand. you’re just 12. i’m too evil. no one could forgive me.”
“i forgive you,” i said. “and so does god.”
“i’m honestly crying right now,” he responded. “you don’t know what I’ve done.”
“god will always love you, my friend. always. i know it.”
“how can you know that?”
“because i feel god’s presence inside me,” i typed. “jesus is my best friend. it’s not just a religion. it’s a relationship with christ. he speaks to me. i feel him inside my heart.”
we talked for another hour about all of his sins. he told me about his whole life, so many details, and i promised him that god loved him all the same.
“and i love you too, brother,” i typed.
“you’ve reduced me to literal tears, mate,” the australian told me. “you’ve saved my life.” he hesitated for a while, but i guess we had been talking for so long he felt comfortable: “i was honestly going to kill myself before this conversation.”
“i am so happy, brother,” i said. “are you ready to confess your sins and give your heart to christ? are you ready to make jesus your lord and savior?”
“yes,” he said. “i can already feel the love of jesus.”
“then say this out loud,” i wrote. “dear jesus, i have sinned. i am a filthy and awful sinner. please forgive me. i accept the blood you shed for me on the cross. please come into my heart and be my lord and savior. i love you jesus.”
“i said it,” he told me. “i feel so much better. it’s just like you said! i can feel the holy spirit inside me. i am saved! i am saved!! i am saved!!! i can’t believe god sent you into my life. i can’t believe there is forgiveness for someone like me. i love my life!!!”
“i’m so happy,” i typed. “my heart is rejoicing for you! god’s forgiveness has no limits.”
“you’ve saved me,” he said. “you’ve changed my entire life. i honestly can’t believe it.”
**********************
the next day, i went back to working on my business enterprise.
20% of all revenue i raise per month after fees will go to the LGBTQ fund of the Grand Rapids Community Foundation, an organization in my community. 💖
i worked on my scenario map in the age of empires ii world builder.
i was using the trigger functions to create a custom multiplayer role-playing-game. players would control an individual unit that would gradually level up: gaining combat strength, hit points, and even magic. meanwhile, they would journey through the pseudo open world which i was creating.
when i needed a break, i played the joan of arc campaigns and pretended to be her.
but mostly i worked my ass off. i found that the more focused i was on tasks, the less scared i felt of hell, and video games were the ultimate escape from the reality of hell. when i was playing video games, i forgot about hell.
i wanted to become a member of an online scenario-builder guild. one option was “creative guys,” run by a dude who went by the name “khan.” the real dream by 2001, however, was “fusion studios,” run by the legendary mapmaker and rpg designer “sypher2k1.” he was the creator of the famous age of empires 2 player-made rpg series called “warriors odyssey.”
i would design the next warriors odyssey, i was certain of it, and i threw myself into design while never doing my homework and failing all my classes.
i saw no point to school: i had no real dreams or hopes about the long term.
but i knew that if i designed the next warriors odyssey, would win renown on microsoft zone: people like khan and sypher 2k3 would respect me. competing offers from fusion studios, creative guys, and start-up guilds would come pouring in.
who knows, i thought. maybe i could become a millionaire off this.
i knew a thing or two about business.
first of all, my zelda fan site was top 5 on the ranking websites.
secondly, in fifth grade, my friend and i walked around the neighborhood selling pokemon cards to little kids at rip-off prices. we got some first-grade kid to go home and take 20 dollars from his mom. he gave it to us in exchange for a holographic zapdos card. some of those from that year, 1999, are probably now worth a thousand dollars. but his angry mother came to my house demanding her money back.
“she has no business sense,” i told my friend. “this card will be worth a fortune.”
in sixth grade, i embraced a more religious approach to my business endeavors.
my friend and i wrote a letter to bill gates asking him for a million dollars so we could start a computer game company.
“we know you have a lot of money and probably get asked for some all the time,” i wrote. “but we are both christians who go to church every week. we believe in Jesus. and so we would never lie. you can trust us. we are going to start a video game company that will be even bigger than blizzard, ensemble studios, or electronic arts. we will make the next age of empires 2. we just need a million dollars.”
we gave this letter to my dad, urging him to send it to bill gates.
“yes,” he said, “of course i know his address.” he walked off with the envelope.
“we should hear back within a couple months,” i told my friend. “he is a busy man.”
“we have to learn how to computer code,” my friend said.
“it’s no sweat,” i told him, patting him on the back. he was always so skeptical. “i know html,” i said.
he nodded. “oh right,” he said, “i forgot about that.”
“and i’m learning java too,” i added.
i had built my whole zelda fan website empire based around html. i was confident that if given a million dollars i could figure out how to make the next age of empires 2.
**********************
“that’s the girl i like,” i told my mom once, pointing out my first candidate.
i was in the passenger seat as she picked me up from school.
“she’s a christian, I checked.”
i knew this because she came to the youth group at church. also, before finalizing my eternal love for her, i sent her a message on AIM.
“are you a christian?” i asked.
“yes,” she said.
“good,” i told her. “me too. i love you more than anything in the world, even myself.”
there was a long pause.
“i would die for you,” I told her.
a long pause.
“oic,” she finally responded.
although I convinced myself she was the love of my life, I hardly ever spoke to her.
soon there were others.
and even as I consistently thought each of these girls could become my wife one day, I cycled through them by the week.
i rarely spoke with any of them beyond a few promises that i would die for them.
but i thought about them all the time: their outfits, their fashion colors, their hair styles, their skin, the way they moved their bodies. i was in love with all of them.
finally, i resolved to ask one of the christian girls to a dance in sixth grade.
we were partners in science class. my whole body felt as if it might crumble into pieces as i struggled to say even a word to her.
although she regularly attended my youth group, we had basically never exchanged more than the handful of phrases required to coordinate our lab activities. other than when I told her on AIM, as i had told the other girl, that i loved her and would lay down my life for her.
i hardly dared look her in the eye when with her in person, even when we were doing partner work. but on the day before the “after school activity,” i needed to be brave.
the bell rang and we began collecting our things. “hey,” i said, forcing myself to look at her mesmerizing face.
she kept her eyes locked down on her things, not even looking at me. she frantically hurried along with her packing.
“i was wondering if….”
her whole body tensed up as if from terror.
“if you would want to go….”
“no,” she said sternly.
then she stood up and rushed away. i remember how her pony tail, her beautiful pony tail of which i snuck so many glances, whirled by my face.
i saw her laugh with a friend. they rushed out the door and i gathered my things.
**********************
i thought maybe her rejection was because of the white stuff in my hair.
while falling asleep at night, i used my fingernails to violently dig through layers of hardened hair. deep beneath a brown surface speckled with white dots, a nearly impenetrable monstrosity had buried chunks of hair beneath one another, gluing individual strands together. i had to repeatedly liberate each individual thread from this soggy marshland. i carefully scraped the flaky, moist, viscous goo off of each of them, until at last i could feel the damaged, soft texture of the hair itself.
on rare occasions, i was able to drill my nails all the way through several layers of rock-like hair clusters. then i would finally touch my sensitive, buried scalp. it was tender and bloody. sometimes it felt like soft wet gunk. usually, it was the first time in many years that this particular portion of my scalp had any contact with the air.
at least a few times, when I was 11 in sixth grade and sitting at my desk in class, i diligently emancipated various strands of hair. as the english teacher droned on about some boring novel, i collected the white crispy residue into a neat pile beside my books and notebook.
my parents certainly seemed to think so.
whenever i donned dark colors, my shoulders were covered in snowy debris. my parents would tell me how disgusting i looked but i wasn’t sure what to do about it.
i was ordered repeatedly into the shower.
there, i deployed increasingly powerful versions of head & shoulders against the white menace. sometimes, i scrubbed so hard that i’d find little blotches of blood on my fingers. each time, however, there were still so many white flakes floating out of my hair that my parents accused me of not having really tried.
for years i struggled with this issue and eventually i thought the white stuff was simply a part of me. i was ugly, i thought. i am a disgusting freak. and i picked it out of my hair in class for all to see because when i did, there was a satisfying rush: yes, look at me, look at what a repulsive creature i am.
once my dad ordered me into a bathing suit. with me in the shower, he tried to wash my hair, getting his fists in there. i hated it and he totally failed.
finally, after many years of reprimanding me for how embarrassing i looked whenever they had to show me to their friends, my mom took me to a dermatologist.
the dermatologist explained that a yeast had infected my hair.
only a potent anti-fungal ointment could cure this particularly severe case.
in the meantime, i continued attending the youth group. i scouted my surroundings for christian girls who might accept me, constantly admiring their accessories and hair colors and clothing. usually, however, i was confined to a church-run small group of other boys. we met weekly at a youth minister’s house.
**********************
in his living room, this man taught us about america’s christian heritage. he said this heritage was under attack by liberals who claim america is not a christian nation.
“well, let’s see what the founding fathers have to say about that,” he suggested.
we watched a documentary which explained that all the founding fathers were devoted to incorporating god and/or christianity into our system of government. this nation was always meant to be a godly and christian one.
“they will tell you something different in the public school,” he said. “but it’s a lie. until i saw this documentary, i didn’t quite realize just how great of a lie it was. we are the greatest nation on earth, but we lose that as soon as we forsake the lord.”
i interrupted him. i hated this man: just looking at his face made me want to get violent. i told the group that i wouldn’t be so sure about america’s greatness.
my heart was thumping.
i prophesied the coming franco-british invasion.
“britain and france,” i explained, “are way more powerful than america will ever be. teamed up, they will destroy us all. it’s only a matter of time.”
the others laughed at me. “america is the greatest country in the world,” they said.
“you are fools,” i said. “america is weak. our navy in particular sucks.”
my grandpa had told me god would send me to hell for calling people fools. i called people fools often. it felt as if i might as well seal the deal, take out the wondering.
i was patient. they hadn’t yet read my novel about the coming invasion.
i was currently working on a battle scene during which the united british and french armies were pushing into michigan.
“i’m going to be a british soldier one day,” i said.
“you should fight for your own country,” said my youth minister, looking concerned.
“britain is my country,” i said. “did you know that i am descended from king arthur?”
my dad had always told me i was descended from king arthur and i could feel that heritage in my bones.
a friend of mine argued adamantly with me at school about this topic.
“america is the greatest nation to ever exist,” he told me. “we will always be the most powerful.”
“no, we won’t be,” i said, recalling my shifting fortunes in age of empires 2. i actually knew a lot about world history because i played so many video games set in the ancient world and i sometimes read my joan of arc book, maybe 2 pages a day.
“all empires eventually fall, including this one,” i announced. “this nation will be completely and totally destroyed.” i waved my hand through the air. “you see all these houses? just wait until the franco-british army arrives.”
“i don’t think that’s true,” my friend said. he was getting angry. “we have — ”
“our army sucks dude,” i interrupted. “britain and france already have better armies.”
“that’s bullshit,” he said. he was raising his voice. “how can you know that?”
“i’ve read about it on the internet,” i said. “well, we have a better army. britain has a better navy. that’s just a fact. but france has the better army than both.”
he plugged his ears. “america will always be the best country in the world.” he shouted it again: “we are the greatest country in the world.”
“look at reality dude,” i said, shrugging. “america’s days are numbered.”
**********************
within the broader youth group, we were repeatedly warned about the struggles we would encounter to maintain our faith at public school.
“school can be really, really hard guys,” our youth minister told us in a room at the church. “especially science class. in high school, when they start presenting their evidence for evolution, it’ll just be really hard. we laugh about it now, saying they just believe monkeys turned into people. but the devil is very deceitful, and they’re going to give you a more complicated explanation than that. they’re going to give you what they claim as evidence. you have to remember it’s all a lie. remember they cannot explain the huge gaps in the fossil record. they can’t explain where life came from to begin with. and how could something as astonishingly complex as the human eye just evolve? the whole theory of evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics. keep your faith in god. you are not an animal. don’t forget that.”
an evil song had even come out in 1999.
this song proclaimed that we are nothing but mammals and so we should bang each other like the animals do on tv. convincing us we were animals in biology class was part of a larger liberal-feminist-atheistic-scientific project to make us think we were free to do whatever we wanted without god’s approval.
in high school, the youth minister said, they would really start teaching us a more liberal version of sex education.
girls may seduce us, trying to touch our penises and stuff like that.
but we could not allow the school to convince us that there were “safe” ways to have sex before marriage. vrginity was sacred, and we must protect it.
our bodies were sacred temples for the lord. premarital sex defiles this temple. we must reject the temptations of science and the flesh. science, by convincing us we are animals, encourages sexual behavior which the lord has not sanctioned.
“you know i love sex,” the pastor used to say to the congregation at the megachurch, always getting a chuckle from across the enormous audience. “sex is a great gift from the lord. we are not against sex between a man and wife. we love sex here.”
he paced back and forth on the stage before thousands.
“raise your hand if you love sex!” some people did so and cheered. “see,” he went on, smiling broadly and raising his hands into the air, “we love sex here.”
**********************
“you should push crawford into the tool cabinet,” someone suggested in woodshop.
i checked for the teacher.
his back was turned to me as he creepily leaned over some popular girl’s project.
i got up out of my seat, walked across the room, and shoved crawford.
he went stumbling back into the open tool cabinet. a satisfying surge of hatred for myself rushed through me: it was like, this is me, an evil person, a bad boy, a failure. there was something like a deep pleasure that briefly ran through me at the thought that i had crushed myself like this.
his back smashed into the cabinet doors. a few metal tools fell to the ground. a
after he recovered, he lunged at me, and i ran away.
when they took me to the principal’s office, i didn’t feel good anymore, i just hated myself, and i wondered what was wrong with me.
**********************
shortly after that, i was in the library at a desktop computer working on a german project. another guy, roger, came over to me. this guy was always being an asshole to me: calling me a faggot, making faces at me, taking my things.
he grabbed a piece of paper from me and held it in the air.
i quickly checked to see if the teacher was looking. but her back was to us. she was leaning over some other kid, examining his computer screen.
i rose to my feet. roger stretched to his tip-toes, pushing the paper even higher into the air. he laughed at me as I reached.
“why don’t you jump, little bitch?” he asked.
so i kicked him as hard as i could in the crotch.
he immediately plummeted to the ground, where he gasped and clutched at himself. but he was seemingly unable to make much of any sound.
i looked at him there in agony and i thought: i did this, this is me, i am terrible. i am awful. and a surge of pleasure rushed through me just for a moment again, only to give way suddenly to a deep and crippling self-hatred: while roger writhed beside me, i sat down at the computer and just stared at my project.
roger finally started making small sounds. he began crawling toward the doors to the hallway for some reason and not toward the teacher in the library.
i saw all his pain and i thought: why did i do this? and i knew: because i am bad.
i looked back at the computer screen and wondered, “why am i alive?”
when i looked back at roger again, he had reached the threshold of the hallway.
he was still on the ground. his upper body was turned toward me. he was propping himself up on an elbow with one arm. he clutched his crotch using the other.
then he lifted his hand and pointed right at my face.
above him stood the woodshop teacher.
shortly after that, my teacher brought my parents in and told them i was kicked out of the german program. “there’s really no purpose to his being in this class,” she said.
**********************
my parents were thinking of ways to reform me.
clearly, annual bible camp just didn’t stick.
so they told me terrifying stories about some wayward boys who lived down the street.
military men had burst into the boys’ house in the middle of the night.
these men grabbed the screaming youths and dragged them forcibly from their beds.
“and you know what happens?” my mom asked me, nodding assertively.
she was explaining this for the twentieth time. threatening to have men come and take me in the night had become my parents’ primary disciplinary tactic. but this time my mom was more determined. this time the whole nightmare seemed more real.
“they cry and scream and beg and plead,” my mom said, “don’t take me! don’t take me! and the parents don’t even come out of their bedrooms.” she raised her voice. “that’s right. we won’t even come out of our room no matter how loud you scream for us. the men will just come into your room in the middle of the night, take you out of your bed, drag you down the stairs, put you into a van, and drive you away.”
i started having the nightmares i used to have in early elementary school. my parents would come and take me out of bed and feed me to a gigantic man-eating flower. i would always wake up screaming, and then my parents would come into the room.
this time when my mom warned me about these men, i screamed at her.
“i will hate you! i will hate you forever! i will never see you again!”
“well!” my dad said, tossing his hands in the air. “that’ll be your choice!”
“we hope you won’t make that decision,” my mom said. “we love you very much. but if your behavior doesn’t improve, be prepared.”
i screamed at them. i knew my dad’s dad had left him, so i called him a bastard. i told my mom she was a fucking bitch. i started grabbing my own things and destroying them, shredding them up.
“don’t do that,” my dad said, suddenly becoming concerned.
i destroyed more of my things. then i went for their things and they changed.
i screamed “i fucking hate you i fucking hate you i fucking hate you” and then i made as if to physically attack them.
not for the first time, my dad slammed his fist on the kitchen island and shouted: “men will come and take you in the night!”
“and you’ll have no way of communicating with any of your friends,” my mom added.
“and you’ll have no way of communicating with us either,” my dad said.
i went to my room and cried.
out my bedroom window
despite their threats i did not start doing my homework or behaving at school. i spent all my time working on my dream: becoming a member of fusion studios, winning the respect of sypher2k1.
and i did it. after months of meticulous devotion, sypher2k1 was impressed with my work. he told me i was one of the best designers out there. he made me a member of his guild, fusion studios, and the thrill of it all helped me forget about my parents: all day and all night i would play age of empires 2 and imagine i was joan of arc.
every weekend my dad gave me another supply of snacks: 24 packs of mountain dew, several family-sized boxes of cheez-its, and massive quantities of gatorade. every day after school i ate an entire box of kraft mac and cheese.
**********************
my dad took me to a flag store at great lakes crossing, a large mall.
my dad loved to buy me things.
i wanted to buy a huge british flag to hang from the wall in my bedroom and showcase my national loyalties. i was eager to renounce my american citizenship and serve the queen. “fuck these people,” i thought to myself. “fuck my teachers, fuck my parents. just wait until i’m the fucking prime minister of the united kingdom.”
i hung up the big british flag in my bedroom, savoring the symbol of the distant nation i would one day lead. i would wear the british flag on my shoulder as i fought the taliban in afghanistan. then, returning to london as a war hero, i’d be elected prime minister. i would declare war on the united states if it proved necessary. which of course it would prove necessary. and then i would command a large franco-british army to conquer america, expanding the queen’s domains.
a couple months later though, i changed my mind and wanted to be a sports journalist. i’d never been able to fit in with the boys because i’d never watched sports other than the nba briefly in elementary school.
but then these boys invited me to their house and we watched an nfl playoff game.
suddenly i thought, “i can learn about this! if i learn about this, i can make friends!”
and from that point on i became a fanatical oakland raiders fan, a team on the other side of the country.
no comments about any actual people in this story
afterward
many of you may have noticed that i sent this post out last night and then deleted it from substack at some point this morning.
where did this post come from? i did not write this from scratch. i dug this up from an old blog and then revised / edited the content. because this is a story i had tried to tell before, long before i was diagnosed with PTSD — and also long before i realized that severe discomfort with my assigned gender lay behind so many of my mental health issues. but once i finally identified these two building blocks of my own suicidal agony and hatred for myself, so much of my own past became so much more clear.
and that includes my understanding of my middle school days.
as i also mentioned in the afterward to my choice at 16, i have been working for a few years on a book that combines content from both this post and my choice at 16. but i kept running into a dead end. i simply did not understand something about my reality.
always i had believed what my family told me: i was a bad kid. i was a crazy, terrible, awful kid and there was literally nothing they could have done differently. and look: of course i did a lot of bad shit. of course!
but what my parents did is they defined me as bad.
and eventually i even believed i was bad, like badness was me.
when i finally got my shit together and graduated high school with admission to michigan state, i told my mom, “there was nothing you could have done: i needed to decide to take my life seriously.”
and i do think to some extent that’s true of course, i was a middle schooler. but if you read my choice at 16 you also know it’s definitely not true. as a result, there are so many details in this piece that i now understand fundamentally differently.
i will lay out just 3 key details here which illuminate my point.
the british army stuff: i hate how i wanted to be a soldier. like, i fucking hate it. i hate that i just wanted to go to war and that i oscillated between addicting nightmares about dying to the point i spent hours watching war movies imagining my own gruesome death on the one hand; and on the other hand, grandiose dreams about becoming prime minister of great britain just so i could betray my country. but now, look back on it all, i do understand why i hated my country as a proxy. it’s no different from how i hated the bible and christianity as proxies before i stopped being an atheist and finally became a witch: we hate abstract proxies to avoid looking at reality.
the disgusting hair scene: maybe this scene honestly is what made me delete this whole post. i was so disgusted by this scene, which i actually wrote years ago. when i first wrote this scene, i deliberately used my fungal infection to show that i was a disgusting kid: to show that i was a freak. i was using my writing to self-harm. but actually, all those class periods i spent picking white stuff out of my hair and gathering it on my desk, that was me saying: “this is me, a disgusting freak,” and i was addicted to sort of baring myself to the world that way, confirming that i was an ugly person so i could accept that i was ugly in my mind and then not be anxious about it.
this scene is the most significantly edited scene for a simple reason. the scene as it originally appeared in this post basically eliminated my feelings about the white stuff. the original version which some of you may have read was a leftover from how i used to tell my story: look at what a fucking disgusting freak i was.
it has taken me so long to stop believing that. i see now how it bled into my writing.
the cheez its: to this day my dad has made fun of me, in front of groups of people, for eating box after box of cheez its when i was in middle school. i would drink can after can of mountain dew too. every saturday my dad would come from costco with enormous quantities of junk food and gatorade that he let me keep underneath my bed. by the time i got to college i was diagnosed with severe acid reflux and damage to my esophagus. and i literally used to think: wow, i was a psycho! why did i drink all that!
but i wasn’t a psycho. i was a 14 year old with parents whose primary disciplinary tactics were spanking me, reminding me i could go to hell, threatening to have men come take me in the night, and keeping me pacified with massive amounts of junk food/video games. i finally understand that now.
i have added a few additional details in terms of my feelings from that time to capture all this. when i told my therapist i was nervous to write about my life because of how it might make others feel, i realized through our conversations that i would never be free of my self-hatred and other issues until i had not only embraced my own authentic gender identity but had also given voice to this younger being.
because the younger being in this story had no voice. he was told that he was bad. he believed that he was bad. he was terrified of hell. there were nights when he went to sleep wondering if men would bust the door down and take him in the night. so often he went to sleep wondering: is tonight the night that the men will come?
i’m a dad now. i have a fourteen month old baby. maybe that also encouraged me to see the younger me in a more compassionate light.
this being wasn’t a psycho. this being wasn’t a bad child. this being was in agony. this being was hurting other people as a way of hurting himself, hurting other people as a way of seeing his supposed badness reflected back at him.
this being was addicted to the thought: “this is me, i am bad, i am evil.”
this being was always out in the world constructing himself into the badness he had been told he was.
but i actually think the christianity story at the beginning shows a spark of who i was inside. yes, the things i say are absurd, the fundamentalist doctrines ridiculous: but i remember feeling so happy that this man was so happy after our conversation.
i know that deep down inside of me that radiance was always there. always.
there’s a part of me that still hates the being in this story, and i think that’s why i deleted the post too. but i know that i was not bad. i know that i was radiant. and i have to learn not only to love the present me but also the child me, the child who was constantly terrified and never able to express those feelings.
recently i was with my dad and brother-in-law. my dad looked at me and said with a laugh, “we thought about taking you to someone’s porch and leaving you there!” then my mom soon took to talking about one of their favorite topics: the boys down the street who did get taken away and turned into heroes — navy seals.
my point is that there is still so much discourse in my life defining me as a bad being.
i guess the experience of working on this taught me that i still have a whole lot more to process. i hope i can learn to love the whole of the being that is me.
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Holy shit your pastor was fucked for using such a gruesome story as a scare tactic