#my brother sank into so much financial despair

[bioethicists]

irt poverty/homelessness + alcohol use (esp with @butchfeygela‘s tags on my post)- people really underestimate the function that substance use/alcohol use can have for someone who is unhoused. being unhoused is boring, cold, painful, + lonely. substances can allow the 8 hours panhandling to get the $45 you need for a motel to fly by. alcohol reduces your perception of the cold + can knock you out whben you can’t sleep. substances can help you cope with the physical deterioration from malnutrition, constant stress, + sleeping outside. substances can provide social connection with others who you would otherwise not enjoy or help you cope with being alone.

not only that but- many unhoused people are stuck in a seemingly inescapable position. the pathway to financial stability or even housing is difficult or even impossible. in the wake of that hopelessness, the downsides of substance use start to seem insignificant. arrest? you’re getting arrested anyway for sleeping outside, peeing outside, standing in the wrong place, etc. physical danger? you’re already beat the fuck up, anyway, right? loss of relationships? you’ve lost most people already. inability to keep a job? nobody will hire you + you can’t stay employed, anyway, because you have no car + no shower.

perhaps for you or me, the cons of heroin use or binge drinking nightly greatly outweigh the pros. that isn’t the case for everyone. if we are really serious about ending overdose/addiction, we need to start looking at giving people lives worth recovering into instead of shaming them for their own hopelessness.

[jaydcstories]

Read this and previous chapters of THE RETREAT on my blog: JOHN DEE COOPER'S ALL-MALE SLAVERY STORIES

THE RETREAT by John Dee Cooper © 2019

16. Andy’s eyes were focussed on the door at the top of the staircase. It had been a quiet day with only a few guests and none of them had taken any interest in him at all.  

He’d tried calculating how much longer he’d got to stand there chained to the wall but it only made him more depressed. He may have got used to the routine but the days were still long and tedious.

It seemed an age had passed since the gruesome events in the Barn, but in fact it had only been a few days. The Bronson Brothers had gone off and left him mummified under the rubber sheet until the house slaves came next morning to let him and the other boy out. They’d managed to stagger down to the cellar were they were locked up in a cage to await inspection. The Slave Keeper concluded there was nothing the matter with Andy that couldn’t be put right with a little food and some exercise and next day he was back on display. He hardly dared think about Master Paul. It was too painful. He’d been a fool to put his trust in a Master who beat him and fucked him and then fired darts at him. Anyway he’d disappeared along with that monster, his uncle.

And so the days rolled by and nothing changed, except the deepening of his despair. He had to face up to the facts. This was where he was going to spend the rest of his life, in this cellar, ignored and forgotten, till he was no more use to anyone and they decided to get rid of him once and for all.

So when late on that final day the side door swung open and a handler strode in, checked the number tattooed on the back of his thigh and then dragged him off by the collar, he knew his time had come and it was all over.

*

The Colonel's private office was tidy and efficient. The large oak panelled desk, neatly positioned in the bay window, was devoid of clutter apart from a telephone, a virginally clean ink blotter, a couple of framed photographs and a plain brown folder. “I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting,” said the Colonel, addressing his two visitors as he quietly closed the door behind him. “I’ve sent for the boy. He’ll be here in a few moments. Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer to choose from a wider selection. It would be no trouble to set up a viewing.”

“No, no. It’s just this one boy we’re interested in,” said the Baron, glancing across at Paul who nodded in confirmation.

“Maybe I can I fetch you some refreshment while we wait?”

“No, thank you. Our business will be brief. Do you have the necessary papers?”

“Yes. It's all here.”

Seating himself at his desk, the Colonel opened the folder and perused its contents.

“Oh, dear. All these forms to fill out. Selling slaves isn't as simple as it used to be, what with these new regulations and taxation and what not.”

While the Colonel whittered on, Paul considered how much had changed since his last visit. His uncle’s wager over that ridiculous business with the crossbows had been the last straw. They’d had a terrible row and Paul had stormed out losing all hope of ever getting any support, financial or otherwise, from his uncle. It was just by chance that on his way back to his room he’d run into the Baron who, seeing how upset the young  man was, led him into the Drawing Room where for several hours Paul had poured out his sorrows over some extremely fortifying brandy.

When it was time to say goodbye, Paul was pretty sure that he’d made a drunken exhibition of himself and that the Baron would never want to see him again. But the very next day, back in London, he got a call. It seems the Baron was smitten with him. He invited him down to his country house and offered him a position as his companion and personal assistant. For a very comfortable salary Paul would be looking after the Baron's private affairs and helping to manage his famous collection of slaves.

Within a matter of days Paul’s whole world had turned around. He’d moved in with the Baron, put his London flat on the market and paid off most of his debts.

It was when his new friend and benefactor had suggested that Paul should have a slave of his own to practise on that, rather than choose a slave from the Baron’s own stables, Paul had thought of the boy he’d encountered at his Uncle’s weekend retreat. That boy had intrigued him, and he’d derived so much pleasure from using him that the prospect of owning him outright was too tempting to resist. And then there was the added advantage of getting one up on his uncle.

The Colonel had been somewhat surprised when the Baron contacted him on Paul’s behalf. He wasn’t usually in the business of selling boys to guests. But the Baron was very persuasive and had managed to negotiate a price that was comfortably within Paul’s means.

After an awkward pause during which the Colonel tried to make polite conversation with the Baron but failed, there was a knock on the door and Andy was dragged in.

They’d put heavy iron shackles on his hands and feet, so he had to hobble into the centre of the room where he remained standing, under the stern eye of the handler, naked and confused, with his eyes fixed on the floor. He wasn’t used to being in a room like this, with smart furniture and thick carpeting, and he had no idea what they were going to do to him. He’d  recognised the Colonel’s voice straightaway and could sense other men sitting around staring at him, but he was too nervous to look up. He tried to breath calmly but couldn’t stop trembling. He was still recovering from the cold shower they’d just given him and was shamefully aware that he was leaving damp patches all over the carpet.

At first Paul wondered if this could be the same boy that he’d enjoyed so much last weekend. He looked quite different, less assured, more at a loss, younger even. He was still in a good physical state though — in some ways his youthful body looked more healthy and robust than ever — but he seemed drained of energy. For a moment Paul wondered if he’d made a mistake and if it was really worth buying the boy after all. The Baron saw him hesitate and quietly reminded him that it was perfectly in order to instruct the handler to present the boy  properly for inspection.

Which is what Paul did.

Andy reacted to the sting of the handler’s whip by pulling himself up straight, clenching his buttocks, and letting out a painful sob. Now he couldn’t avoid seeing Master Paul.

His heart sank. He’d been rejected once already, or so he thought. Why was he having to go through this humiliation all over again? At least there was no sign of the Uncle and his sadistic friends. Just the young Master, the Colonel and a smartly dressed grey-haired man with an icy stare. He wasn’t sure if he’d been brought here to be punished for having failed to please them or whether he was about to be put through another programme of tortures for their amusement. It was only when Paul began his examination that the truth dawned — he was being sold.

As Paul ran his hands over the slave’s now fully alert body he felt more positive about his purchase. The skin was fresh and silky and still a little flushed from the recent cold shower. He could feel the neatly-tuned network of muscles tremble slightly as his fingers ran over them, and the boy winced a little when Paul dropped his hand down and stroked the soft cock and squeezed the loosely hanging ball sac, which he did several times before turning to the Baron and saying, “He’s not as well hung as some of the ones in your collection.”

The Baron pondered for a moment.

“There are ways of improving that,” he said. “But If you’re not satisfied...”

“No, no. I want him. But I’d like to see his cock hard, if that’s alright with you, Colonel.”

The Colonel nodded and signalled to the handler who passed the order on by releasing the shackles from Andy’s wrists and giving him a hard slap across the back of the head.

While he rubbed the soreness out of his wrists, Andy looked around the room. There were no bars on the windows, no cages and no chains — apart from the ones that held his shackles. The furniture was sparse but orderly and there was a business-like atmosphere that was every bit as forbidding to Andy as the gloom of a condemned cell. He was naked. Forsaken. Alone. Master Paul and the stranger sitting next to him were watching him intently while the Colonel hovered in the background.

He knew exactly what they wanted him to do — they were staring at him with that familiar hungry expression — and he was so eaten up with anger and frustration that there was nothing he would have loved more than to grab hold of his cock and shower them all in cum.

At one time he’d thought he’d have done anything to please Master Paul, submitted to any kind of hardship, humiliation or pain if it had given him pleasure. But there was no sense in it anymore. If Master Paul wanted him that much why didn’t he look him in the eye and whisper some words of comfort or even regret at having tortured and abandoned him?

Then, as he trailed his fingers across his chest and down his stomach in a reluctant effort to arouse himself, a dangerous thought crept into his mind. Why was this happening? After all, he wasn’t really a slave. He hadn’t been a slave when they took him off the streets of Bristol all those years ago. He was just a kid, a boy in chains, with nothing to show now but some muscles and an aching cock. He was only behaving like a slave because they said he was one.

As his fingers curled around his balls, he thought more and more about himself as a single unit. He was proud of his body, from his neck, to his stomach, to the soles of his naked feet. He didn’t need a Master to feel the rush of blood through his veins, the weight of the muscles in his arms, the powerful grip of his thighs. Those were all his to relish and enjoy. What had it to do with them? He could just turn round and walk out of the room, away from it all. He wouldn’t get very far, obviously — the handler would probably kill him on the spot. But at least he would have proved....

What? Proved what?

He lifted his hands and covered his face. Stop thinking! Stop thinking!

This didn’t go down well in the room. The handler went for his whip but Paul stopped him.

“I’ll handle this,” he said grabbing the small black bag that was hanging on the back of his chair and taking from it the familiar red leather strap his uncle had given him and which he’d used for the first time on Andy that day he’d found him down in the cellar.

He gently pulled the boy’s hands away from his face, saying nothing. This was the first rule in the Baron’s method. A slave must learn to obey without his Master having to utter a word. Andy didn’t know this. Andy didn’t even know that his training had begun.

They were standing so close together that Andy could feel the full weight of his Master’s presence enveloping his naked body. Their eyes came together for a fraction of a second till Andy snatched his away. It was too much for him. There was so much he needed to explain. So much to beg. He tried to mumble something but Paul pressed the red strap against his lips to stop him. The sharp taste of leather told Andy exactly what was going to happen next and his heart sank. Here? In the Colonel’s Office? In front of that stranger with the cold stare? No. Please. No more humiliation.

But all it took was for Paul to place his hand firmly on the back of Andy’s neck for Andy to bend forward obediently and grab his ankles. It was the instinctive action of a slave — and Andy knew it. His tears welled up as he waited.

Unlike that first awkward attempt down in the cellar, Paul wielded the strap this time with all the proficiency and precision of a practised Master. He took time over each of the twelve strokes to ensure that they landed squarely on target with the maximum effect.

Each lash scorched its way through Andy’s buttocks to the hollow of his aching guts and after only two strokes he was struggling to catch his breath. He swallowed hard to fight back the pain and gripped his ankles tighter, forcing his legs back so that his haunches were fully exposed ready to receive the next blow. Five strokes in and he was riding the shock waves so well he thought he could probably get through this without breaking down.  

But Paul was ahead of him. At the sixth stroke he shifted his aim from the fleshy roundness of the buttocks to the much more sensitive tendon at the rear of the thigh. Andy shrieked. It was like being ripped apart by a javelin.

After that Paul kept moving around so Andy never knew where the next stroke was going to land. Soon the entire surface of his buttocks and the backs of his thighs was red and burning. Even his balls got a beating. And with each shockwave Andy got dragged lower and lower into a whirlpool of shame, humiliation and despair.

Around the eighth stroke Paul took a little rest and rubbed Andy’s back giving him a chance to catch his breath. Then he launched into a final rally of thrashes that had Andy choking on his screams.

When it was all over, Andy tried to stand up straight but every joint in his body had turned to concrete and he had to use his hands to force his back into position. His face was drenched in tears and his head went on spinning with the relentless barrage of beatings echoing through his body.

And yet through all that pain and humiliation he could feel Paul’s fingers jiggling his limp cock and he knew that he still had to do what was required of him. It took some effort and a lot of concentration but eventually he managed to steer his cock into an erection and even bring himself to the edge of coming. But another small gesture from Paul was enough to tell him to stop, leaving his rock hard cock standing rigidly to attention.

Paul stroked it a few times to satisfy himself that it was to his liking, apologised to the Colonel for the few drops of pre-cum that had landed on his carpet, nodded to the Baron and indicated that he was ready to complete his purchase.

The shackles were removed from Andy’s ankles and he was fitted with a leather collar embossed with Paul’s monogram. His wrists were strapped behind his back and he was led outside to a small slave wagon, where he was locked up in a cage ready to be transported to the Baron’s mansion.

The cage was tiny and cramped. He had to kneel with his arms bound behind his back and his head bent forward almost touching the floor. It was cold and it was dark and he had no idea where they were taking him or how long the journey would be. One thing he understood though. He belonged to Master Paul now and learning to serve and obey him was going to be hard and painful. As the wagon made it’s bumpy way through the night, he cried long and hard until there were no doubts left in his head. He’d deserved that beating. He’d been unruly and undisciplined. What he had to do now was put all his trust in his new Master and all his strength into fulfilling his true purpose in life — to be the best possible slave he could be. THE END

[fromtheothersideby]

And so here I am, asking bluntly – is the closedown of the country the right answer to the coronavirus? I’ll be accused of undermining the NHS and threatening public health and all kinds of other conformist rubbish. But I ask you to join me, because if we have this wrong we have a great deal to lose. I don’t just address this plea to my readers. I think my fellow journalists should ask the same questions. I think MPs of all parties should ask them when they are urged tomorrow to pass into law a frightening series of restrictions on ancient liberties and vast increases in police and state powers. Did you know that the Government and Opposition had originally agreed that there would not even be a vote on these measures? Even Vladimir Putin might hesitate before doing anything so blatant. If there is no serious rebellion against this plan in the Commons, then I think we can commemorate tomorrow, March 23, 2020, as the day Parliament died. Yet, as far as I can see, the population cares more about running out of lavatory paper. Praise must go to David Davis and Chris Bryant, two MPs who have bravely challenged this measure. It may also be the day our economy perished. The incessant coverage of health scares and supermarket panics has obscured the dire news coming each hour from the stock markets and the money exchanges. The wealth that should pay our pensions is shrivelling as share values fade and fall. The pound sterling has lost a huge part of its value. Governments all over the world are resorting to risky, frantic measures which make Jeremy Corbyn’s magic money tree look like sober, sound finance. Much of this has been made far worse by the general shutdown of the planet on the pretext of the coronavirus scare. However bad this virus is (and I will come to that), the feverish panic on the world’s trading floors is at least as bad. And then there is the Johnson Government’s stumbling retreat from reason into fear. At first, Mr Johnson was true to himself and resisted wild demands to close down the country. But bit by bit he gave in. The schools were to stay open. Now they are shutting, with miserable consequences for this year’s A-level cohort. Cafes and pubs were to be allowed to stay open, but now that is over. On this logic, shops and supermarkets must be next, with everyone forced to rely on overstrained delivery vans. And that will presumably be followed by hairdressers, dry cleaners and shoe repairers. How long before we need passes to go out in the streets, as in any other banana republic? As for the grotesque, bullying powers to be created on Monday, I can only tell you that you will hate them like poison by the time they are imposed on you. ll the crudest weapons of despotism, the curfew, the presumption of guilt and the power of arbitrary arrest, are taking shape in the midst of what used to be a free country. And we, who like to boast of how calm we are in a crisis, seem to despise our ancient hard-bought freedom and actually want to rush into the warm, firm arms of Big Brother. Imagine, police officers forcing you to be screened for a disease, and locking you up for 48 hours if you object. Is this China or Britain? Think how this power could be used against, literally, anybody. The Bill also gives Ministers the authority to ban mass gatherings. It will enable police and public health workers to place restrictions on a person’s ‘movements and travel’, ‘activities’ and ‘contact with others’. Many court cases will now take place via video-link, and if a coroner suspects someone has died of coronavirus there will be no inquest. They say this is temporary. They always do. Well, is it justified? There is a document from a team at Imperial College in London which is being used to justify it. It warns of vast numbers of deaths if the country is not subjected to a medieval curfew. But this is all speculation. It claims, in my view quite wrongly, that the coronavirus has ‘comparable lethality’ to the Spanish flu of 1918, which killed at least 17 million people and mainly attacked the young. What can one say to this? In a pungent letter to The Times last week, a leading vet, Dick Sibley, cast doubt on the brilliance of the Imperial College scientists, saying that his heart sank when he learned they were advising the Government. Calling them a ‘team of doom-mongers’, he said their advice on the 2001 foot-and-mouth outbreak ‘led to what I believe to be the unnecessary slaughter of millions of healthy cattle and sheep’ until they were overruled by the then Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir David King. He added: ‘I hope that Boris Johnson, Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance show similar wisdom. They must ensure that measures are proportionate, balanced and practical.’ Avoidable deaths are tragic, but each year there are already many deaths, especially among the old, from complications of flu leading to pneumonia. The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) tells me that the number of flu cases and deaths due to flu-related complications in England alone averages 17,000 a year. This varies greatly each winter, ranging from 1,692 deaths last season (2018/19) to 28,330 deaths in 2014/15. The DHSC notes that many of those who die from these diseases have underlying health conditions, as do almost all the victims of coronavirus so far, here and elsewhere. As the experienced and knowledgeable doctor who writes under the pseudonym ‘MD’ in the Left-wing magazine Private Eye wrote at the start of the panic: ‘In the winter of 2017-18, more than 50,000 excess deaths occurred in England and Wales, largely unnoticed.’ Nor is it just respiratory diseases that carry people off too soon. In the Government’s table of ‘deaths considered avoidable’, it lists 31,307 deaths from cardiovascular diseases in England and Wales for 2013, the last year for which they could give me figures. This, largely the toll of unhealthy lifestyles, was out of a total of 114,740 ‘avoidable’ deaths in that year. To put all these figures in perspective, please note that every human being in the United Kingdom suffers from a fatal condition – being alive. About 1,600 people die every day in the UK for one reason or another. A similar figure applies in Italy and a much larger one in China. The coronavirus deaths, while distressing and shocking, are not so numerous as to require the civilised world to shut down transport and commerce, nor to surrender centuries-old liberties in an afternoon. We are warned of supposedly devastating death rates. But at least one expert, John Ioannidis, is not so sure. He is Professor of Medicine, of epidemiology and population health, of biomedical data science, and of statistics at Stanford University in California. He says the data are utterly unreliable because so many cases are going unrecorded. He warns: ‘This evidence fiasco creates tremendous uncertainty about the risk of dying from Covid-19. Reported case fatality rates, like the official 3.4 per cent rate from the World Health Organisation, cause horror and are meaningless.’ In only one place – aboard the cruise ship Diamond Princess – has an entire closed community been available for study. And the death rate there – just one per cent – is distorted because so many of those aboard were elderly. The real rate, adjusted for a wide age range, could be as low as 0.05 per cent and as high as one per cent. As Prof Ioannidis says: ‘That huge range markedly affects how severe the pandemic is and what should be done. A population-wide case fatality rate of 0.05 per cent is lower than seasonal influenza. If that is the true rate, locking down the world with potentially tremendous social and financial consequences may be totally irrational. It’s like an elephant being attacked by a house cat. Frustrated and trying to avoid the cat, the elephant accidentally jumps off a cliff and dies.’ Epidemic disasters have been predicted many times before and have not been anything like as bad as feared. The former editor of The Times, Sir Simon Jenkins, recently listed these unfulfilled scares: bird flu did not kill the predicted millions in 1997. In 1999 it was Mad Cow Disease and its human variant, vCJD, which was predicted to kill half a million. Fewer than 200 in fact died from it in the UK. The first Sars outbreak of 2003 was reported as having ‘a 25 per cent chance of killing tens of millions’ and being ‘worse than Aids’. In 2006, another bout of bird flu was declared ‘the first pandemic of the 21st Century’. There were similar warnings in 2009, that swine flu could kill 65,000. It did not. The Council of Europe described the hyping of the 2009 pandemic as ‘one of the great medical scandals of the century’. Well, we shall no doubt see. But while I see very little evidence of a pandemic, and much more of a PanicDemic, I can witness on my daily round the slow strangulation of dozens of small businesses near where I live and work, and the catastrophic collapse of a flourishing society, all these things brought on by a Government policy made out of fear and speculation rather than thought. Much that is closing may never open again. The time lost to schoolchildren and university students – in debt for courses which have simply ceased to be taught – is irrecoverable, just as the jobs which are being wiped out will not reappear when the panic at last subsides. We are told that we must emulate Italy or China, but there is no evidence that the flailing, despotic measures taken in these countries reduced the incidence of coronavirus. The most basic error in science is to assume that because B happens after A, that B was caused by A. There may, just, be time to reconsider. I know that many of you long for some sort of coherent opposition to be voiced. The people who are paid to be the Opposition do not seem to wish to earn their rations, so it is up to the rest of us. I despair that so many in the commentariat and politics obediently accept what they are being told. I have lived long enough, and travelled far enough, to know that authority is often wrong and cannot always be trusted. I also know that dissent at this time will bring me abuse and perhaps worse. But I am not saying this for fun, or to be ‘contrarian’ –that stupid word which suggests that you are picking an argument for fun. This is not fun. This is our future, and if I did not lift my voice to speak up for it now, even if I do it quite alone, I should consider that I was not worthy to call myself English or British, or a journalist, and that my parents’ generation had wasted their time saving the freedom and prosperity which they handed on to me after a long and cruel struggle whose privations and griefs we can barely imagine. - Peter Hitchens https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8138675/PETER-HITCHENS-shutting-Britain-REALLY-right-answer.html 

#resistthelockdown #whatsreallygoingon

[apostateangela]

Neurotheology Part 1

I have been tasked to write this post.

I’m not sure if I can do it, let alone do it well.

But I am willing to fight long and hard to understand the truth of what has happened to me.

This blog is a tool that helps me do that

while also sharing that truth with others- in case that can be of help.

So I will try.

The revelation that has come to the forefront the days immediately surrounding when I started this post and for months afterward,

because of my own life and thoughts and an intense therapy session,

has shaken me deeply.

I don’t know how to reconcile it

other than with sorrow and even shameful despair.

I’ll weed through that part somehow.

I wish I knew how to isolate the phenomenon connected to said revelation, but I really don’t.

It will help if I explain the thought processes leading up to the revelation.

After the tithing post I had a conversation with my mother. I have explained before that my mother and I have a somewhat strained relationship. She is more programmed than I was/am. Because of this fact, she often doesn’t have the vocabulary to talk with me outside of the paradigms created by the Mormon church.

She is trying, because of her love for me.

That is quite remarkable and should give hope to those of you out there who find themselves estranged from overly judgemental parents and family.

It is possible for them to put aside that judgement

and try to understand because of their love for you.

My mother is trying, and it is as beautiful as it is frustrating.

Anyway, during this conversation she made the prescriptive comment that maybe if my daughter (her granddaughter) would pay her tithing and live more righteously then God would improve her financial situation and also soften the heart of her boyfriend who is somewhat of a deadbeat.

This is both horrible and laughable.

One of the things I didn’t really go into in the last post was how not paying your tithing is used by others in a more personal way to make you feel guilty and irresponsible because of your sin--that of robbing God or not paying your tithes.

The attitude is that this sin deprives you of blessings that would otherwise be yours (even outside of the blessings received from participating in the ordinances).

Which explains my mother’s approach here; God given blessings she describes as more financial security and the change of personality traits in my daughter’s boyfriend.

Here is where the revelation begins.

My comment to my mother was this:

“I think that instead of (granddaughter) relying on God to fix her situation she should take responsibility for herself and get a better job and dump (boyfriend) or at the very least stop relying on him for any kind of support, financial or otherwise.

It’s HER job, not God’s, to make these decisions for herself.

Tithing is pretty irrelevant in this case.”

As an interesting side note my mother eventually agreed.

Here’s where the epiphany kicks in; as I thought about my daughter’s situation, it brought me back to my own.

Ultimately, iit was MY choice to marry and stay married to an asshole.

Quarter of a century of abuse aside, I chose it.

I am responsible for that choice, right?

I have to own something here.

Just like my daughter has to own choosing to be with a dishonest, unreliable man who can’t commit or follow through with anything.

The question really isn’t whether I am responsible but rather WHY I did something so very stupid?

A cliche and easy answer is that I thought I was in love, or I WAS in love and people do stupid things for love.

But that is not really true.

I married him because God told me to.

At least that is what I have believed up until a few days ago.

Okay, I’m going to digress here. Because there are forks and backtracks and lots of twists on this particular path.

I am having an ongoing problem where I hate myself.

Yeah, I know, that is nothing new.

But this is a bit different.

As I spend more and more time inside my new self, my recently discovered self, and in the newborn paradigms I have fought for the last 3 years to establish, I find that I travel further and further away from who I was--the weak, pathetic Mormon woman who did as she was told and pushed down anything interesting in her personality because it was considered wrong.

I feel like I’m living in a parallel dimension. In fact, thanks to the new popularity of Quantum theory and the imagination of the MCU, I buy into this idea personally and metaphorically at the very least.

And the woman in that other dimension, I HATE HER!

I believe she is weak and stupid and easily manipulated and that is everything I do not want to ever be again.

I talk about her in third person. I have even said that I want to KILL her.

On some level I know this is problematic.

So of course, I brought it up to my therapist the other day along with the phone call I had with my mother about tithing and my subsequent epiphany that somewhere in my past there must have been an initial choice to be with my ex which I had to own.

And so my therapist had me dig into the moment I made the choice to marry him. He believed it was important to explore the events and understand how and why I made the choice.

One August day when I was nineteen years old, I was sitting at the family piano in my childhood home. I was in quite a bit of agony, in every way. I was physically ill (I had mono, but I didn’t know it yet). I was emotionally and mentally in distress (spiritually too if that is a thing, I thought it was then). I had recently returned from a summer job at a mountain camp where I had explored some “sin”. (drinking, sexual exploration/but not intercourse) I had been to speak with my Bishop and had confessed my “sins”. He had been very critical and condescending and I left his office feeling like I had committed the worst of deplorable and depraved acts. His comments and my upbringing had me believing no one would ever want me as I was soiled and ruined. And beyond that, my father had been yelling at me for several days to get out of bed, stop being lazy, and do something with my life because he wasn’t going to support me anymore.

I was sick, bereft, alone, afraid, and ashamed.

To help you understand, even though I have written about this shame before, I draw your attention to this image I very recently came across that brought back the amplitude of my constructed shame. I remember the exact day President Romney (apostle and second counselor in the First Presidency of the LDS church in the 80s). I was eleven; watching General Conference with my parents and brothers on the television. For context, the statement is something Romney’s father told him once and that he directed then to us. He ended his instruction with this statement, “You young people—May I directly entreat you to be chaste. Please believe me when I say that chastity is worth more than life itself. This is the doctrine my parents taught me; it is truth. Better die chaste than live unchaste. The salvation of your very souls is concerned in this.” Afterwards, my mother had a long talk with me about the topic in which she agreed with Romney and used the talk as a way to bring my attention to my impending entry into womanhood as a 12 year old girl, the age you graduated from the Primary children’s church program and into the youth, Young Women’s program.

Did I want to die because of my unchaste actions in New Mexico? Sure. I’d wanted to die for quite some time at this point in my teenage years. Had come close to attempting it even at 17. The feelings connected with this were because I was never good enough, ever. I tried so hard to please everyone and be perfect, but always failed. The church and my parents and my culture dictated these parameters that became the perfect atmosphere for suicidal thoughts. When you feel like you are bad, never good enough, always letting others down--including God, it was hard to want to be alive. Repentance existed, but it was always preceded by crushing shame. That was the intent, to tear you down with shame, almost to death, so that your only option was to turn to God for reprieve.

That day, I was perfectly primed.

Wanting these horrible feelings, any of that pain to go away I did what I was taught to do.

I sank from the piano bench onto my knees and prayed. I poured my sorrow out to God and begged Him for forgiveness, love, and to take my pain away. Alone in my house, I sobbed and prayed out loud, nearly wailing. After a period of emptying and the hollow, spent calm that followed, I asked God a desperate question: “What do I do now?” thinking that if no one would want me, even if God forgave me, what was I to do?

It is important to note that two days before I had received a strange phone call. A woman had called me from Iowa. She introduced herself as a Sister------,a ward missionary. She asked me a question, “I want to know how you feel about Elder ----- (The man that was to be my husband, let’s call him John)?”

I was taken aback.

I’d met John at work, six weeks before his mission, nearly two years previously--when I was still in high school. We’d had a quick, G rated, whirlwind chivalric romance before he left. I’d written him some letters, but not many.

I’d been busy sticking my toes in the waters of sin.

I didn’t want to tell this stranger on the phone how I felt about John when I didn’t really know how I felt about him myself.

The woman was kind and persuasive.

She told me that he’d been at her home that very day, in tears, wondering if I still loved him.

He was sad and desperate and had confided in her how much he loved me.

It was a beautiful tragic scene. One any girl waiting for her Prince Charming would find extremely flattering--a silly, young idealistic girl like me.

My heart burned and tears of love sprang to my eyes. I told that stranger to go ahead and tell John that I still loved him and if he wanted me to come to the airport in five days when he came home to meet him, I would.

Cut back to me, on my knees praying in desperation.

I felt a burning inside my chest, I felt a voice inside my mind. And the answer was that I was to marry John, and as soon as possible. It felt as if a bolt of energy had entered me at the top of my head and filled me. I began to cry again and wander my house shooting questions at the ceiling: “What about my education? What about my family? What about money to support ourselves? What about the fact that we really didn’t know each other? Where would we go? Where would we live? … and on and on. The strange thing is that with every question the answer was simple, “It will all work out. Have faith, I will provide.” And I felt the answers inside my mind and heart. And so, I married him.

Let’s get back to my therapy session.

After I related the story and answered some questions about logistics, my therapist asked me a question, “Given your new perspectives about religion and God what do you think happened that day? Do you still believe God told you to marry John?”

I shook my head. I didn’t believe that anymore, but I had no explanation. So I asked my therapist this question, “Do you think your brain can be conditioned to create a specific physical response to mental and external stimuli?”

“I know it can.”

With his answer I felt something break inside me, “So it’s possible that my brain could have created the burning in my heart, the electric overwhelming emotion, and this physical belief that God had told me to marry John?”

He again confirmed the possibility. We talked about the conditioning I had received throughout my life. I had been taught what the “Holy Ghost” was supposed to feel like since I was three years old. I was told hundreds of times by everyone in my life what the answers to prayers “felt” like.

And, he gave his professional opinion on the potential truth. His opinion: I wanted rescuing--an out to get me away from my angry father and my shame.

I asked him, supremely disgusted with my past self, if what he was saying was that I created a God generated answer to a problem I was having because I couldn’t face the pedestrian truth?

He didn’t think so, but rather that I did what I had been trained to do, solve problems with prayer and faith and God. And that those things were deeply tied to the cultural way I had been taught to solve all my problems.

Sadly, his words didn’t make me feel better. In fact, they made me feel incredibly worse.

I felt tricked, betrayed by both the church and NOW my OWN brain.