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gxlden-angels · 9 months

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do you have any thoughts on the story of abraham and isaac? my parents talk about it and praise abraham for being willing to kill his son which..... scares me to say the least, and i'd love to hear your perspective as someone who seems more well-adjusted

Where I am now, it disgusts me more than anything. The interpretation of "I'm willing to sacrifice your life if I was told to" feels like the step before "I put you into this world and I can take you out of it." It's entitlement to a child, who is an independent individual, just because they are dependent on you for survival. I prefer the interpretation of understanding the actions you're taking and the reasons why (like how there's multiple religions that don't eat pork because it was so unsafe to eat at the time), especially if it's at someone else's expense.

Where I was in the thick of it all, it gave me morbid comfort that scares me now. I had fantasies of being a martyr for the church and the idea of being the next Isaac was just so appealing. Being a hand-selected sacrifice chosen by the Good Lord Himself? Sign me the fuck up, babey!

I think if I admitted that to my family, they'd be horrified.

It's another one of those stories or beliefs where I think the majority of christians just regurgitate what they've heard. It's a point of pride and devotion, but there's no personal reflection or cross-cultural awareness of it. Lean not unto your own understanding and whatnot. It's the potential that scares me the most, like the Quiverfull movement with the Duggars or Turpins. I'm sure there's stories now, but I can't remember them off the top of my head

(Also I will be telling my therapist someone on Tumblr called me "more well-adjusted" thank you anon)

#My therapist has called me 'surprisingly well-adjusted' before #He has since retracted that title and given it back multiple times #I don't know if you relate more to the 'Scared of my parents for praising that' or the 'Scared that I was okay with that' part #maybe both #either way the cycle ends here with you #No more bible quips and quotes that harm you and others. You find your own understanding and eventually it feels nice #It doesn't at first I will admit that. At first it feels like you're gonna go to Hell Right Here Right Now #But eventually you learn to trust yourself. It's a slow process. I've been in therapy for a good 6-7 years now #But one day you wake up and notice life feels more authentic. You feel like your values matter (and they actually do!)#And again it's slow. It's in bits and piece and back and forth. My worst habit is switching something from religious to moral #I highly recommend this type of therapy called ACT it's a CBT subtype #I'm usually not a fan of cbt so u know it helps if I recommend a subtype of it #CBT shit is so cheap I got a workbook from the library #this isnt relevant to the post but #my cat is trying to steal my burger king rn #it gets better (I have a cat) but progress isn't linear (eating burger king)#ex christian #religious trauma #anon tag

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inkovert · 10 months

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WIP Snippet Tag Game

Rules: Post a snippet you've written that you're proud of and tag 5 people

Thank you @pluttskutt for creating this tag game and tagging me to get it started! Hope you don't mind I gave it a name, feel free to change it

Tagging: @that-chibi-writer @junypr-camus @mundanemoongirl @chauceryfairytales @author-a-holmes

I was pretty excited to do this one because I have a lot of scenes that I'm proud of that I've written lately. I was torn between two that I wanted to share but chose to go with this one. I rarely post long snippets of my writing so I was hesitant to share this one, but I just don't think singling out a piece of this scene would've done it justice so - here it is!

A snippet from My Dearest Enemy. I don't think much context is needed.

CW: active grieving, death of a parent, brief mention of self-harm (to those I tagged pls don't feel obligated to read this if it is at all triggering)

Word count: 1915

A sea of faceless onlookers. A figure in the middle, centering the piece. Something was off about her. Was she naked? No. Too literal, too obvious. Black in a sea of white? No nuance to that. But something made her different from the others. A spot of abnormal in the sea of normality.

“Would anyone be willing to read the passage on page 13 starting with ‘Clevinger arrested himself’?”

I glanced up from my sketchbook. Dead silence. Almost everyone stared down at their desks as if that would somehow make them invisible.

Mrs. Fischer stood at the front of the class, frowning. Why she insisted on getting a bunch of jaded seniors to read out loud anymore was above me.

To put everyone out of the misery of steeping in this awkwardness any longer, I closed my sketchbook and boldly raised a hand.

Mrs. Fischer’s eyes brightened behind her glasses. “Thank you, Cameron, for volunteering.”

I flipped to the page and cleared my throat before reading: “Clevinger arrested himself in mid-declamation, suspiciously. ‘Who’s Nathaniel?’ ‘Nathaniel who?’ inquired Yossarian impatiently. Clevinger skirted the trap neatly. ‘You think everybody is Jehovah. You’re no better than Raskol—” I stopped abruptly.

“Raskolnkov,” Mrs. Fischer said, under the assumption I was having trouble pronouncing the name.

An intense pressure slammed into my chest like a crushing weight.

This Raskolnkov fellow sure is a piece of work.

A tidal wave of emotions surged to the surface, crashing over me. My body grew heavy and rigid like blocks of steel, pinned beneath the weight of anguish threatening to consume me. I took quick, shallow breaths, forcing myself to stay afloat, willing the flood to recede.

“Raskol —” My voice thinned and broke with impending tears.

I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to regain control of myself. Not here. Not now. Not like this.

The rustling sound of movement. I could sense heads turning in my direction.

Faint whispers. “Is she okay?”

“Cameron? Are you alright?” Mrs. Fischer asked.

I clamped a hand over my mouth, smothering the sob expanding like a bubble caged in my throat. I bolted up from my seat and ran for the door, ignoring the confused looks and poorly concealed murmurs of concern.

You’re never going to finish that are you?

Some day, I will. A chapter a year and I’ll be finished before you know it.

I’ll practically be in college by then!

So, it’s a deal?

My heartbeat thundered in my ears. Everything around me blurred as fresh, hot tears pooled behind my eyes, racing down my face. I clenched my teeth to quiet the sobs. The world tilted as I suddenly grew unsteady on my feet, in desperate need of a place to sit down.

Coming up on the stairs to the upper floor, I ran up a few steps and took a seat at the landing. Heaving and sobbing hysterically, I shook out my wrists, willing myself to get a grip, terrified that I was rapidly losing control. Digging my phone out of my pocket, I furiously wiped away my tears so I could see the screen.

Who to text?

Mira? We hadn’t talked since I blew up at her Saturday night.

Jeremy? No, I couldn’t drag him into this.

My grip on my phone slipped and I gasped as it clattered down the steps, sliding across the floor.

“Fuck shit fuck!”

Hugging my knees and burying my head in my lap, I rocked back and forth, praying for this intense feeling of despair to subside.

The faint sound of footsteps. They abruptly stopped just below me.

“Screen’s cracked.”

My ears perked up at the familiar voice. I lifted my head. It took a second for my eyes to focus. Spencer stood at the base of the stairs holding my phone in his hand.

I scoffed, glancing away with a sniffle. “What the hell do you want?”

“Mrs. Fischer wanted someone to check on you. I told her I’d make an attempt to look for you on my way to the bathroom.”

I rolled my eyes with a bitter laugh. “How noble of you to include me in there as an afterthought. You checked. I’m fine. You can leave.”

“Very convincing performance.”

“Seriously, Spencer, go away. I’m not in the mood.” Balancing my elbows on my knees, I hung my head, digging my fingers into my scalp. In my periphery, I watched him take two steps to lean against the railing. “God, can you please just leave?” I whined in aggravation. My heart wrenched, and any other words of protests died inside me on their way to my lips.

I was too far gone to care how humiliating this was, falling apart in front of him, of all people.

It didn’t matter. I was no longer in control of my body. Grief had snuck in and hijacked my nerves, rooted itself in my bone marrow. All I could do was bend to its will, heave and sob into the sleeve of my sweater until it retracted its claws from my lungs and granted me permission to breathe again.

Slowly, gently, my sobs subsided into quiet hiccups. I folded my arms atop my knees and rested my cheek against them. “No one told me it would be like this.” I sniffled, my voice quiet and hoarse. “No one prepared me. After it happened, we just…never spoke about it. She just went on as if nothing had happened. Like if we ignored it, everything would go back to normal.” My forehead pinched in frustration, a stray tear tickling my skin as it streamed down the side of my nose before veering off course and dripping against my hand. “I guess something inside of me wanted to believe that it was possible. That we…that I could be normal again. I’d give anything for that.”

“Seems like an awful lot of effort wasted pretending to be something you’re not.”

I furrowed my brows. Lifting my head, I regarded Spencer at the base of the stairs.

He rested an elbow on the railing behind him, his thumb fiddling with the ring on his pointer finger. “If you ask me, it’s pretty overrated. Being normal. Whatever that means.”

I pursed my lips, then cleared my throat. “How do you figure that?”

“Normal people don't do extraordinary things. They don't make history. They're,” he shrugged, “forgettable.”

I perched my chin on my arms and stared down at him. “What if I don’t want to be remembered?”

He finally glanced up at me. “Sounds like a pretty sad existence.”

“Maybe. But can’t be any worse than the one I’m already living.”

He quirked a brow as if to say, Touche.

I studied him. “You know, you’re not normal either.”

“Damn, really?” he said, in the world’s most disinterested tone. “What gave it away? The fact that I piss off everyone I talk to or that I stood in the middle of a hallway and cut my hand open?”

My head tottered from side to side. “You know what? I think it’s a tie.” I pressed the knuckle of my thumb against my lips to suppress a laugh. He shook his head, turning away just as the corner of his lips sloped upward in amusement.

I pulled the sleeves of my sweater over my hands. “My dad had to read Crime and Punishment for a lit class he was forced to take in college. He never finished it. Every time he picked it up, he’d only get a few pages in and give up. Years later, after my brother and I were born, Jeremy signed up to be the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz for a school play. A few weeks into rehearsals, he started to get bored of it and wanted to quit. My dad gave him this whole speech about how if he never finished anything he started people would assume they couldn’t rely on him. My brother, cleverly, asked my dad if he’d ever started something that he never finished. And he remembered his college lit class. He couldn’t come off as a hypocrite. He had to set an example for my brother. So he made a deal that he would finish Crime and Punishment if Jeremy saw the play through.”

I chuckled. “Total idiot move. My brother only had to suffer for two more weeks in rehearsal. But my dad had to suffer through that book for years. A chapter a year. That was his goal. And he stuck to it. Every December, I’d catch him up late in the middle of the night, trying to get a few pages in so he could keep his promise. That book practically lived on our coffee table. Every year the bookmark inched closer and closer to the end. We even made a game out of it, seeing who could come up with the most absurd things that would happen before Dad ever finished that book.” My breath hitched. I swallowed as fresh tears stung the back of my eyes. “I’d almost forgotten about that. And now all I can think about is…that bookmark. Staying on that same page where he left it last December. Forever.”

My voice cracked. Sniffling, I wiped at my wet cheeks in frustration.

I blinked up at the fluorescent lights, willing the tears to stop. “It’s crazy. The different ways a person’s memory lingers. How just reading a single word in a book could make me wanna cry for days.” The ensuing silence made my skin crawl, suddenly painfully aware that maybe I had shared too much. I tugged my sleeves further over my hands. “Have you ever…lost anyone?”

His head shifted in my general direction, but he didn’t meet my eyes.

I stiffened. “I’m sorry, that’s a really deeply personal question. You don’t have to answer that.”

He tilted his head back. To my surprise, he responded, “Yeah, I have.” I stayed quiet, giving him the space to speak, or to share in the quiet with me. “My mother.”

My heart pierced. “Oh my god. I’m so —”

“Don’t.” He cut me off. “It happened when I was really young. I don’t even remember her.”

I peered at him curiously, not understanding. “Even if you didn’t really know her, that doesn’t mean you can’t still mourn what’s missing. I know I would.”

His head whipped up to me, eyes wide with the purest, unguarded wonder for the briefest moment.

The shrill ring of the bell broke the spell.

He turned away, withdrawing into himself once more.

“Crap. I practically skipped out on the whole class. This isn’t gonna go over well.”

“We should probably head back.” Head down, Spencer eased off the railing.

“You go ahead,” I said. He threw a curious look over his shoulder. “I’m not exactly keen on walking back into a room full of people who witnessed me having a mental breakdown.” He nodded in understanding. “But, thank you. For checking on me, and trying to comfort me…in your own way. You didn’t have to do all that.” Given how standoffish he’d been during our last few encounters, I began to wonder. “Why…did you?”

He stared down at his hands, idly twisting the silver ring on his forefinger. “I don't know," he said. "What’s the alternative?”

His response disarmed me as I slowly recognized my own words from our conversation at the Yard. A slow smile crept up my face.

#writeblr #writing community #writers of tumblr #tag game #wip: MDE #thank you for the tag!#happy I got to share this one #I've never lost anyone - least of all a parent - but I think about how I would cope with something so devastating all the time #I hope I was able to write it authentically

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