#purity culture trauma

[atsadi-shenanigans]

Feeding Alligators 43 - The Proposition

Astarion makes a proposition.

Warning: that shitty feeling when you're demisexual (with purity culture trauma) and someone you thought of as a friend propositions you with sex and you realize, in a survival situation, your choices are sex, or losing this friend and possible support. There's a happy ending eventually, but both of these people have serious issues.

On AO3.

“That went well,” Astarion says. He sits nearby on the unshattered stairs leading to the front door, hair dripping from the quick wash he’d given himself.

The air stinks of smoke and char and some nauseating, roast meat reek you refuse to think about. Everybody calmed down (Karlach) and most got their wounds treated. Shadowheart had conjured up a rain to put out a fire (with a fucking arrow in her hand), leaving the tollhouse a fire-gutted wreck. Fucker ain’t structurally sound in the slightest; you’ll ask Gale to thunderwave it before y’all leave to make sure no unsuspecting travelers try to take shelter and get crushed when the roof finally caves in.

Literally everybody got hurt except you. Lae’zel tore ligaments in her knee. Gale’s hands and half his face are mildly burned. Shadowheart actually got hit in the face with shrapnel in addition to the aforementioned arrow-through-the-hand. And Wyll is gashed down his side to his ribs.

Karlach is still burning too hot to be near anybody—she sits over in the road with her teddy bear.

And Astarion, who doesn’t need to breathe, inhaled smoke right after Harvey Dent gashed his head. You gave him a healing potion to help his lungs—he don’t need air to live, but he does need it to talk—because Shadowheart is triaging the magic she got left.

“They’re dead and we’re not, darling, and that is what matters,” Astarion says. He wipes his blades down again, having already inspected his bow (and found no damage).

He’s right. Y’all did what y’all had to. Karlach don’t got hunters on her tail no more, and none of the injuries are more than y’all’s resources can handle.

Except you are completely fine and none of the others are.

Astarion finishes up and slips his daggers back into the sheathes on his belt.

“We’re probably staying here for the night, huh?” you say.

“I can’t imagine the others will want to go far.” He looks to the rotting carcasses. “But I also don’t anticipate anyone, even the gith, wanting to linger amongst all this.”

You nod. You can help set up camp. That can be your contribution; you should really ask Gale for cooking lessons. Nobody fucks with the camp cook.

“Well, my dear,” Astarion says. “Shall we see what items might be left in that ruin? I’m rather sure I saw a basement.”

Bringing back presents also boosts morale.

“We probably shouldn’t go alone,” you say, and completely miss his smile turn sour. “Hey Karlach! You wanna see if they got shit in the basement?”

In the road, Karlach perks up. Woman has such golden retriever vibes.

***

Karlach ends up taking an ax to the charred hatch cover that does, indeed, lead to a basement. And then to the big doors Astarion can’t jimmy open—you let him search the ripe body y’all find down there. Must’ve been the toll collector. You got a sneaking feeling it wasn’t them dead gnolls outside that got him. Might be the way his gut is cleaved damn near in two, like some Harvey Dent motherfucker and his overcompensation sword nailed the guy.

Most of the boxes in that first room are empty, save some salvageable rags, which you stuff into your bag like there’s gonna be a shortage (you got maybe six or seven days until shark week, you suspect). Find a couple of broken weapons, a pair of frayed sandals, and not much else. But as you start into the second room, stepping over splintered wood, Astarion grabs your elbow.

“Careful darling,” he says. “There are traps about. Stay next to me, hmm?”

Circular grates dot the floor. A lot of them.

“Can you disarm these?” you say.

“Oh, I got it,” Karlach says, flexing her biceps unnecessarily (but not unappreciated). She skirts the first one, hefts up a heavy looking jar that comes up to your ribcage, and sets it over the grate. “There. Fucker can’t spew if it’s blocked, yeah?”

“Indeed,” Astarion says. “Why don’t you be a dear and go handle the others?”

“Aww, what’s a matter, Fangs?” she says, and if he were a cat, his ears would be plastered to his skull. “Can’t do a bit of heavy lifting?”

“I’d rather not dirty my hands, if it’s all the same to you,” he says, despite the fact that 1. he's wearing gloves and 2. he's still got dried blood crusted in the creases down the front of his armor.

Karlach looks at him for a second, and the both of them make weird facial expressions. Then she grins. And there’s something odd in that grin. And in the way she glances over to you.

“Gotcha,” she says. And saunters off to find more huge-ass pottery.

You start rummaging through the first box you see. Old clothes. Not moldy or covered in mildew or crusted bodily fluids, so into the pack they go. Move on to the next.

It’s quiet as you work. Karlach shuffles over to the corner, secures that vent, and starts rummaging herself.

Two boxes later and Astarion sighs. You look up, find him about where you left him, but leaning on a shelf with an arched brow.

He…hasn’t been looting?

“You alright?” you say. He don’t look injured. His arms are folded and you catch the barest flicker as he apparently resists the urge to roll his eyes.

Then he pastes on the smarm again. “I just wanted to take a moment to congratulate you. That was quite the plan, back there. Very effective.”

“Uh huh.”

He’s angling for something. And he seems to know that you know, and he leans into it. “Are all your plans going to be so vicious?”

“I’m not…it’s not on purpose. I’m not trying to cause…mayhem.”

“And yet you’re rather good at it.”

It’s still not a comfortable thought, that part of you. It’s keeping your ass alive, but if (when) you get home, you ain’t sure you’ll be able to cram it back into the box you took it out of.

“I don’t know how to fight and I can’t use magic,” you say. “If you don’t hit hard and hit first, you give them a chance to hit back and you get your ass handed to you. We cannot afford that.”

But no disgust wrinkles his face. No frown draws his brows together the way most people in this situation would.

“You know, my dear, some people might call that cowardice,” he says.

This time you get to roll your eyes. “Bet you those people die young.”

He barks out a laugh. Doesn’t seem to mean to, but his eyes are wide and sparkling in the dim torchlight. Karlach pauses her rummaging, and then begins again in earnest.

“I like you,” Astarion says. “It’s refreshing to talk to someone with a modicum of sense, for a change.”

Insulting the entire rest of the group. There’s a tactic that should work to do��whatever he’s trying to do here.

“Neat,” you drawl, using that extra second to try to get a fucking read on him.

“Honestly,” he says, and his voice drops. “I’m beginning to like the whole package. And you clearly like me, too, so…?”

You stare. After a moment, you realize he’s waiting for a response and you’re just standing there. You should probably put on a facial expression. You’re doing the blank face thing again and that tends to piss people off (you look like an idiot, you stupid girl, ohh I’m a stoic Indian hey-ya-huh-huh). You should really stop. You should stop right now.

You can’t stop.

“…so?” you finally manage.

“Come now,” Astarion says, expression dripping smarm. “Don’t be coy. Your body’s already given you away.”

What in the fuck is he talking about? What is this? The man flirts literally more than he breathes. He’s fucking with you, somehow, trying to get a reaction. You’re just not sure which one.

But his eyes widen in what really looks like a genuine smile. No malicious smirk, no smug, just…a man smiling at you.

“I could feel it, you know. As I was getting…” He steps towards you and you ain’t sure when he got that close. His gloved fingertips brush down your neck where he bit you, so featherlight, you ain’t even sure he actually touches you. “Getting lost in your neck. Your little shakes of excitement. You enjoyed it, didn’t you?”

He is entirely too close. You can smell iron on his breath. That strange, almost electric charge that hugs his skin crackles against yours.

“Um,” you say.

He was this close when he bit you. His soft lips on your neck. His fucking tongue. And the noises he made slurping on your wrist. You ain’t never heard those kinds of noises outta someone before.

It’s his spit. It’s that memory effected by his goddamn vampire spit. Of course you had a physical reaction. That was normal.

But you barely know the man and having a chemically induced reaction like that don’t mean you want what you think he’s alluding to.

“I…I was trying to help, is all,” you say.

Thank fuck he steps back. Only to throw out his arms to show himself off. “And look how well it’s worked. I’ve never felt better, all thanks to you. So let me repay you for your noble sacrifice.”

Is it just you, or does his voice take on Wyll’s cadence over that last bit? (Yes, much better. Analyze that and not the situation unfolding here. So much better.)

But then he leans in again, lids all heavy.

“We could take an evening to ourselves,” he says, voice low and…and melty. “Get away from camp—get some privacy. I know somewhere quiet. Somewhere…intimate. Somewhere we can indulge in each other.”

He waits. You stare. Cause it sounds like he’s suggesting…?

He sighs. “And I do mean sex, to be clear.”

…no. No. He’s not. He can’t be. It ain’t the first time somebody joked like that with you (against you, using you as a prop to make their buddies laugh). But he don’t got no audience to play to. And he ain’t never took the joking this far. The others wouldn’t find that funny, would they? You want to look over to Karlach—suspiciously loud in her searching—but don’t think you can break his eye contact.

“You really don’t owe me for that,” you say. “I’d do it for anybody.”

He lets out that soft, high giggle. “But you didn’t do it for just anyone, darling. You did it for me. And that’s hardly the only reason. It’s more of an excuse, if anything. Assuming…you want that too, of course?”

Your chance to get the fuck out of this. But then he tilts his head down and what you suspect might be actual lust (might have been this whole time, oh god, you didn’t see, you never see until it’s too late, until it’s printed on a big, plastic sign some high school kid twirls over his head outside a roadside sandwich shop).

“But we both know you do,” he purrs.

Oh god. Oh sweet jesus.

You been friendly. You shoulda known better. People—men especially—always take it wrong. Why do they always take it wrong. Why is he targeting you for—

Oh.

Yes. That makes sense, don’t it.

A pile of lovers. That’s what he’d told Shadowheart he had. Man likes sex. Nothing wrong with that, but now he’s stuck out here with all y’all and who is the easiest target? Who has no backup? It’s the same reason he picked you to bite in the first place. You look as you do, so he probably pegged you from day one as the most desperate. The easiest prey. He wants a quick, no-strings lay, and who better than the fat girl with no connections to anybody?

You can say no. Logically, you know this. You don’t think he’s the type to hurt you for refusing (none of them ever seem like they would in all those crime stories, do they?). And Karlach stands right there. You’ve refused people before (it’s all you ever done).

But that was back home. You had a stable job and a couple of hundred bucks in a savings account and your own, one-bedroom apartment. You could stand on your own, two feet back then. Back there. If anybody tried to give you shit, you could call dad’s side or Sasha (who carried a baseball bat in the trunk of her car).

Here?

You’ll die without Gale’s blood potion—and it needs all of them to make. You can’t even ask for help without the dirt potion. You got a brainworm, and your best chance of not turning into a space monster is a band of people you keep leading into danger while you sit your fat ass in the background and take not a single fucking scratch.

What happens when you make a bad call? What happens when they get sick of covering for you? Coddling you? You are wholly dependent on their good will for food and a…and a fucking allowance.

You been trying not to think of that for a week. Of just how defenseless you are. How you worked so hard, and yet you are right back where you started, poor and helpless and vulnerable and staring down the barrel of fucking someone you don’t know.

Except you ain’t some twenty-year-old kid this time. Now you know what’s happening to you. Your body is on the market, and there’s no Sasha to swoop in with her pickup truck and whisk you away into the night.

“You’re…you’re not joking?” you rasp, throat drier than a salt flat.

Astarion blinks. “Darling, I would never about this.”

He wants to fuck you. Whatever reasoning (easiest prey, the lamed deer) he actually wants to fuck you.

You can’t feel your hands.

You’re not…possessive of your “virginity.” It ain’t some commodity (Mother). You know, intellectually, it’s an activity just like any other: riding in a hot air balloon, scuba diving, eating one of them lollipops with a bug inside (crickets actually don’t taste too bad, once you get over the leg barbs dragging on your tongue). You ain’t opposed to trying sex sometime.

It’s just…you barely know this man. You barely know any of them.

God, you’re being fucking precious. It’s just sex. People have sex all the time. They been having sex they weren’t enthusiastic about for thousands and thousands of years and they all survived just fine. This ain’t no different. And you can use this, right? Forge a…a…

(Relationship, and your stomach clenches.)

An alliance with him. That’s just good interpersonal insurance, right? He’s damn good with those knives. He’s even pretty—not that that part really matters to you; it’s the same category as “his shirt is white” and “his hair is white” and “his face is symmetrical and he’s got fangs.” Just an observation.

He watches you. Waiting. He expects an answer. He expects a yes. Possibly a gushing “oh me oh my, lowering yourself to offer me??”

It probably won’t be bad? Somebody with a pile of lovers in the city has to know what he’s doing? Orgasms feel great and other people really like sex. It’s just an activity. You were probably gonna do it at some point, anyway. This is just sooner than you anticipated. It probably won’t even last all that long, right?

It’s the smart move.

“I, um, yeah,” you say and now you can’t feel your face.

“Wonderful,” Astarion says, lighting up. “Once we have a chance, I promise you a night of passion you’ll never forget.”

You certainly won’t be forgetting your first time, you’re sure.

You can’t throw up on then man’s shoes. That would be the height of rudeness. God, you’re such a mess. Your body is wigging out for no reason. It’s not that big of a deal; there’s no reason you should be this light-headed.

“Oi! You two!” Karlach pops her head out of an aisle. “Think I found a secret door!”

Oh thank fuck. You want to hug Karlach. Swoon into her arms. Except she’s still on fire and you just told Astarion you’d have sex with him.

Astarion lifts his eyebrows and makes an intrigued noise. He starts past you, but pauses and leans in to whisper, “See you later, lover.”

Your heart lurches. It’s not a good feeling. The pit in your stomach only grows when Karlach—behind Astarion’s back—catches your eye and gives you a grin and two thumbs up.

She knows. Oh sweet christ.

You smile back and hope it doesn’t look as weak as it feels.

Previous - Index - Next Chapter

[heyftinally]

I had such a weird experience this past weekend while celebrating my friend's birthday, and I kinda want to ramble about it because I think asexuals of tumblr will get it, and my friends don't have the same experience(s) to get it.

So our characters in this story are K, H, A, and myself. K and A are bi, H is straight, and I'm pan/ace.

So it's, like, 11pm and we're playing drinking games (namely kings cup). And the people around me are VERY comfortable in their respective sexualities, which I'm fine with and glad for. They were all respectful of the fact that I haven't had nearly the same experiences they have, nor was I comfortable with the same things they were (at one point they were sharing a picture around and told me "you can see it if you want, but I don't think you want to", which was true).

But it struck me about halfway through the game truly just how weird my situation is.

I'm a sex favorable asexual with purity culture trauma, which is basically a fancy way to say I'm a hot fucking mess (/lighthearted).

I have no interest in one night stands/hook ups/friends with benefits/etc. I'm very much a "long term monogamous committed relationship" kind of girl. I'm closer to the the demi/grey/fluid side of asexuality (I actually recently found the term acesymmetrical, which perfectly describes me). But when I *do* get to that point in a relationship, I have a VERY hard time talking about it even with my partner because I have so much shame left over from christian purity culture. Even now, what I'm talking about is 100x easier to say from behind a screen with a level of anonymity.

So sitting around while everyone talks about their kinks and one night stands, I'm in this painfully awkward situation where I know a lot of the things they're talking about in theory only, and even admitting that much feels incredibly shameful, even though logically I know it's not, and I have no judgement towards my friends who are more promiscuous than me. Hell, I'm all for hookups if that's your thing. Be safe, don't get a baby, a disease, or murdered, and have fun. But I can't extend the same thing to myself.

And it's just such a profoundly weird position to be in. I'm not allo enough to participate in the the conversation, but I'm not ace enough to be completely removed from it, and I'm too ashamed of my own feelings to participate even if I want to. I can talk about my asexuality no problem, but ask me to talk about my *sex*uality and I would rather give a TEDtalk that I only had three days to prep for.

So yeah, that was my weekend. I had a fantastic time, but being made so starkly aware of my unique experience like that was...not really the way I'd hoped things would go. I don't like that I'm so complicated, and I don't like that I feel like I can't participate in completely normal conversations without feeling like my face is on fire. I'm proud of my sexuality, but it would be nice if my trauma could get fucked and stop making everything 1000x harder.

[dukeofankh]

I cannot express how jarring it was after being raised by a "Porn Addiction Coach" to get into a relationship with a woman and come face to face with the fact that she did actually want me to sexually desire her.

Like, in Evangelical Purity Culture, male desire was basically poison. It was a threat. It was this constant temptation that would destroy everything. And even after leaving, in the sort of queer, feminist spaces i spend most of my time in that wasn't something that pretty much anyone was spending time actively dissuading me from feeling.

But my desire is good. It's not something that I'm being accepted in spite of. It's a positive thing. It's a bonus. Not even just vanilla stuff, all the stuff I'd convinced myself were these weird terrible desires that were shameful to have.

It honestly took me over a decade to fully accept that. To stop dissociating during sex and confront that I was, in fact, being a massive perv and that was fantastic and preferable and that I could accept that into my self-image without shame or self hatred.

But it's important to do. It's important to leave relationships that don't welcome that part of you. To know that your sexuality is valuable and valid and worth owning and celebrating. Because the alternative is just...not being. Either existing as yourself and repressing the part of your identity that is sexual or allowing that sexuality to exist but turning off your self while it does.

[sweaterkittensahoy]

Stop misappropriating the abuse and trauma cults use through purity culture for your stupid fucking shipping discourse? Holy fuck no wonder everyone hates this whole discourse.

Since when is "priests getting shuffled around after raping kids and kids being told they're sinful because they had bodily reactions to being SAd" comparable to "Bobo the clown said my ship was cringe"

I'm not gonna answer this with The Aristocrats, as a I threatened, because I want to make a very serious point to this anon:

Purity culture isn't just religious abuse. It is most widely connected to religious abuse. Including actions in the Catholic Church and all fundamentalist Christianity. It's entire existence is about terrifying and indoctrinating people into being fearful of their own actions and bodies so that they feel certain that moving out from the "umbrella of safety" (to use a fundamentalist term) will result in them being harmed in ways they can't imagine. This is generally happening at the same time as they are being harmed by those who are supposed to be keeping them safe from all those terrible, worldly evils. Like speaking up when you're being abused. Believing you are not responsible for the actions of a rapist, and many, many other things that any person with an ounce of self-worth and good sense (two things not allowed in fundamentalist circles) knows are true in abuse situations.

But the point of the purity culture as identity in the above-mentioned circles is to teach people from birth that they aren't to have their own feelings, ideas, or instincts. They are only to follow the feelings, ideas, and instincts on the approved list in order to stay within the structures they know and feel safe in even as they feel very unsafe.

That being said:

Purity culture can also exist WITHOUT a religious structure while still being about controlling the thoughts, feelings, and actions of everyone within it. In terms of fandom, purity culture is groups of people stating that if you write something uncomfortable or gross or immoral, then YOU must be uncomfortable or gross or immoral and therefore, not worthy of the safety and moral superiority of the group.

Purity culture without religion teaches black and white thinking, encourages thought policing, and shames anyone who steps outside of a very narrow definition of good and bad by turning an entire group of people against them for being "bad".

Just like in religious circles.

Just like in the cult of fundamentalism.

Purity culture is a term taken by fundamentalists and turned into a whole way of life because the goal of fundamentalism is to make people too scared to leave. Purity culture in fandom does the same thing. It uses fear and threats of abandonment/harassment to control the way people act because a group of people decided they didn't like something, so they must try and wipe it out rather than simply ignore it.

I am not mis-using the term because "Bobo the clown said my ship was cringe." My use of the term is intentional and precise because what is happening in fandom spaces now is non-religious purity culture cult thinking. My use of the term does not invalidate or water down the use of it in conversations about religious abuse and trauma. With or without religion, purity culture is a dangerous cult of "us vs them" that is built to demoralize and eradicate those deemed unworthy.

[wildfeather5002]

I hate it when xtians reduce my religious trauma to "a religious person said something mean to you once so now you're mad at religion".

Like, shut the fuck up. My trauma isn't just someone being a little rude to me once, it was systematic, deliberate manipulation with the threat of possible eternity of suffering in Hell if I didn't obey religious rules and "keep Christ in my heart". It was "Nonbelievers burn in a lake of eternal fire. Tell your friends to convert to our faith or they'll be damned for eternity".

I have suffered from anxiety, ocd and other mental health issues for several fucking years because of this shit. I've suppressed my sexuality and felt terrible guilt just for the 'sin' of having sexual thoughts. I've feared for my loved one's souls, genuinely believing they would go to Hell for simply not being xtians and that I'd never see them again in the afterlife.

These beliefs are sick and twisted. What I went through was sick and twisted.

I seriously don't know what to say to you if you still think telling anyone, let alone a child, that they're going to be damned for eternity if they disobey 'God's word' is totally fine and not abusive.

Know your fucking place and stop speaking over trauma survivors who have been hurt by your shitty religion.

[lostmf]

By @desnos

[sadieshavingsex]

I’m tired of healing I’m tired of waiting to heal I’m tired of researching what’s wrong with me I’m tired of feeling pathologized im tired of pathologizing myself im tired of not feeling safe im tired of overanalyzing everything im tired of not being able to make a decision im

[thepeacefulgarden]

[atsadi-shenanigans]

Feeding Alligators 50 - The Smallest Ember

TW: abuse, reference child abuse, potential eating disorders, referenced corporal punishment, suicidal ideation, and threats of sexual assault

You return to the farmstead.

It’s…the chapel. You wouldn’t know until much later that chapels outside the farmstead have benches. That their congregations sit for their sermons.

The Pastor of the farmstead, however, says laziness comes from the devil. Your congregation stands. All the better to witness confessions.

The floor is bare concrete. The walls are timber boards. The roof arches up, overhead. The whole space is open and clear in the back, where y’all stood, with a raised dais at the front. Upon that dais sits two chairs.

One is a massive throne, painted gold with red, velvet cushions. Only the lord in heaven can sit in it—it’s big enough to hold two people with their feet dangling. Beside it sits a smaller, slightly less opulent chair. And everyone was very specific to call it a chair and not a throne, because The Pastor was not some delusional man with dreams of grandeur, but the voice and the right hand of the heavenly father. His chair just happened to be decorated like a throne, because he was still important to the lord.

Both were illuminated in a single, golden band of sunlight streaming in from a strategically-placed skylight. The pastor would seat himself in his “humble” chair to deliver his latest sermons, Mother and his eldest son standing to his right.

He took confessions from that chair.

You walk towards it. The space is smaller than you remember. Old. Sort of musty. The boards don’t fit together very well, and sunlight leaks through the cracks. It got terrible cold in the winter. The chair is smaller than you remember, too. And the paint don’t glimmer. It’s faded in places. Cracked and chipped. It looks…cheap.

When you turn, Sarah stands in the confession circle. Your knees hurt just looking at that part of the floor. There’s nothing to mark it. Seems it should be stained. Greasy brown from sweat, crusted white with salt. Worn dents from all the knees and foreheads pressed into it.

But it’s just a plain patch of concrete, same as the rest.

You spent hours on that spot. Knees aching from the cold. Face pressed down, voice shaking and cracking as you said whatever they wanted. Whatever an Aunt hissed at you. Pride and stupidity, insolence, laziness. Lust. Always lust. They saw it every time you looked at someone, every time your lips moved, your fingers twitched, every time you breathed. Never mind you’d never so much as kissed anybody, that you don’t understand when the others saw in Caleb Jennings (he was tall? And skinny).

You are a lust-filled harlot. They can tell just by looking at you (and later, much later, you would read about “savages” and the “loose morals” of the native women, and some of that would shed light on what exactly all them people was seeing in your tanned face and dark hair).

So that’s what you said. Over and over, day after day crouched on that floor, crunching the inside of your cheeks in a desperate attempt to keep in your tears. Groveling for forgiveness for your whoreish thoughts, the way you lusted over this or that boy (but never the girls). How craven you were, the filthy things you (never actually) imagined. Lies and stories spilled from your lips, crouched right there on the floor, at the feet of The Pastor and Mother while they watched on in judgment.

Until you believed it. Because there had to be something wrong with you. There had to be a reason for this. They had to see something your stupid eyes couldn’t perceive. You were wrong. You were dirty. And only they could cleanse you.

Your stomach flops all queasy. You look to Sarah.

“I’m here now. Is that all?” you say.

But she shakes her head and points again. You instinctively resist the urge to roll your eyes (it was ten lashes with the switch). Remember you are thirty-fucking-five, your name is Eleanor Ripley, and you can roll your eyes as you damn well please.

It feels like sacrilege, all heady and delicious.

It feels great.

Until you follow Sarah’s gaze, and where them thrones sat, the cellar doors await.

Your entire body snaps rigid.

“No. No, Sarah—”

But she’s gone. You stand alone in that fucking barn. Alone. The empty space, the creaky boards. And those fucking doors.

From the outside, they’re shabby, fragile looking things. Classic root cellar—two doors opening up from the ground. But normal root cellars don’t have a chain wrapped around the handles with a padlock hanging unlocked, you suspect. It came with the house, these doors. Back from when claim jumpers raced in to snatch up Native land. The farmstead even used it as a root cellar, most of the time.

The handles are worn smooth. You ain’t never touched them. Always one of the Aunts, or even Mother, when you were especially egregious. Your hands rattle as your fingers brush the cool metal. Bile rushes up the back of your throat and you have to take a step back and swallow.

The chapel still sits empty. Outside, the air is hot and heavy and stone still, like it’s waiting. You know you have to. Down in your bones, the knowledge thrums. Only way out is through. Is opening them doors. Is stepping down them stairs.

You use every trick you know to keep the vomit down. It barely holds. And before you can think anymore, you grab the handle (no chain and padlock now) and wrench it open.

The stairs are bleached out. They creak as you coltishly stagger down, gripping the door frame above to keep yourself from tumbling (unlike last time).

The smell hits you first. Dirt, wood, stale air. The faintest tinge of mold. A sourness to it.

You double over, clap a hand over your mouth. No. No, no, no, no. If you puke you’ll be switched so bad you can’t sit. You’ll be stripped down to your underwear for next confession, so the congregation might witness your shame. No. No, you can’t.

Deep breath. Controlled, deep breath.

You open your eyes. There’s the shelves you spent so much time looking at. The one on the left has a whorl and a knob in it that looks like man with a pointy beard. They line the walls, two rows filling the space between, loaded with big cans of evaporated milk and powdered eggs. Sacks of flour and sugar. Canned vegetables stacked ten rows deep, on the outer shelves. The jarred fruit and jams. Some of it was farmstead produce. The gift of the lord through y’all’s hands.

A lot of it was store bought—though less and less often as the years went on and The Pastor preached self-reliance, rejecting the toxic chemicals of the secular world which damned the body, and wasn’t the body the holy temple of the lord? To pollute it was a sin.

It looks innocuous. Some old-timey painting of Wholesome Farmer’s Pantry. Until one noticed the bucket in the corner. The glint of a long chain bolted into the wall. The handcuffs they’d bring from the main house, by the shepherd ushering your way to repentance, to click into one of the links, its proximity to the wall depending on how bad the sin was.

You stand at the foot of the stairs, legs rooted to the dirt.

The chain only appeared after the first few years. In the beginning, they’d shut the sinful down here in the dark, to reflect and repent. And starve. Age didn’t matter. Sin was sin, and all were equal in the eyes of the lord. You were five the first time. You broken a towel rack in the bunkhouse on accident.

The thing about the root cellar was that it was full of food. And to a five-year-old, eight hours is a very long time in the dark and hungry. You took two fingers of raspberry jam. No one would notice. You even hid the jar behind the others after you’d jimmied it open.

But five-year-olds are stupid. Your fingers were sticky when Mother came to fetch you.

Your body was a holy temple. You’d defiled it with stolen goods. It dirtied your temple, and a dirty temple must be cleaned.

She’d made you drink the lemon-scented dish soap. Not a lot. Couldn’t bring down the attention of the secular, satanic authorities should the poison control center become involved. But it was enough. Your system purged itself quite thoroughly. Quite violently.

Then she’d made you wash the sin from your clothes yourself. By hand.

Everyone knew, of course. That might have been the start of it; you’re not sure. Your childhood memories are hazy in the few patches you can remember. You were branded a thief. Greedy. Dirty. Sinful.

And here you stand now. What a fun trip down memory lane. Time to go.

Wood thumps. You spin as the light winks out. Bolt up the steps. Misjudge the distance in the dark and slam head first into the doors. They give, but only so far as the chain allows.

“No, no! Let me out! I didn’t do anything, let me out!”

You bang and shove and rattle. Get your feet under you and shove up with your entire body. The chain above rattles and wood squeals, but it doesn’t give. It just falls back on you, hard enough to send you stumbling down, lose your footing, crash into a shelf.

Jars fall around you. One of them crashes and you know even in the dark it’s shattered. Slimy pears spill over your hair, down your front, pooling in your skirt.

“No, please! I didn’t mean it! Please!”

But nothing moves up there. The chain will hold. The chain always holds. And trying it only earns you lashes, and more time down here surrounded by food you cannot touch.

The lord will not forgive you this time. Because The Pastor will not forgive you. Prideful thing. Too busy lusting after good, honest men.

“But I’m not!”

They’re trying to protect you. Give your sinful lust a holy purpose.

“I don’t want to!”

They all see how you watch the men. Twenty years old and your womanly weakness cannot be contained anymore.

“I want to be good! I’ll be good! I can stay pure, please!”

The lord has finally blessed you through his shepherd. The Pastor has found a faithful man to take you into holy matrimony. To (you’re gonna vomit) fill your womb (throat clenches and the corners of your jaw prickle) with the blessings of the lord. Your duty is to him and through him the lord and you will obey the head of your house as you would the lord for if his eye strays it is because you invited the devil and failed the commandment given unto you to be fruitful and loving and kind and ever welcoming—

You scream. You scream now as you couldn’t then. When The Pastor summoned you to the main house to deliver unto you the Good Word and Mother beamed. You were to be a wife, finally. A mother, finally.

They see how you watch the men.

“I d-didn’t.”

They see how you lust.

“I n-never.”

The lord knows your secret thoughts.

“Please. I want to be clean. I want to serve you.”

The Pastor is the instrument of the lord and you are to be his trusting child.

“I don’t…I don’t want…please.”

You could never overcome your own, weak nature. So you had to be placed into the root cellar to cleanse yourself. To prostrate yourself before the lord and his will and see the wisdom of The Pastor, see his Holy Truth.

Mother had been rough pushing you down the stairs. You fell against this shelf, right here. Knocked off a row of jars (you don’t even know how many lashes, it’ll be a lot, waste is not tolerated). The glass shattered, had sliced a thin line into your forearm as it broke.

You sit down there, cradling the scratch as the terror closes your throat and buries your thoughts. A husband. Your duties. Your purpose as a servant of the lord. Finally, to be wed to a man forgiving enough to accept one as flawed as you. A holy match, determined by the holy lord.

You can’t refuse. No more than you can deny the word of the lord himself. You’ll come to your senses. Here in the peace and quiet, your female hysteria will run out of fuel to burn and you will know the proper order of things and submit yourself to the authority entrusted to guide you. And they’ll be proud of you. Married. Swollen. Run ragged by children to raise for the lord’s army.

Your duty. Your sole purpose on this earth.

That glass is awful sharp.

There’s no way out, no matter what that heathen girl in town (her ears pierced like some jezebel whore) says. She’s trying to temp you (“You ain’t never seen the ocean?”). Trying to lead you astray. (“There’s all kinds of people on the other side. You know in France they serve hot chocolate and it’s literally melted chocolate? Wait…what do you mean ‘what is chocolate’?”)

She gave you a slip of paper with her number, she said. If you ever needed anything (you ain’t got no intention of reaching out to an agent of the devil). You’d taken it, because she was talking to you all friendly, like she wasn’t trying to damn you, and the joke was on her, because the farmstead don’t got phones.

You’ve disappointed Mother. You disappointed The Pastor, who only wanted to keep you safe, even from yourself. They found you something good in your life, and you threw it back in their faces. This ends one way. You’ll accept. Whether they keep you down here for days, until your legs cramp, until the hunger wraps around your spine and turns you inside out. They ain’t letting you out until you beg for forgiveness and accept The Pastor’s judgment.

But…that’s not the only way out, is it?

Mother was so disgusted she didn’t even walk you back to the chain. It’ll be some time before somebody comes to bring you water. Once that happens, they’ll bring the cuffs.

That jar smashed. One of them pieces is about the size of your palm. Long enough. Sharp enough. It could…could cut deep. You hear sermons, and some of the husbands work out in town, so when a secular girl killed herself, the news spread like a brushfire through the bunkhouse. You seen them bleed the calves come butchering season, and you’re sure this glass could cut deep enough. Could open your arm and let all the sin flow out of you. Let it seep into the dirt of the cellar floor. Let it take all this with it.

You’ll be damned. But lately, you’ve started to think you’ll never be the lord’s favorite. Won’t even be the lord’s liked, no matter what you do, no matter how hard you pray or how hard you work, you are broken. Wrong. Dirty and stupid, greedy and lustful, the product of shame and sin and it flows in your veins, corrupting every part of you—

No. No, the lord probably doesn’t even know who you are, does he? Or he don’t care. He’d never smiled on you. Never reached his hand to shield you or protect you.

No.

You won’t be missed. And this, this you can choose. You can rest. No hurting. No cold guilt. No freezing, aching shame.

You test the sharp edge. It pierces the tip of your finger. You’d barely feel it, even if you do make a mess of it, and you would deserve that. It’ll be hours before anybody finds you. Long enough. They’ll all know they were right about you. A disgusting little bitch to the end.

But.

There’s something inside you. Not a voice. Not a song or a feeling or any of those pretty words you will soon read about. It has no emotion to it. No warmth. It just is. A tiny, little ember. Not even a flame. Just a glowing speck down deep in the heart of you.

Sleep, it says. And you’re tired. Sleep now. Maybe all these thoughts later, but sleep now.

Your body drags. Your eyelids flutter. You shuffle around and curl up on your side, try to tuck your bare toes within the folds of your skirt to keep them warm. And you sink down.

Wake to light. Warm sunlight. For a moment, you only lie there. It comes back as slow and steady and dreadful as gray rain. The glass. Your way out.

But that tiny ember is still there. Still glows. Soft and steady. So fragile, yet it doesn’t sputter. Footsteps stomp outside and voices mutter, yet it remains. It just…refuses to go out.

A high voice, pitched sharp in irritation. Mother. Come to water you. To chain you. To wait out your stubbornness the way a cruel man breaks down a dog.

That’s what you are, isn’t it? That’s what you always been—

You clap a hand over that thought. Not safe. Blasphemy. The lord can hear your every thought and if The Pastor learns of it…

A shadow falls over the hatch. A booted foot on the first step.

The phone number. That heathen jezebel.

Sarah Greenwood lives with her husband and kids in one of the trailers closer to the edge of the property. She’s The Pastor’s eldest daughter, the shining beacon of gentle womanliness to the rest of you. Her husband has a town job, so he has a phone…

As eldest daughter, it’s Sarah’s job to prepare her younger sisters for being married. Helps sew the dress, teach the rules, instruct their duties. Mother is too busy being the helpmeet of The Pastor. Sarah will surely be the one to prepare you. And Sarah’s house has a phone.

Another boot. The hem of Mother’s skirt.

That shining, shimmering line. What you want and how to get there. You…you have to leave. God save you, but you can’t, you can’t stay here. But that brilliant, glimmering line can show you how to get out. All the steps leading to that phone. What comes beyond it, you can’t imagine. Your mind shies from it. But you can feel it in the thump of your own pulse. This is what you need to do. They’ll be furious. Sweet Sarah, who only ever helped you, the only one to help you, and you are going to hurt her. Betray her. Get her into trouble because everyone will be furious.

But this is your way out.

You scrape at the dirt with your bare hands. Look at the piece of glass in the dim light spilling down from above. The razor edge glitters. You lower it into the shallow hole. Scoop and pat the dirt over it and it’s a promise, somehow. One that faded as you threw yourself into the back of Sasha’s (that heathen jezebel, and she absolutely cackled when you told her that) truck not-so-distant-from-now.

A promise that became blurry as she reached out to friends and coworkers, because it turned out she was part of a network for this, and they could help you get things like a birth certificate, a social security number, enroll you into school. You cried when you got your GED certificate in the mail. You spent precious grocery money to get a frame.

And your promise lifted like morning mist as you built yourself an entire life upon this tiny grave in the bottom of a root cellar.

But you did make a promise, those years ago. One you remake now.

Mother descends to find you sitting primly, hands folded in your lap, head bowed respectfully, stinking of canned pears.

For the first time in years, she smiles at you. Even offers her hand to help you up and guide you to the stairs to emerge, and take your first steps towards the life you will claim.

Just as here, now, you emerge alone, into brilliant sunlight.

Previous - Index - Next Chapter

[side-b-bumblebi]

Trying to detox from toxic ideas internalized as a result of legalistic Christianity while still being Christian is so weird

Like yes my faith is still important to me and sustains me through my worst moments. I heard some wild stuff growing up tho

[antimyselfclub]

love isn't supposed to be pure, you're not supposed to be pure

life isn't pure. there's nothing pure in this world. nobody is pure. pure is a concept that can't exist in real life. it's okay if you don't feel pure. it's a human thing actually.

[femmefatalevibe]

You cannot be "in your feminine energy" without advocating for intersectional feminism. Otherwise, you're just promoting repackaged patriarchy. The latter is not hot, ladies.

[sweaters-and-vertigo]

[labyrinth-walls-tiny-worm]

[lylahammar]

this might be a hot topic but like it really frustrates me when people say that the culture of sex/kink shaming online isn't purity culture because purity culture only exists in relation to religious fundamentalism. You really think that online sex/kink shaming sprouted up all on its own completely independently from Christian purity culture?? it's one and the same mon frere

[fawnbae21]