#we went to catholic schools so a lot of the bullshit that happened was religious based bigotry

[apostate-in-an-alcove]

Ngl my disdain and dislike for teachers largely stems from how relentlessly ableist and openly bigoted teachers were to my brother and sister regardless of what school the three of us went to.

[colonyorats]

So, all credit to my very close friend @silly-boi-broski for reminding me of this song because I need to write a whole entire other post about my relationship with this song and how I kept thinking about it and how well it fits with both my life and probably my favorite book, Hell Followed with Us.

*Deep breath*

I grew up in a very very religious household (I still live in one). My dad's a pastor, my mom works with the youth groups, and I was heavily involved from day one. I was taught to "Love thy neighbour" and that everyone deserved a chance at heaven, that Jesus loves everyone no matter what but at the same time I watched as the very same people would turn around and chase the teen mom out of church or shun the kid who came out as queer and whatever other bullshit things they did.

I remember people at my church saying the most racist and terrible shit ever, like, the kind of things people say on Twitter nowadays but in real life infront of the Pastor and his literal child.

Then, we moved somwhere else and I got sent to a private school up until 5th grade and saw the hate the teachers spread and how a bunch of people bullied this one kid because he was of color and all the rest of us where white and it was so bad that he had to be transferred to a different school the next year because of it but I didn't understand it at the time and he was my best friend so I was so fucking confused.

Same thing happened to a kid in a wheelchair, and, while it wasn't as bad for me, I was, and still kinda am, the fat kid so that made it suck on my part since I heard comments from adults saying things to my mom like "She'd be so much more beautiful if she lost a few more pounds" which, hello??? That's a fucking terrible thing to say about a literal 10 year old child.

That was about the same time I started questioning if any of it was really real and I had a huge drop in my mental health and personally went through hell and back during a bunch of personal stuff I won't get into right now, but involved a lot of questioning my identity and shit and a lot of family drama.

That's when sometime during 2022 my friend (also @silly-boi-broski) suggested me a book called Hell Followed with Us because he was going through some similar stuff. I was skeptical at fist but then I read it and was blown away that someone was writing about similar feelings I had.

The rage and justice I felt while reading it almost broke me because I had grown up in an environment, while not as literally deadly as Benji, was so similar to it that I freaked out and had to put the book down at times. I finally finished it and I felt so seen and understood that I couldn't not want to talk and ramble about it and now I've reread it more times than I can count and everytime it makes me feel so understood.

Fuck, then I remembered the song he sent me and hearing that for the first time made me feel all the same things I did when reading HFWU and it just shocks me.

While I don't align myself with the church in any way, I think I still believe. Kind of like how Faith said it in the book, "I do, actually. And I'm still trying to figure out how I feel about that. Talking to friends--you know, Sadaf is Muslim, Salvador is Catholic, Carly is Jewish--to see if anything clicks. Or if I'm just going to have to deal with believing in the same kind of God those motherfuckers do... I guess what I'm saying is, I believe in something, and I don't know what to do with it, and maybe, I don't actually believe in anything at all, and I just want to because I hate the idea of Trevor being faced with nothing." (-page 55 of the US edition paperback of HFWU)

This is already so long so I'll stop but I still have so much to say about this book and this song but I'll save that for another day.

Here's the song I was talking about btw

[shy-marker-pliers]

Just Catholic School Things (AKA why i became an atheist at age 11)

PSA: everyone’s religious experience is obviously different. i’m just talking abt my experiences here and i’m in no way speaking for everyone who ever went to a catholic school lol.

Ok my parents are catholic and because of that i went to a small catholic school for eight years (preschool-grade 6) and hoo boy it was Something. tw for religion, religious trauma, all that good stuff.

UNIFORMS UGHHHH (the only colors we were allowed to wear were red, white, black, and sometimes you could get away with very dark navy blue)

you could choose from this wide variety of options: long or short sleeved polo shirt (has to be tucked in), black dress pants or dress shorts. sometimes they’d let you wear a sweater or cardigan but only if it was red or black. you could also wear a jumper dress as long as you had black/white tights and dress shoes. also the dress had to be black and red plaid.

we only got to go without uniforms if we were having pajama day which only happened like once a year, twice if we were lucky.

having to wear clothes like that for so long is probably the reason why i live in hoodies and sweatpants now lol

Asking my mom if she would sacrifice me if god told her to and her saying yes (i was in FIRST GRADE)

crying for hours and saying that i’m going to hell because i lied about having seen a movie (second grade)

teachers deadass saying that u only go to heaven if you’re the right religion (catholic) and even then you still had to follow all the rules or else you’d go straight to hell

having to tell a priest my darkest sins (this was not optional, everyone was required to do this twice a year)

people in my class thinking that you couldn’t be friends with someone if they were a different religion than you

having to learn cursive ughhhh (jokes on them tho cause now i can read cursive but refuse to write in it out of pure spite)

not being allowed to sing non-religious songs for our yearly christmas concert

being required to speak in church (readings, lord hear our prayer, gospel, stations of the cross, etc) which was hell for ppl that have a fear of public speaking. 

also along with that we had to sing in the choir and be altar servers (again, this was non-negotiable)

ALSO ALSO whenever there was a funeral at church they would make 3 of the 5th and 6th graders miss recess and lunch and altar serve for it, and since there weren’t a lot of us we all had to do it at least once. i’m talking 10-11 year olds not getting to eat and having to spend an hour and a half plus wearing a whole ass robe in a building with no heating or cooling units full of crying people and a dead body 

the only compensation i ever saw for that was a lollipop btw.

im sure that didnt affect anyone in any way

being super fucking clueless about the world around me until like the middle of 7th grade because, whether intentional or not, i was being sheltered

not knowing gay ppl were a thing until 4th grade and only because i overheard my grandma being homophobic and asked what she was talking about

having shit social skills because my entire school, from preschool to 6th grade consisted of about 80 people, including teachers and i had known the same kids since preschool, so i never had to make new friends.

we also had one teacher for multiple grades (for example, 3rd and 4th grade shared a classroom and teacher, 5th and 6th grade did the same)

going to church every week was literally a part of school. every friday we’d get to class, be there for like 10 minutes to listen to morning announcements, and take a 3 minute walk to church. then we’d spend like an hour and a half there and go back to class

and don’t even get me started on lent, advent, adoration, and benediction.

ok i’m gonna get started anyway

fyi advent is the 22-28 days leading up to xmas. lent is 40 days long, not counting sundays, and lasts from ash wednesday to holy saturday (the day before easter).

so every day during lent and advent we all had to gather in the hall or outside and say a decade of the rosary. for those unfamilliar this means saying one our father, followed by ten hail marys, and one glory be. so that’s like 12 minutes of our time that we could’ve been using to idk learn math. 

and on fridays and mondays we had to do 2 to make up for the weekend so double the time wasted yayyy

we weren’t really allowed freedom of expression either. we were told what to do, when to do it, and how to do it, and that’s it. even in art class.

i understand art teachers having everyone do the same style of project (ie: make a watercolor paining, sculpt something, etc.) but ours legit had us do THE EXACT SAME THING.

like, one time we were doing origami and instead of being like “ok here’s some paper and some designs to choose from go wild kiddos” the teacher was like “make a crane, a star, and an envelope. they all have to be different colors and you can’t use white or black paper. ok go.” 

total bullshit tbh

ill talk more abt her later cuz this is getting long lol

anyways thats my spicy religious trauma 4 u

but jokes on them cause now i’m an nb pan anarcho-communist lmao

[militant-holy-knight]

On a fall day in the early 8th century, somewhere between the French cities of Poitiers and Tours, a Muslim army crashed into the serried ranks of a force led by a powerful Frankish noble: Charles, Mayor of the Palace and son of Pippin of Herstal. In the ensuing battle, Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi — governor of the Muslim territories in Al-Andalus (Spain) — was slain, and his troops were routed. This confrontation between two Dark Age warlords echoed through the ages and acquired a potent symbolism, all despite the fact that medievalists know relatively little about the principal protagonists and the respective orders of battle, let alone how the fight actually unfolded.

We do actually know sufficient details about everything in regards to the battle and considering the author used a BBC link (from an outlet infamous for historical revisionism) to prove his point, I really shouldn’t take what he claims seriously. And even if any of these things are true... Should they be dismissed? There are important battles whose details are still obscure like the Battle of the Cataluniuan Fields where the Romans fought Atilla the Hun, but no one knows who won. Yet no one ever complains about it because it isn’t a thorn on the author’s skin. But again this is pointless because we know how the battle played out.

Edward Gibbon famously speculated that, had Abdul Rahman prevailed at Poitiers,

“the Arabian fleet might have sailed without a naval combat into the mouth of the Thames. Perhaps the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mahomet.”

The French romantic writer Chateaubriand made the equally dramatic claim that, “if it were not for Charles Martel’s valor, we would all be wearing turbans.”

“Oh yes, how I wish these Islamophobes had just bowed down their heads and let the Arabs walk over them, violate their wives and daughters, destroy and desecrate their churches. Europe would have been so much more tolerant than today.” - Iskander Rehman, the author of this piece of shit.

Perhaps most importantly, Charles Martel has become an enduring icon of fascist and far-right movements, in France and other Western states. The Vichy regime, for example, reveled in its warped reading of Charles Martel and of medieval French history more broadly. The francisca, an early Frankish throwing axe, featured prominently in Vichy iconography and propaganda, and Charles Martel was presented alongside Joan of Arc as an embodiment of pre-revolutionary Catholic virtue. Meanwhile, a notorious division of French volunteers to the Nazi SS was named the Division Charlemagne after the great Carolingian Emperor and grandson of Charles Martel. In the years following France’s bitter war in Algeria, a far-right group — the Cercle Charles Martel — conducted a string of terror attacks against Algerians and citizens of North African descent in France. More recently, the founder of the French Front National party, Jean-Marie Le Pen, reacted to the Charlie Hebdo killings by proudly claiming “Je suis Charlie Martel,” in defiance of the more republican and inclusive slogan “Je suis Charlie.” “Je suis Charlie Martel” has since become one of the rallying cries of French far-right activists.

This sinister historical crush extends far beyond France. Anders Breivik, the Norwegian neo-Nazi who slaughtered 77 people in 2011, claimed in his online rants to have “identified” with the figure of Charles Martel. In the United States, a group called the Charles Martel Society funds the publication of a pseudo-intellectual and deeply racist journal, The Occidental Quarterly. Charles de Steuben’s famous 19th-century painting of the Battle of Poitiers flashes through one of Richard Spencer’s slickly edited “alt-right” videos, providing a brief and jarring backdrop to a long stream of nativist gobbledygook.

These two paragraphs can be summed up as “Racists, bigots and hate groups love Charles Martel, so you cannot too or else you are one of them”. The irony in all of this is that Adolf Hitler hated Charles Martel for defeating the Arabs because he felt that if they had won, they would have brought Islam to Germans and they would have become unstoppable, since he felt Islam was a more appropriate religion for the Nazis.

Most modern historians are skeptical of the notion that the battle of Poitiers constituted such a watershed moment. While the defeat of the Andalusian army by a Western European force was certainly significant, it was not unprecedented. Only a few years prior, Odo of Aquitaine crushed another Muslim army outside Toulouse, but this battle never acquired the same mythological symbolism of the battle of Poitiers.

The difference is that Odo’s victory was merely temporary while Charles’ stopped any more invasions - that is exactly what makes it decisive. If Arabs had retreated back to Spain after the Battle of Tolouse, you’d be writing this same article except condemning Odo of Tolouse instead of Charles Martel. The Battle of Poitiers happened because Odo asked Charles for his help and in exchange he’d swear his allegiance to him.

The academic consensus now appears to be that Al Ghafiqi’s foray into what was then referred to as Northern Gaul was a long-distance raid or “razzia” motivated not so much by an ambition for conquest as by a desire for plunder. Indeed, we are told that the prime target of this raid was a wealthy religious sanctuary located at Saint Martin de Tours and filled with gold and precious fabrics. Hugh Kennedy has noted that the defeat seems to have had little resonance in the wider Arabo-Muslim world, and he views it as one symptom of many that marked the steady decline of the Syrian-based Umayyad Caliphate. Others have pointed to the Caliphate’s overextension into Spain and to the growing tensions between local Arab and Berber forces as well as rival tribes and clans. 

A lot of Islam apologists use this argument of “plunder” to whitewash it’s militarist expansionism and not name it what it actually was: colonialism. There is no such thing as being there “just” for plunder when Arabs are actively settling the region and governing over it (Septimania was already occupied by this point). The Vikings were motivated solely by plunder and didn’t care about ruling their victims (the Danelaw over England being the exception). I love how he uses “academic consensus” because that is dogwhistle for “what me and my SJW friends agree with”, as well as “Arab Muslim world didn’t care for this battle, but I am so mad about it I am going to write everything I can to discredit it”

Although the destruction of Al Ghafiqi’s field army depleted the Ummayads’ local reservoir of military strength, Moorish troops lingered in some southern French cities such as Narbonnes for two and a half more decades. Meanwhile, Muslim raiders continued their “ghazawat” across the Pyrenees for at least another a century, long after the fall of the Ummayads.

Minor skirmishes don’t mean a whole lot if they can’t even launch another full-scale invasion again.

It would be reductive to present the battle of Poitiers as the military manifestation of some age-old existential struggle between Christendom and Islam. Charles Martel’s Europe was a continent of many faiths and philosophies, not a religiously bipolar system. 

OMFG. You actually went there, you son of a bitch.

Religious differences could cut across tribes, kingdoms, and ethnicities. For example, along the Pyrenees resided the fiercely independent Basques, some of whom were Muslim, some of whom were Christian, and a portion of whom practiced more ancient forms of belief. The “Song of Roland,” a medieval ballad familiar to all products of French middle schools, recounts the cowardly ambush of one of Emperor Charlemagne’s retainers, the noble Roland, by enemy forces in a narrow mountain pass. For centuries, schoolchildren were told that the Carolingian knight had been killed by “Saracens” — Muslim forces based in Spain. It is now believed that Roland — whose prolonged death scene famously inspired Boromir’s in Lord of the Rings — was actually killed by Basques, rather than by Arabs or Berbers. This historical gaffe provides yet another indication of our tendency to overlook the rich tapestry of political and religious actors in early medieval Europe in favor of more binary models.

Admittedly, the Song of Roland is very historically inaccurate - this is obvious to anyone who reads it since Muslims worship Muhammad the same way Christians do with Jesus - but this is explained due to an unfamiliarity the people at the time had with other religions. Rehman expect us to believe that Europe was like this bastion of religious tolerance when the authors of the Song of Roland can even get other people’s religions right.

I am honestly done, this guy is beyond retarded and I feel like genocided more braincells than I should have trying to refute his bullshit. I strongly mulled on whether or not to post this, but I feel like it would have been a waste of time to not expose this shit. Iskander Rehman is the kind of guy who would criminalize celebrating the Battle of Poitiers, the Siege of Vienna or any “triumph of the cross over the crescent” battle (even an obscure one, like the Battle of Vaslui) if he had the power to do so.

[yasminsqueendom]

Antique the Vamp Geek Pt1 Ep8

CW:Potential starvation, more economic talk, discrimination.

A/N: Another Q and A

W/C: 1357

Whooooo lawd! I'm on 10 today babes!

So let's get into it.

You have questions and so do I. So let's talk.

Starting off with a question from @beyonbeat313: I can’t believe I let my daughter listen to your show! Why would you say those things about weird sex? She’s too young to hear things like that!

Ok. So, you do bring up a good point that I should at least rate the content of the shows. Thank you for the reminder. I suppose it would be much more helpful to control the content that your children engage in. I don’t know how old your daughter is, but the site that all my casts are posted to does in fact specify that adult topics are going to be discussed, and that parental discretion is advised. You would know this if you bothered to further look into it. 

I don’t apologize for any of my content because ultimately, it’s all true. The real life experiences of my listeners, and my own personal experiences are what fuel the content of my casts. I can be more mindful of my ratings, but I will not stop my discussions about my status and the state of the society I live in.

But anyway, next a question from @CCIT021: Hey, Tique! Your cast about how expensive being a vamp is was really interesting. The cost is astronomical! Would you say that the reason baby vamps die at such an alarming rate is because of the cost?

Yes and no…..

Yes, because the majority of baby vamps are from low income households. Every once in a while, one might be adopted by an older, wealthier vamp, but at the end of the day that doesn’t happen often. It’s only really romantic like that in the movies. The expenses do make it feel almost impossible. Interesting fact: baby vamps in areas with a lower population have a slightly higher survival rate. That is largely do the cost of living in urban (read black) areas being so high. But, that’s a different discussion.

No, because baby vamps are usually turned by other inexperienced baby vamps that don’t know any better. So essentially, there is no education on what you’ve become and how to deal with it. Some people are religious and feel that they have become some sort of demon. Those ones usually kill themselves or go on a killing spree (which still ends with them dying). Some start out ok, but they reveal themselves to their parents, and their parents kill them. Some of them already were a part of gangs or in areas of high violence, and they are killed the ways that regular humans are. Some get turned in jail, and die or locked in solitary and eventually starve. 

It all depends upon the circumstances. Some are lucky enough to link up with few good people and find themselves a source. Sources are really the saving grace of baby vamps. There are links to several resources regarding safe sourcing on the station’s website. 

Another one from @okurrrr.b!tch318: How have you been surviving? I know you said your source/plug or whatever stopped coming through. It’s been weeks. Do you have a source?

Just in case you didn’t know this already, while the government can’t technically make it illegal for normal humans to bleed (and others to drink it), they can make it illegal for that blood to be sold for use by vamps. And they have, in a way. If a regular human reports that a vamp has sourced any blood from them, and decides to press charges, that vamp is arrested immediately, without question.  There are other little sneaky loopholes, too. For example, family members can call authorities on their vamp relatives if they are caught sourcing blood. For any documented vamps, there is a mandatory Power of Attorney signed to give legal authority to a relative to make decisions on the behalf of the vamp. The reason for this is the likelihood of the virus taking over, and the vamp immediately becoming unable to make sound decisions. There are lots of sneaky things like that happening. 

You may wonder why I went on that random ass tangent. Basically, I can’t say shit about that. I cannot risk getting caught revealing any info about my feeding habits. It would put my life in immediate danger due to my family’s beliefs. I want to talk to you guys, but my health matters too much for me to discuss anything more personal than I already have. 

I don’t know if you’re a fucking cop or something. 

So please stop asking. I won’t tell you. I’m alright. I appreciate the concern if it’s genuine. That’s all you need to know.

Another question from @danielthemaniel.shadeking1: How is the situation with your school working out? Have you reported your status yet?

So……. no I haven’t reported my status yet. It gives me an absurd amount of anxiety and I’m terrified that I could lose everything. There are no laws that forbid suspending government assistance based on infection status. And, as I’ve stated, a couple of my grants come from religious-based institutions. Also, my college is Catholic. I don’t know how bad it would be, but I know that nothing good would happen if I disclosed my status. I’ve been seeing if I could transfer to a public university in the even that I have to drop out of here. I’ve only got about a month left until the deadline. 

A question from @qween.sansa98: Can you share the links for all the info to help baby vamps adjusting? I’m terrified after reading your last post. 

Certainly! It takes a few loopholes to get through everything, but if you’re determined to go through them.... It’s more like there are chat rooms where people share info anonymously. But if someone decides they don’t trust you, the room will be closed and a new one will be set up under a different name. For baby vamp safety, these rooms change and rotate regularly. I can point you in the right direction, but you have to do the work. 

Also, I hate your handle. Sansa fucking sucks.

One last question from @lolo.appointments.qw33n: Your statistics for the rates of survival for baby vamps is incredibly disturbing, but also isn't it beneficial that there isn't a large number of baby vamps around? Doesn't it benefit the society that everyone isn't getting infected because at some point there would be no fresh sources of blood? Shouldn't we be concerned about the repercussions of providing any assistance to vamps?

….ok…. It took me a minute to think of a response for this one. A lot of people feel that our existence is a direct threat to humanity. 

IT ISN'T.

We are not a fucking threat for simply existing. 

Our kind has been existing right alongside you for FUCKING EVER. Completely unregulated by government. At no point has there ever been an overwhelming amount of us that has in any way threatened uninfected humanity. 

We are not draining medical resources away from the sick people that “really” need it. 

Which fucking reminds me that those of us who are turned have a goddamn medical condition! We need that blood to survive as well. Our kidneys don't do what they're supposed to either. We aren't stealing resources from other patients. WE ARE THE PATIENTS.

Everyone gets infected when you try to ignore it to make it go away. Innocent people die when you just try to kill it away. Assisting poor people never robs the rich of anything. Stop telling that bullshit story. Most of us don't even want to spread it. We just don't want to starve to death. 

Anyway. Look forward to Tique 9 for more excitement. Or just more loud ranting from me. I'm tired of answering y'all questions today. Keep ‘em coming though. I'll get to you eventually. 

Stay safe and follow me on all my social media. Links posted to the main site.

Stay moisturized and hydrated y'all.

Love Tique

[purplesurveys]

476

If someone's laughing, do you instantly think they're laughing at you? Egh no, not really. I’ve had people laugh at me but I do know about it; I’ve never felt paranoid like this. What is the strangest thing you've been asked? My mom’s masseuse asked me if I was pregnant after taking a good look at me and deciding I looked familiar. It felt weird and eerie until I told my parents about it the next day and they said “Oh yeah, she’s the one with the third eye.” Didn’t feel as strange after that, but at the time when she looked me dead in the eye and asked me that question it was definitely so weird lmao. What’s the weirdest thing about life that people just accept as normal? Sometimes I wonder how people from the far past got to decide how certain animals were safe to eat even though they a) clearly scream danger, b) have such a complex way of being consumed (like crabs), or c) ARE STRAIGHT UP POISONOUS (like the pufferfish in Japan). But hey, we’re all eating them right now.

What was your favorite game as a child? I liked local games. We had langit-lupa (heaven and earth), piko (hopscotch), ice-ice water (freeze tag), Chinese garter, 10-20, and patintero. What’s the stupidest thing you've ever heard? Anything that comes out of conservative Catholics’ mouths.

What's the most random thing you've done out of boredom? It would have to be that time that I got really depressed last December and I spent all my Christmas savings meant for friends and family on a bunch of coloring books and my own set of coloring pencils. All for myself. It’s a little morbid, but whaever.  What show did your parents not let you watch as a kid? My parents were pretty liberal and weren’t too strict about shows. My mom absolutely hated Mr. Bean though because she was convinced he was the reason my brother didn’t start talking until he was like 6. She would change the channel if it was on, but she didn’t outright ban us or anything. What is your personal catchphrase? I don’t have one. What is the most pleasurable feeling that doesn't involve anything sexual? Biting into your favorite food after a whole day of not eating. What was your 'Oops, wrong person' moment? I don’t think I have one. I’d die of embarrassment. What do you find attractive that isn't considered 'normal' attraction? I really can’t bring myself to be into the muscular/buff look and don’t mind if someone is on the bigger side, is skinny, or is generelly not a gym person. What’s the dumbest thing you’ve done drunk? Fell asleep in the pool. What's your proudest moment in the bathroom? ?????? What’s something you own that gets you lots of compliments? Technically not mine, but Gabie would lend me a windbreaker-type of jacket that was very colorful. It was green, yellow, pink, basically a very bright and gay jacket. I got complimented on it EVERY SINGLE TIME I wore it by nearly every single person who passed by me in school – and I wish I was kidding lmao. She got it in Baguio for 50 pesos ($1), it’s insane. I think it was lost by another person she lent it to. A damn shame. If money was no object, where would you want to live? Canada. Who is your favourite mythological character? In the brief moment I was into mythology, I really liked the way Rick Riordan wrote Apollo to be in his Percy Jackson series. Big ol’goofball. What's something that's happened which couldn't happen at a worse time? [continued from this afternoon] > Had the sign for my gas start blinking while I was stuck in standstill traffic > Get into a car accident while finally making a turn to the gas station > Get pulled over by an officer for changing a lane and nearly hitting a car, because unbeknownst to me, the accident had closed my right side mirror, making me not see my entire right side and I almost hit the car to my right All happened within ten minutes. I was a freshman in high school and couldn’t be more terrified. Police let me go when I started having a panic attack. What is the best pickup line you've ever heard? I don’t like pickup lines. What did aging ruin for you? Dreams. What is the most hilarious thing you’ve ever heard? Idk, I’ve found a lot of things hilarious. What is the darkest thing you have seen on the internet? It would be either Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared or Too Many Cooks. What's something you really enjoy, but can't have? A regularly luxurious life. What Wikipedia article have you recently read? OMG hahaha so there were times in internship where nothing was tasked to me FOR HOURS and I would get super bored. Then I remember hearing from somewhere that Wikipedia has a whole article that’s just a list of unusual deaths that’s happened from modern history until the present, and I gobbled that shit up until I was given a responsibility. I found out more listicles they apparently had – list of last words, list of people who disappeared mysteriously, etc; read all of those too. What's a book you were made to read in school that you really liked? My #1 would have to be Without Seeing the Dawn by Steven Javellana. It’s the most honest narration of the Philippines’ Japanese occupation I’ve ever read. It’s painful to read, but it’s the beauty of it. What objective did you fail to complete this week? I told myself I was gonna start externals work for my org, but I’ve just been so burned out in the last month that I haven’t gotten around to starting yet. I definitely have to this week, though so it’s not like I’ll completely fail it. What could have gotten worse for you but it didn't? Tbh the desire to end my life? I threw in the towel by the time I was 12, but I’m still here so I guess life is doing something right.

What subject should be taught at schools, but isn't? Adulting. Like being taught about taxes, social security, insurance, documents they ask when you apply for a job, etc. I’m 21 and I know nothing about these. I didn’t even know what insurance meant until I was 20. What is the best thing about having a Significant Other? The idea of having a go-to person for everything is very comforting for me. What makes you unusually uncomfortable? Distorted sound effects. It’s probably not unusual though. What is an upcoming purchase you're excited about? It’s no longer future tense because I was finally able to find Pop-Tarts at the nearby mall! I couldn’t find it ANYWHERE in the last couple of years and I’ve been craving it for the same period of time. Then Gab convinced me to try the supermarket at the mall we went to today and we found a box of Chocolate Fudge gloriously sitting on one of the shelves. It was way more expensive than I remember it being, but I waited for so long that I just grabbed it and didn’t care about my budget anymore. What is the worst game you've ever played? The Hannah Montana game for the Wii that I had was so bad it was good. What’s the oddest thing you like to do? I don’t think I have particularly odd habits. What's the funniest news story you've seen in the past few weeks? There’s a satirical article I came across a week ago that was about how dinosaurs got extinct because they ate pineapples on pizza. It was made even more hilarious by the fact that it included a graphic of dinosaurs and there were slices of pizza with pineapples on them photoshopped into the graphic. Definitely pissed off a number of pineapple enthusiasts that day lmaaaaao. What do you really really want right now? I’m so excited to eat my Pop-Tarts but I think I should save them for tomorrow. What do you hide from people? Suicidal thoughts, because I never wanna bother anyone. What was the first sign you knew you had a crush on someone? When I actively avoided her because it hurt to see her. HAHAHAH yuck drama What's the best lemonade you've made from the lemons life gave you? Lasting long enough to create a family in the form of my orgmates. Who was your cartoon crush while growing up? Sam from Totally Spies. What's the best way to deal with religious door knockers? We don’t have that culture here but I most likely would just never open the door. What’s the most hypocritical thing you’ve ever seen or heard? A large chunk of Catholics. Who’s the most interesting person you’ve ever met? When I was still interning at my PR firm, I shadowed my supervisor in an interview that one of our clients had for that day. Our client’s representative is the biggest badass I’ve met. He’s from South Africa and was born and raised at a time when apartheid was still around. He’s white, so he was brainwashed in school to think that they were superior and for a time, he really thought his race was. Then he got to work under Nelson Mandela’s party when he was much older and that was the only time he realized how backwards that mindset was. Anyway he had Mandela’s spies stalk his ass every single day because of his background and he ultimately got shot twice. There’s loads more stories to tell but I don’t want to give him away. 

When I was watching him get interviewed he proved to have a lot of knowledge on history and current events too so that’s another plus. He was just super cool and it was a breath of fresh air to talk to a foreigner that was more aware of social situations than the average Filipino. What just doesn't impress you? Carly Rae Jepsen. What’s the worst possible way to introduce yourself? There’s no worst way; just don’t try too hard because the bullshit can be detected so easily. What makes you wish that you were born in the past or the future? How easy it was to make a living and score a job decades ago. What tragic event was coincidentally beneficial to you? My breakup. What's something people are proud of, but it doesn't impress you? ‘Miracles.’ What's the worst possible moment to go and play on a bouncy castle? Doing it with a bunch of sweaty, rowdy kids. Who is the greatest ever comedian? Not really into comedians so my recommendations might suck for some. What’s your irrational fear? Commercials at night. What's your oldest memory? Playing in a Winnie the Pooh tent when I was 3. What can you not wake up without? Checking the time. What did you think was cool when you were younger that you now think isn’t? Wristbands. What are your favourite or most memorable lines from any movie/show? “How do you like them apples?” from Good Will Hunting. What's something people love to hate? The Kardashians. What’s something that is underrated but extremely useful? Being polite.

[problematicthoughtsandsonglyrics]

Part two

-“I swear if you pour that water on your corndog I’m gonna kill myself”

-“The powder works so much better”

-“Ah. Ah. Don’t make a lot of noise” (wish I remembered context for this one)

-“He’s going to smite me during second period”

“You’re going to get smitten bro”

-“I’m going to aggressively Gangnam style to Africa”

-“Wow, I don’t remember drinking this much water, ever”

-“I look like I’m walking like a godforsaken penguin”

-“All liberals are suicidal”

-“My dad is a giant teddy bear. Her dad, on the other hand, is who you should be scared of”

-“If my dad wanted to hide a body you’d never find it”

-“There are so many hoes at this school. That’s all I have to say to you”

-“I’m getting a headache where’s my chocolate”

-“Skinny banana? Don’t you mean Jacob’s penis?”

-“Wait let me write something” *proceeds to write Osama Bin Laden under religious leaders*

-“Well what happens if he makes a sandwich out of your body?”

“That’s cannibalism. But cannibalism will solve overpopulation and world hunger”

-“Last time I had a banana I realized you could stick a straw in it and blow and it makes the banana warm”

-“I can’t find the furry mask”

-“I want a Lightning McQueen waffle maker”

-“I need to download a Disney XD wallpaper right now”

-“Life’s not easy being green”

-“I’m gonna run Mr Woodfield up on my dick”

-“I have a new conditioner... I mean follower”

-“We should all get lockets and put a picture of Shaggy in them”

-“Kind of like when a car passes by you really fast and makes this noise” (he did the nyoom sound)

-“You should be a car Mr Childress”

-“Get that finance over here. Let me get. That. Tax.”

-“I wanna go home and eat ratatouille right now”

-“I don’t have a nice face so that leaves one thing. My ass”

-“Ben Shapiro is gonna kill all the liberals”

-“I made a fucky wucky, my bad”

-“No, dude, he would hear us cursing in the hallway at top volume and never said anything”

-“You know what Maddy? I don’t like you anymore. I don’t want to be friends anymore”

-“Maybe if you burn in the fires of hell all the alcohol will burn too”

-“Spreading the diabetes, one marshmallow at a time”

-“At least you got to preform in front of Colonel Sanders”

-“Who’s pet is she?”

-“Everybody gets Kraft Singles, on me”

-“I’ve been scarred for life so much it feels more like a tickling sensation”

-“No one wants to touch you!”

-“It’s less like a rape and more like a gangbang”

-“There is no leader we’re all submissive runts”

-“Temporary joy, permanent pain”

-“Heteronormativity can eat my ass”

-“So what should we have overlapping heterosexuality?”

-“Just because my voice sounds like a man doesn’t mean I am one”

-“I wasn’t expecting a sip of vodka at 7:40 in the morning”

-“If you can’t do it then the best way to go is: don’t do it”

-“If anything, you’re in the way of the wine”

-“I mean, if the Catholic Church had done it right, we would have communism”

-“He is the straightest gay man I know”

-“The last time I had orange juice, I think you guys let me have a mimosa”

-“Your jacket makes you a big blob”

-“You’re like Cetaphil moisturizer because you make me wet”

-“I wish I was as bomb diggity as Beyoncé”

-“My ice cream is crunchy”

-“Quick question, how do you lose a banana?”

-“I’m really confused, yet oddly aroused. Is this normal?”

-“What kind of damn Gucci dogs come here?” (talking about a place with $60 dog food)

-“Your knees look ripe for sucking”

-“Weenus penis suck my kneeus” (they said this in unison while doing the sign of the cross)

-“And my cat’s name is Crazy”

-“If I could drown in applesauce that would be nice”

-”Why do heroin when you can have garlic bread injected directly into your veins?”

-”It’s red ribbon week for the horns. Say no to crack”

-”Oh my god I’m so hungry right now, I should’ve brought my sushi”

-”Where is this man’s penis?”

-”Wait a minute, if a guy masturbates that means he’s using his dick more often, so why doesn’t it grow?”

-”Someone say something smart cause I can’t”

-”Does anyone here have self confidence?”

-”Hello small child. What’s it like having a high voice and ambitions?”

-”I walked over here and thought she was trying to be 21 Savage”

-”Oh my god are you worshipping the antichrist?”

-”See, I know a lot about North Korea because I plan to take it over”

-”Which sounds like a lesbian affair, but it’s not”

-”My mom can spot my hair on the ground and sniff me out”

-”Goddammit. Who is you?”

“Logic would dictate that I answer no”

“It’s machete time baby”

“I have to protect it as if it were my nutsack”

“If you don’t appreciate that, you’re wrong”

-”Your elbow is a bone it can’t be muscular”

-”San Angelo ain’t hell but you can see it”

-”There’s only two things to invest in. Paintings and land cause they aren’t making any more of it”

-”Cats need to be in the center of a pentagram” 

-”If you get bored, drink”

-”They put an homage to blind people. Not like they’re gonna see it”

-”If you don’t have your green card you’re gonna get dimma-deported”

-”Why is the uncle taking pictures but keeping the camera for himself?”

-”My body is going to start physically rejecting fruit snacks”

-”I would wear a Wonder Woman costume to school”

-”I don’t know the first thing about anime”

-”I don’t know why my first thought was ‘cheese stick’”

-”DA DA DA is not the most exciting thing you’ve played! Shut up!

-”On the eighth day, God created trombones”

-”It smells like cheese in the microwave”

-”I wonder what would happen if I ate powdered pancake mix”

-”I guess I didn’t breast feed her long enough”

-”Hey kid, there’s a hotspot in the van”

-”That’s not going to be good for anything. My waist line or my budget”

-”I’ve had to pee four times. It’s noon”

-”Sword swallowers are the best deep throaters”

-”I don’t know where my socks went”

-”Maybe if you wore pants your legs wouldn’t be cold”

-”You could take a survey of everyone in this whole school and they’d say that Minecraft is a culture”  

-”Yeah I would fake a broken arm if it would get me out of testing”

-”Can I have a spicy roll of corn?”

-”Where’s my Asian?”

-”I baked a fucking birthday cake last night”

-”It’s been christened. Christened by ass”

-”I’ve eaten so many expired tortillas my body’s probably used to it”

-”Broccoli and hard drugs are two different things”

-”You’re like the bitch whisperer”

-”Dominance wasn’t established until the later years, but it was effective nonetheless”

-”Is uber a country?”

-”I think I’m good. It’s like dusting off the scent of another woman”

-”You’re under arrest, if you really want to be”

-”I get drunk and I spend money”

-”No honey, that’s heartless. I can still be a caring racist”

-”Are big boy gains genetic?”

-”Wait so he moved the infinity gauntlet from his hand to his dick? What the literal fuck?”

-”If I get a chair with wheels, then I win”

-”I was looking up Foghat on ancestry.com”

-”We all know the more alcohol you consume, the more insightful you become”

-”I’ve had enough experiences in wineries and breweries to last me a lifetime, and I’m only nine”

-”Innuendos and Speedos: his story”

-”You have sobriety on your side”

-”You spilled beer on the Scrabble board”

-”How many times do I tell you, we don’t listen to the retarded kids in school”

-”Furries can enjoy shitposting also”

-”Slow songs make me cry”

-”The resistor is your ass”

-”God dangit there’s a freakin egg in my boot”

-”Oh, Liberia. I know that from the vine”

-”Screaming is kid friendly”

-”Textual evidence states that that’s bullshit”

-”I’m on an emotional high and I’ll crash four hours later”

-”Yeah I got these yesterday and they’re already looking scuffed”

-”Yeah there’s always at least one cocky bastard”

-”All I need to know is how much a coat hanger costs”

-”I kept thinking Europe was a state”

-”I am a handy woman”

-”Oh my fucking god there’s communist Superman. I kind of love that”

-”Why is dog a gender?”

-”I will flood your mucus membranes with urine”

-”Does that mean it’s violent masturbation?”

-”Flex seal is the only 100% effective contraception”

-”It’s like telling someone not to do drugs while sniffing crack”

-”I like my men like I like my apples: red”

-”I invade the percussion’s privacy and pretend I’m one of them”

-”Are you calling my lap dances mediocre?”

-”Don’t even talk to me if you haven’t made out with a Frenchman”

[sea-of-sunlight]

Pride Month Week One: Aro Identity

Aka the month where I overshare and everyone applauds. Also, today is day three of my headache, so apologies in advance for assumed incoherence

1. How did you realize you were aro/arospec? How long have you known?

I refuse to scroll all the way back on my blog, but if you want to spend some time going through my “personal” tag, you’ll find a Raven Cycle fanfic college AU (if Tad is trans, That’s The One) and as I was peacefully reading my way through the latest update mid-summer of 2017, the author personally came into my home and shoved my brain into the word “asexual” and some other pretty terms in a particular order I had never heard before, and to this day I still haven’t read past that point bc it shook me so badly. 

Found the term, found the related terms, went through some depressions and questions and tacked on “probably aromantic” somewhere around February 2018.

2. Have you come out to anyone? Share a coming out story.

A handful of friends know, and my siblings, and like two coworkers in a bit of an accident.

So there I am, March 2018, gushing about Love, Simon, to a couple coworker friends, one of whom happens to be trans and previously ID’d as lesbian. And I’m New To This, so I’m just like, “Yeah, it’s so queer! It’s such a great queer movie!” like, on and fucking on. Like, trying to get them to realize through gay osmosis I’m one of you love me please. And this trans coworker deadass looks at me and goes, “Are you an.........................Ally?”

And this is hysterical in hindsight but at the time all the clocks in the store stopped and I spent eternity contemplating how to phrase my identity so I wouldn’t be, like, yeet-ed out of friendship or whatever. 

I finally settled on “Er, I’m actually Bi. And Ace. And Aro.” And both friends were just like, oh okay, although both later cornered me with questions. It ended up being incredibly fine.

3. How/why is your aromanticism important to your identity?

I mean, why is any part of my identity important to me? It’s a huge part of the lens through which I view the world, and has shaped me just as much as the rest of my experiences have. I’m fiercely protective of it, actually, because now that I’ve found this word that helps define my experiences, I’m torn between keeping it under lock and key so my life stays mine, or shouting it at every passerby so eventually, I won’t have to constantly redefine myself to strangers.

4. What are some misconceptions about aromanticism that bother you?

Like any group, aromantics have a huge variety of relationships to that label and what it means for them. Personally, I grew up religious and relatively romance positive, with strong senses of both aesthetic and sensual attraction, and I didn’t start teasing it all apart until my late 20s. Others hit 15 and are squicked and that’s that. But we tend to all get lumped together under one poorly conceived stereotype, and it gets old. It’s like saying every single gay man must do drag, and every trans woman longed to wear dresses as a child. It’s reductive.

5. What’s something you like about being aro/arospec? Something you dislike?

I feel like I avoided a lot of drama in high school and college by nature of my aromanticism. I recognized flirting et al, but I never understood the drive to date a specific person or to put up with the bullshit expectations of conservative Southern men because I just loved them.

I still have a hard time redefining my future without the likelihood of a monogamous, devoted, passionate partner though. Growing up in the Catholic Church I always thought I had been called to the sacrament of marriage, and realizing my aromantic identity didn’t automatically erase the baseline for that desire.

Challenge created by @aromantic-official; thanks, y’all 🌻

[wildflower8281]

#nunlife

A lot of people ask me what #nunlife was like and why I left. So I’m answering some of that here in various parts because #nunlife is so multi-faceted, happens in steps and in 8 years I experienced many sides of it! Also, the reasons why I left deserve some space, thought and clarity. 😊 While I do get saucy in various parts because lots of my #nunlife was kinda cray, I also would not change my time in the convent because it has brought me to where I am now, a space and a life that is full and bright. So even though I call out some of the bullshit antics here and in other places I’ve written, I also still hold much love for the actual humans who I grew up with there (I was age 22-30 in the convent, with many of the same) and who I know are still living that life with good intentions. Also, I know there are many former nuns who prefer not to revisit convent life or remember things, which I honor. For me, I have no problem sharing (really?!) any parts of it - the good, the bad and the ugly. And honestly, sharing has helped me to make others aware and also reap the wisdom from those years for my own life and spirit. 

Below is everything from our insane schedule, sleeping on pieces of wood to chauffeuring the priests around. Also the cool stuff like traveling to the White Mountains of New Hampshire every summer, playing volleyball and getting a new name. Oh and why the sound of a bell is semi-ptsd for me! 

In adjectives only, nun life was: fun, challenging, quiet, loud, sacrificial, routine, adventurous, exhausting, annoying, ignorant, blind, well-intended, broken and beautiful. Full of humanity, right?!

What order? I entered The Servants of the Lord & the Virgen of Matara (ssvm), they are the female branch of the larger Religious Family of the Incarnate Word, mostly a missionary catholic priesthood, originally founded in Mendoza, Argentina in 1984. (www.ive.org; www.iveamerica.org)  The order has definitely had it’s fair share of shadiness that has recently come to light, but honestly none of that had any personal, major effects on my life or leaving. The sisters were founded in 1988, marking 30 years this year (www.ssvm.org; www.ssvmusa.org) They are a catholic missionary order and so when I met the ssvm while attending Catholic U. in DC, they had only been in the states for maybe a handful of years. They only had probably 7 American sisters, most of them still in formation. I think my class was probably only the 4th or 5th class here in this province (which now includes USA, Guyana, Surinam, Mexico & Canada!) Still to this day, the Novitiate formation houses for both the men and women resides in Maryland, very close to DC.

Entering the Convent: I entered at age 22, only 9 months after graduating college. I entered the Novitiate House/Convent, where both postulants and novices lived together. Postulancy is the stage upon entrance until a girl receives her habit & religious name. At this point, that is usually a year or longer. For me, back in the early days of SSVM in this province, it was only 11 months and for some of my classmates, it was only 1-4 months. The order did not have a certain level of church approval yet (it only had local ones or something,) so we didn’t yet have to follow canonical rules, which was fine and semi-normal.

When I entered, there was a novice class already living in the house that consisted of all Americans and 1 Philipina. They were about 8. My class that followed was also 8, but we were much more diverse: 3 Americans, a pair of Pakistani twins (truth), 1 Haitan, 1 Mexican and 1 Guatemalan. Of the 8 of us, only myself and the Mexican girl eventually left. Of the novice class before me, 4 remain and 4 left. The ones who remain have been and are still in various missions all over the world such as Italy, Tunis, France, and various places across the US.  

My Religious Name: Technically now after about a year of postulancy, the sisters are given their religious names in a special, fancy ceremony and Mass. We were allowed to propose names, but also ultimately our superiors chose them for us. The name given to me was: Sr. Maria Lumen Christi, which is Latin for Sr. Mary, Light of Christ. I loved the name and really resonated with it. As all of us were named after Mary in some fashion, we went by the 2nd part, so I was Sr. Lumen, or just Lumen (as we called each other) for the next 8 years. (I still feel that my “calling” here is to Be Light, so that name still is most definitely a part of my being from all eternity.)

Novitiate Life – Koolaid Initiation: I spent about a year and ½ in this house and for the most part, it was pretty fun and I loved it. It was actually a house in a small Bowie, MD neighborhood that had been turned into a convent (which only meant that 1 room was created into a Chapel basically.) It had 4 bedrooms upstairs that were stocked with bunk beds (except for the Superior’s room,) a kitchen & dining room, a library room, a study/classroom, the chapel and a backyard where I played my first volleyball games. At our smallest, we were probably 8 or so, and at our largest in that house we were probably around 20, definitely more than allowed. The class who entered after me was large, to the point where we set up bunks in the library and in the garage that summer, until my class moved out to the Juniorate House in DC that Fall. It was community living at it’s best.

Everything in convent life was scheduled. We had a weekly schedule, divided into the days, divided into hours, marked by the bell ringer, which was an actual job. (To this day, whenever I hear a certain tone of bell, I am brought right back – it’s semi-ptsd and semi-nostalgic for me! Truly.) These years were basically learning how to live like a nun, how to live in community, as well as studying the catholic faith. A normal day in the Novitiate House might look like this:

Take a good, long look at that one! 

If anyone ever gives me shit for being slightly cray about my personal time, tell them to go live that life for 8 years and get back to me! 

Work duties consisted of various tasks to keep the house in order: cleaning, laundry, sacristy (taking care of the things in the chapel), cook (not cooking every meal, but meal planning for the house & coaching those of us who had never cooked in our lives!), librarian, liturgy (prepping all music & songs for Mass & prayer) etc. There were also sisters in charge of sports and recreational activities. There were also “drivers” – as some, but not all of us could drive. Picking and dropping of the priests for Mass  (yes, that was a thing…don’t get me started) and various other things we needed them for was a daily task.  In this house, there were only 2 showers, 1 phone line and maybe 1-2 computers. Needless to say, we all learned about community in very real ways.

While the novitiate years were mainly focused on community life and study, with some apostolic work on weekends (like teaching ccd, etc) once a sister left the novitiate, she entered the Juniorate House of Studies, where all of that only intensified & multiplied.

Below: the novitiate and juniorate houses present day. The superiors and lead sisters in these houses were girls I lived with for many years. 

Juniorate House of Studies – A Whole Lotta Crazy: A sister usually would

 spend 2-3 years here and begins her life in this house only after her first profession of temporary vows (poverty, chastity and obedience.) It was all the things above – including the hour by hour daily schedule complete with large bell ringing & everything - except everything was more – classes, responsibilities, hours awake, hours driving, cleaning, cooking for more, etc. It was meant to be a harder, more demanding lifestyle, in preparation for “missionary life.” The house was huge, there were 2-3 classes of sisters living together, usually over 20 of us, plus the superior and formators (older sisters who help the superior in various specific arenas like discipline & studies.) (Again, if ever anyone wonders why I revel in living alone…!!!!) Thankfully there were way more bathrooms and showers here, but sadly it was in SE DC, so there was not a yard to play in, but we had access to the school gym which is where we would play volleyball and basketball about once a week if we were lucky. Sleep here was less, despite the fact that work was more. We would rise at 6 I think, but usually were not in bed until 11pm. If you had to pick up Father, you were up at probably 515am. While there was still a siesta scheduled in the Juniorate, very often sisters would catch up on work or study during that hour because there was just not time enough in the day to keep ahead of the game. While it sounds like nun-studies might be an eye roll, the order is actually super academic and takes studies very seriously. We learned some high level philosophy, metaphysics, church history, roman history, not to mention Latin, Spanish and Italian studies. A shit ton of church documents, papal letters, names, dates, etc. It wasn’t just make sure you know the Saints and the 10 commandments. This order knows their Catholic doctrine, history and all of the Church documents really intensely. So, classes, studying and exams were very real and for some caused a great deal of stress.

Despite the demanding schedule and responsibilities, these years were probably the most fun and enjoyable for me, because I was not in charge and didn’t have enough time to realize how much I naturally disliked a lot of people and a lot of movement, ha! I was too busy people pleasing and trying to be a good, docile, generous nun! But honestly, a lot of us were around the same age – 18 to early 30s – and generally had a great time together. There were a shit ton of cultural differences that we all were challenged by and eventually learned to honor, as they all made us more open and wiser. Meals together, sports, road trips to other convents or shrines or holy sites, recreation and games, and religious feasts and celebrations were usually joyful & lively, with an abundance of good food, guitar playing and lots of songs. We celebrated the various represented cultures with feasts of ethnic food, drinks, music and ceremonies. Every summer, we would drive up to the White Mountains of New Hampshire for vacation. We would spend a month hiking those awesome mountains, swimming in lakes, camping, playing volleyball, barbecuing and singing around the campfires. Those were also pretty amazing times, despite the on-the-go routine and lack of sleep!

Things to notice about these years: the young ages, the lack of free unstructured time, the lack of sleep, the dozens of hours being taught by a superior or priest (read: Koolaid,) the lack of time alone, catering to the priests…Anyone who knows me, knows that I do think the life was and is a cult...I just never noticed it until years later. (Still wouldn’t change it though! lol!)

Deny Thyself: Penances, YAY!

Some things that are rarely brought up in conversations about #conventlife are the physical penances. As most people know, Catholics practice various forms of penance. Our order was and is very old school, orthodox Catholic and so the physical penances were very much a part of the spirituality and practice. This may be new or surprising or crazy to you, but for us it was pretty freaking normal and eventually not a big deal. I understand if you read this and think that we were like trying to live in the 1500s. It was like that sometimes!

o   Fasting: every Friday of the year (except a few) it was encouraged to fast until dinner. This was always optional. There were all kinds of ways to fast, including removing sugar or milk from coffee, only eating bread or fruit, etc. There were a zillion ways to deny the palate & appetite and we were allowed to do whatever worked for us.  

o   Hair shirt: this was introduced in the Juniorate and we could wear it in accordance with what our spiritual director allowed. It was basically a lightweight chainlink belt that we wore around our waist, under our habit, as a penance – to remind us that we are sinners, or to remind us ‘what Christ suffered for our sins.’

o   Self-flagellation: also a thing! In the juniorate, we were given a medium sized whip made of rope, I don’t remember the name. At least once a week, we would perform community self-flagellation, on our knees, at night before we all went to sleep, usually to the duration of a decade of the Rosary (a few minutes.) This may have increased during Lent, like 1 extra day a week. Since it was an obvious thing, it wasn’t easy to do it secretly. I’m sure many of us also performed this penance during silent retreat weeks and months.

o   Sleeping on Wood: I discovered this option for penance at a visit to a NY convent, when I was still in the Juniorate. Girls would elect to remove their mattress and use a similar size piece of plywood to sleep on. I asked to do this my last year in the Juniorate and slept this way my 4 years in Harlem.

These are just the main forms I remember, and only physical penances. There were a zillion other ways we learned to “deny ourselves” throughout the day mentally, emotionally, etc. But I thought the physical was worth noting since I would guess most folks don’t think these types of penances still exist, except in some strict monastic convents maybe. Well, they do!

And on that fun note, I will end this post! 

Up next: Sent to Spanish Harlem!

[trickeymickey-blog1]

Life Chronicles 1: Shitty Beginnings

While writing a diary of my daily adventures to help write my feelings over just eating them, I will also be writing down the “history” of my life. This is to not only to be therapeutic for myself (no insurance for therapy right now) but I also want others who have gone/are going through similar things I went through to know they aren’t alone. For so many years, I always knew my family was “wrong” but they always made me feel like I was crazy. That I was always the problem and why the family had such a shitty deal. I never knew that my parents and dad’s side of the family had a name. Narcissists. I’m so thankful I have opened my eyes to the truth about my life, but I just need to sort out my past in order to make my future as bright as possible. I promise, as crazy as some of this shit sounds, it is 100% real, I really went through it. Please come along with me.

Trigger Warnings: Rape, thoughts of Abortion, lots of cursing, shitty parents, religious upbringing

.Shitty Beginnings.

My “father” (I hate calling him that) and my mother were truly a match made in hell.

To give some backstory of my parents that may explain how the seeds of narcissism was planted, I will start when they were children and into their early adulthood. My dad was born of a “14 year old prostitute” (his description, not mine) in the 70s and was put up for adoption shortly after birth. My....I honestly don’t know what to call them, they were technically my grandparents but they aren’t biologically related to me. Eh, still, I’ll call them Nana and Grandpa (for now). Anyway, they adopted my dad when he was an infant, this was the second child they had adopted into their family. In total they had three children, 1 biological and 2 adopted. The oldest was the first adopted child, next was my dad, and the youngest was their biological child. (fucking of course he is the middle child, now he can blame his actions on being the middle child!! *sarcasm*) My grandparents were a very religious family and raised my dad and two aunts with a very stern hand. Attending catholic school, church almost every other day, and anything that would give them an ego boost involving the church congregation. My dad revealed in it. So much so that my dad grew up and wanted to become a priest. He went to attend college to become one but his new found alcoholism made it much more difficult to obtain. I’m still not sure if ever passed everything to become a priest but I know he was pretending to be one up until meeting my mother...but we will put that on hold for now. On to my mother....

My mother was born in the mid 60s to two wonderful people (you’ll learn quickly that though my mother turned into a monster late in life, I truly loved her side of the family). She was also technically a middle child, my Memaw and Grandpa had seven children total but only four survived into adult hood. Two were twins of my mother and (I believe) my uncle that didn’t survive. So my mother and uncle should have a twin but they do not. And my uncle Z was killed when he was about 4 or 5. He was killed when he was run over by semi truck right outside of my grandparents home. I think he had wondered into the street and was only spotted when it was too late, it’s something my family never talks about but I know it was probably the most painful thing for my grandparents to go through. When my mother grew a little bit older, this is only something she told me a few years ago, she was raped by a neighborhood boy. I don’t know what became of the boy or whether it’s even the truth (I promise I will explain what I mean when we get to that part of the story) but if it IS the truth, it would explain her sudden weight gain and why she felt she didn’t deserve a good man in life. After high school however, she did finally lose the weight and began looking for work.

Here’s where the stories start to tangle together.

My dad was 21 and my mom was 27. Both worked together at a psych ward (ironic right?) but never actually dated or became a couple.According to my mother, they were “fuck buddies” before the term was created. This was in the early 90s, so it was a very different time than it is today. Being fuck buddies wasn’t really something you would commonly find back then, you were either dating, courting, or married. Case Closed. On top of that, both of my parents came from religious homes, my dad’s being more devout than my mother’s. Both were born and raised Catholic. My dad’s family lived in the country side and my mom’s family lived in the city. We lived in a small town so back then there really was a difference between living in the country vs the city. Essentially, my dad’s family thought my mother’s family was trash. Why? Because they lived in the city. Yes, that’s it. My dad’s family always thought they were holier than thou when it came to how other people’s living style compared to theirs. If you didn’t meet their standards, you were trash. They would associate with you in public to show how “humble” and “friendly” they were, but would talk so much shit about you behind your back.

As you already may have guessed, Catholics don’t believe in using protection when having sex; especially not back then. And as I said, my parents were fuck buddies, not a couple in a loving relationship, but two people who were together and just fucked each other on the weekends. They never dated. Never said “I love you”, just fucked. Then, they fucked UP.

Yep, she got pregnant. Unmarried and pregnant.

Abortion would never have been an option for my mother. (there literally was a sign condemning it right outside of the church we/I grew up in). So her only option was to marry the idiot she got knocked up by and deal with her mistake. But here is where the lies begin. Yes, lies already have happened before the couple is married or the baby is born. They have two different marriage licenses. Yes, two.

They tried to claim that they had a fake wedding and a real wedding but none of the math adds up. Their “fake” wedding was in May the year before I was born and is when they got married in the church in front of the family. But their “real” wedding was done a MONTH before I was born. Fucking what? Why would then need another wedding if they already got married? Tell me where this makes sense. Because either way you slice it, they are lying about something. Because they also claim she wasn’t pregnant when they got married. Yes, she really tried to pull that bullshit with me. EIther date on the marriage license would mean she was pregnant with me. I just don’t know the truth with this. I’ve stopped trying to figure it out but have accepted that I was an accident and my mother was forced into marriage.

And boy, they definitely never let me forget I was an accident.

That is all I better write for now, the next chapter will be about me being born and telling how my early life was like being born to parents who didn’t really want me and didn’t even really want each other.

It’s gonna be one crazy and fucked up ride, buckle up.

[evilelitest2]

Top Nine Reasons why Marxism Failed in Implementation

100 years ago (though not on this day) The Soviet Union overthrew the Tsarist goverment to usher in a new age of Utopian politics..and that didn’t go so well (and now a bunch of tankies are pissed at me). So why is it that Marxism tends to not work out so well in the implementation.  Just forward note, I am mostly talking about the schools of Marxism that are descended from Leninism and actually attempted to control a nation, so when Marxists Orthodoxy folk come in and say “Hey Lenin skipped the Capitalist step” yes I know, I”m talking about the Marxist states that actually exist.  

Number 1: Party Vanguardism 

So while the popular image of Marxist revolutions is a giant crowd of people storming the palaces and killing all the nobles, Marxist organization principle was based around Party Vanguardism, basically a small elite group of ideologically pure Marxists will take over the country in a lightning coup, seize control of the goverment and implement the necessary social reforms for the sake of the people.  The idea is that since the average people are far too ignorant/stupid/religious/superstitious/easily confused what have you appreciate the Marxist Utopian vision, they would basically forcibly implement the system upon them from above.  Party Vanguardism came about in the French Revolution with the Conspiracy of Equals as a response to the sort of self destructive nature of French revolutionary mob politics.  Problem is when you give a small elite total control of the country whose primary qualification is their ideological purity you wind up with a bunch of people living in a total fantasy world and people who aren’t actually qualified are put into positions of power.  Small groups like that are also really suitableness to infiltration by opportunistic egotists (Stalin) but also are prone to corruption and autocracy by those within because those in the vangaurd are like “I seize power” and then they are like “I has power” but they never seem to get to the “giving up power” stage....hmmm

Number 2: No Balance of Power 

So why is it that Marxists regimes always become dictatorships (Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Tito, Castro, the Kim Family and much much more) If your nation is led by a single Party who can best implement the great wonderful Utopian vision, then there isn’t really any room for an opposition party.  At first glance this sounds great, no stooges of the capitalist machine trying to gum up reform and plan military coups (that wasn’t sarcastic that happens a lot with right wing opposition parties), but here is the problem.  If you’re regime has no built in mechanism to counter the leadership if they go wrong....then holy shit will they go wrong.  And ambitious morally dubious men will quickly realize “Wait...if I seize control of this goverment, then I will live out the rest of my life as a communist god king cause there isn’t any check on my power”.  And those men will fight to obtain as much power, and once they have it, it is basically too late for the Communist state, because once a dictator seizes power they can ruin the state so thoroughly it is impossible for it to right itself under communist principles, as we have seen in both the Soviet Union and Maoist China.  Because while Marxists never intend to implement a horrible dictatorship, there is not safeguard to stop it, and that is why it always happens.  Absolute power corrupts absolutely.  

Not that I want to defend the US system too much because it is a mess, but Trump obviously wants to make himself into an autocrat...but he can’t, at least not yet.  The system is so decentralized and opposition is so easy that he can’t even get his travel bans implemented.  Power needs safeguards put into place to keep it in check, otherwise autocracy.

Number 3: Militancy 

This isn’t unique to Communism, and it isn’t always the communists fault, but the violent militant methods embraced by the Leninists descended communist (Yes yes i know not all Communists are Leninists many are peaceful I’m talking about the historical states that have existed).   I know that violent revolution gets romanticized but you know why it so many times turns from “overthrow the fate elites” to “Lets murder everybody” is because it starts as it means to go on.  Once violence becomes an acceptable form of political expression, then violence is just going to happen more, and it becomes just easier to murder you’re political opponents than deal with them in other ways. And when you have an external enemy who the state has to be focused on battling on the first thing to go is individual rights, which is why the French Revolution really went to crazy land once they went to war with Austria and we have seen how the American political system deteriorated once we went to a 16 year long war.  Wars make autocracy more likely, and Marxists states often emerge in a state of war.  This is to say nothing of the fact that when you seize power with weapons, the person with the weapons is always going to be thinking to themselves “I can do this again.”

Number 4: Winner Take All Politics

One of the greatest advantage of democracies is that political losers can still exist within society (one of the greatest failings is that there isn’t any room for economic loser).  Because when making an incorrect political move could result in death, people get a lot more scary.  In a democracy, even a horribly mismanaged one, if you lose an election and can go home to move on with your life, the state as a whole is more stable.  If losing a political battle results in death, then people are going to use any means possible to win, and this is why communist auto-cannibalism comes so quickly, because pretty much everybody has their back to then they will gladly destroy the state in order to come out on top or avoid being killed.  Or like what we saw happen with the Great Leap Forward, people knew that if they didn’t meet production quotas they would be shot, so they lied and said they did, which caused those on top to make terrible estimations about how powerful the state actually was and oh shit famine.  

Number 5: Totalitarianism

Totalitarianism basically means that the state has no independent groups, they have a totality of political power.  I have railed long and hard about how states rights are awful and racist and how much I think the states power needs to be curtailed in favor of the federal goverment, but there is a very good reason why I want state governments to exist.  And I”m not talking about balance of power, by having the implementation of policies go to local governments rather than the central goverment, you can adjust policies to address local concerns.  There are a lot of problems with this like Pork Barrel politics, but one thing you avoid is the constant communist problem of “Lets implement a single policy that doesn’t vary across the entire giant country” which worked out so well with the Great Leap Forward....oh wait.  And since there is no recourse...whoops.

Number 6: Religion

I’m am not trying to get into a religion vs. atheism debate here because I find those debates extremely stupid, just from a practical level targeting people’s religion leads to much more violent reprisals because the common people will ignore their own best interest in order to defend their religion.  The French Revolution really lost its international appeal when they targeted the Catholic Church, same with the Russian and Chinese revolutions, just leave the Church alone and your state will just live longer, no matter how corrupt and conservative they tend to be.

Number 7: Poor Incentive Systems 

One of the biggest issues with communist states  is that it kinda wants people to run on ideologies and so either doesn’t design incentive systems to encourage people to do the work they want, or they only rely on “Do the work or I will shoot you” motivation which just causes this mess of ironically enough, labor problems.  it also makes corruption and needlessly complicated bureaucracy inevitable, which compounds with reason 5 and 1

Number 8: Doesn’t play well with others

Again this isn’t entirely their fault, but communist systems don’t really work co-existing with other countries which means that you don’t usually get a good trade relationship going and the benefits of a debt based economy never really come in, which is why they tend to stagnate economically...along with all the other reasons

Number 9: Its Utopian.  

The problem with Utopian political ideology is that it basically makes any middle ground impossible.  After all, if you are going to bring about a glorious Utopia, then pretty much any crime to achieve that end becomes justified. And if the goal is utopia, why bother with the boring regulatory details like a constitution or specific system. While the American constitution is a giant mess of contradictions and bullshit and it desperately needs reform, but one thing I really like about it is that it assumes everybody is a selfish asshole who is trying to take as much power as possible.  So its designed to try to prevent that, and worked well when it was designed...we haven’t updated it for decades but that is a new problem.  You need to design systems to assume the worse, because the consequences of people taking absolute power are disastrous.  And that is always my issue when I talk to Marxists is that they love theory, but kinda lose when you get to details, which is why marxism is always better as a form of critical theory than an actual implemented policy. 

Ironically bemuse this is a long post, the only people who are going to read it...are Marxists.  Evidently I wasn’t having enough fun getting into fights with Neoreactionaries.  

[bleederziine]

“I Like Weird Complicated Songs”; an Interview with Sadie Dupuis of Speedy Ortiz

Speedy  Ortiz puts the feminine in feminism. Their music is for everyone realizing that feminism isn’t just about women, but examining how attacking femininity is used to pretty much hurt everyone who isn’t wealthy, white, straight and male by birth. And even though talking about oppression is really depressing and often unproductive because of this, Speedy Ortiz is all about what would happen if we put the positivity we talk about all the time into action. Our world could not only be full of interesting discussions and equality, but playful scariness and fairy tale outfits. But Speedy Ortiz’s writing isn’t only valuable in its humor and politics. With a poetry MFA as their lead singer-songwriter, Speedy’s lyrics are insightful, hilarious, and achingly true. In Sub/Verse’s latest interview, I talked to singer, musician, and songwriter Sadie Dupuis about horror movies, political art, songwriting, and much more.

How was SXSW?

Sadie: Pretty good, I haven’t been there an insubstantial amount of times before, so I know what to expect. I enjoyed all the shows we played, and got to eat all the food I like. No complaints really. I got to see less shows than in the past. In the past I was running around in between sets trying to see a million different bands, but this year I took it pretty easy. I went to the showcases we played obviously, and I got to see US Girls, and Girl Ray, Kurt Vile. I went to the AdHoc showcase, and the Don Giovanni showcase.

Inspiration for new album?

SD: Its hard to talk about just one inspiration for the new album; its all kind of older songs that were written that we rewrote, ones that were more personal. I think my goals as a writer shifted away from things that are specific to me, and I’ve tried to write more towards not universal themes, because everyone’s coming from this world and country from different places, which is evident from the presidential election. But certainly the song that came out today was about people performing allyship,  but not putting in the work to help their friends, and putting a burden on them. In the album we explored a lot of big issues with a light touch, because it can be exhausting looking at the news everyday, with practical ways to not lose your mind while you try to make the world a better place.

On the topic of allyship and consent, how do you think you promote and talk about these ideas at your shows and through your work?

SD: Talking about these issues is one way to help people  understand them more. Certainly Speedy Ortiz has tried to do a lot on those roads. We started a hotline a few years ago for people who are feeling unsafe at our shows. Whats been even more effective is passing out information on bystander intervention and de-escalation tactics on print outs at our shows, so that someone who’s just coming by the merch table can read about how to intervene if you see something going on at a show that seems unsafe. We are trying to foster the idea of people taking care of each other, and looking at not only their music scenes but their lives, like, how they can best help their neighbors and friends. I also believe inclusivity is paramount to safety, so we make sure we hire a diverse crew. These are the issues we are all thinking about, not just musicians, so I think it made sense that these ideas bled into the record.

What inspired the song and video “Lucky 88”?

SD: Well you mentioned that I lived in Austin. I took my mom to Austin for Christmas a few years ago. We spent a week in Texas, mostly in Austin but we also went to Houston. We went to the Cy Twombly gallery and it was the day before Christmas eve, and being in Austin which is a very liberal city but also being in Texas with a lot of conservatism, I felt pretty weird, especially with the president we were about to innaugurate. And I was looking at one of his sculptures called Untitled 1988, 1988 being the year I was born, and all of the horrible things that had happened since then and the things I didn’t know about. I ran outside and just started singing the song into my phone! Its about how the generation before me kind of left this world gutted and ruined but also about younger people keeping a watchful eye and working to make things better, and how inspiring those people are to me.

What do get out of Speedy Ortiz and your more solo work with Sad13, individually?

SD: Speedy started as a solo project, and I really enjoyed the outlet of home recording, and working as a solo musician. But then when we started playing as a band, I really grew to love that, and I don’t really like performing solo. We developed a language and a way for working out these songs together. I wouldn’t trade that for anything, but I like having both options, where I can go in my basement for eight hours, and post something on Soundcloud and its done, vs Speedy Ortiz where I want to make sure its something we all feel good about. Even though I write the songs, we work them out as a group.

I noticed a lot of horror movie and monster visuals in your music videos; are those big inspirations?

SD: We can’t help ourselves, we love horror movies! With most of the songs there are big themes, but we try to approach them with levity. I think a more literal video would be too heavy handed. Daryl our bassist went to film school, and our drummer Mike is really interested in film, always archiving old film stuff. They always have a really strong aesthetic plan for what the videos should be. I like doing that stuff too, but its cool that we can all come together on that and do something creative.

What are some of your favorite movies?

SD: As you might have guessed, I really like horror movies! Scream is my favorite series of movies. I’m coming at it from a pop horror/horror comedy background. I think my bandmates have a more refined taste in movies. I actually think I saw all of the Oscar nominated movies from last year, which is pretty rare. I really liked Moonlight from last year, and I saw I, Tonya which was really good too. I like horror, comedy, even really serious political commentary movies…

I used to have a job at a video store, which was like the best job I ever had, and there was a deal for video clerks where you could see any movie at a theater for free. I don’t  care if a movie’s bad, I just feel like its the most decadent and luxurious experience, being in a movie theater.

What do you do on tour, entertainment/reading/movies wise?

SD: What am I reading… last year in Glasgow I got a bunch of stuff from this place called Good Press, that published a lot of short run poetry, really small press academic stuff, essays, stuff like that. All the books are shrink wrapped, so you just have to trust that whatever you got is good. I was cleaning out my basement and found them in a record box so I’ve just been working my way through that stuff. Its all prose poetry and very experimental, stuff like that.

Do you think getting a poetry MFA helps your songwriting?

SD: I think honing any of your artistic sensibilities helps the others, in the way that so many musicians I know are really great visual artists. I think having an artistic practice, even if its outside your field, is bound to have an impact on your other creative work. I think it might be a detriment to my career because some of the things people really like about songwriting are things that are easy to remember or easy to sing along to, things that repeat, whereas, with my background in poetry, I’m always trying to think of the most not necessarily the most accessible  way to say something, and I definitely don’t repeat things much. So its bad for my pop song writing, and good for the weirdos who like weird complicated songs.

What were you into in high school, especially music? Any guilty pleasure stuff?

SD: Let me think, its been a while, I’m old now… I still like a lot of the stuff I listened to then, I started listening to New Pornographers again. A lot of Matador bands, like Helium and Pavement, and I’m really lucky that I’m friends with some of them now.

You have a really cool way of dressing on stage. How does that work/contribute to your music and performance?

SD: Aw thanks! I try. I played in bands since high school and I was used to being the only woman on stage or on tour, and I kinda got accustomed to this falsely masculine aesthetic, and I would just dress like the boys. Thats still kind of how I dress at home, jeans and a flannel. But at some point, the lack of femininity that I started to feel that if you were going to make rock music you had to fit into the male aesthetic, and that seemed like bullshit to me. I wanted people in the audience to not think they had to wear a man costume in order to play technical guitar music. So I started dressing like a fairy princess that can also shred! Its been a few years of that, with some slightly more elaborate costuming. When I see people in a bright or interesting outfit, it makes me happy to see something beautiful. I want to do that for other people, if their having a shitty day so they can have something cool to look at.

I know it might be goofy to go way back two albums ago, but I wanted to ask you about the title of your album two albums ago, Major Arcana.

SD: Tarot cards were really interesting to me back then. Its basically a breakup record, but I didn’t want to just write about that. I’ve always been interested in magic, and magic as an alternate religion, and witches and witchcraft in general. All of the songs were kind of through the lens of me being a witch and the songs are kind of like incantatory spells, and tarot was one of the lenses I used to find meaning at that time. My dad was Jewish and my mom was Catholic, and I had some education in both, but I’ve never been very religious but have always been interested in magical practices.

You’ve lived in a lot of places; Philly right now, Massachusetts, Austin. How have those places contributed and/or helped your writing.

SD: I think where you live affects you, and who you are affects what you write. I don’t know if its as direct as me moving to Philly made me write like a Philadelphian, but the reasons I moved to those different places was loving the bands and scenes at those times. In  a lot of my early Speedy work from those times I would put little easter eggs in songs to say, oh, this riff is from Pile or whatever. To a certain extent I still do that. There are so many bands in Philly I love, like Palm, Japanese Breakfast… I think anywhere you live, as a music fan, you’re going to internalize that. But at the same time I feel like I could go out in the middle of nowhere and still write songs.

INTERVIEW AND ILLUSTRATION BY CHLOE GRAHAM

[theboardwalkbody]

47, 42, 37?

37. What’s your relationship with religion like?

The short version: Complicated

The long version: I was brought up Roman Catholic at my paternal sides VEHEMENCE. The same forcefulness that forced a Jewish woman to convert and baptize her children unless she force them and herself to face ridicule their entire lives at the hand of their own family members. My mom, a Methodist, was never too religious and mostly celebrated the Major Holidays and called it a day. The Roman Catholic side ALSO celebrated the Major Holy Days (added Ash Wednesday and Palm Sunday) but were never the ‘grace before meals and church every Sunday variety’. But for some reason the ALIGNMENT or DESIGNATION of Roman Catholic was/is a DEFINING CHARACTER TRAIT. This I do not understand. Anyway - my mom refused to convert despite their protests.

Still - I attended a Christian Pre-school (location was a factor) and before/after classes we would say the Our Father. I was baptized as Catholic, I was enrolled in CCD (I still have no idea what that stands for) and attended every Sunday during the school year. I made my Holy Communion and my Confirmation. My mom picked out Cecilia (saint of music) for my Confirmation name because of how much I liked music. My sponsor (the person who is with you when you make your confirmation and is ‘responsible for guiding you to jesus’ or something) was one of my Aunts. I was my sister’s sponsor for her confirmation as at the time my parents were in the middle of a nasty divorce and my mom did not want my dad or his family to be there (as a huge FUCK YOU because THEY are the Catholics) and because my mom and her family are Methodist they can not be sponsors. So I was the only option. 

But what does this mean? I have no idea. 

1. I hardly understand any of my own religion. I don’t know the difference between Catholic and Christian. Why are fucking FB notifications popping up on my computer all of a sudden I did not authorize this what the fuck. I learned NOTHING in CCD despite the fact I was SUPPOSED to be taught about the Saints and the various religious texts. I never paid attention because I was bored the fuck out of my mind. I never really cared.

2. But I was scared. Catholicism, in my own personal experience, is based on FEAR a lot. NEVER DO THIS AND NEVER DO THAT BECAUSE YOU WILL GO STRAIGHT TO HELL DO NOT PASS GO DO NOT COLLECT 200.00. I have been to church only when FORCED for someone’s baptism or communion or confirmation (or my own) or marriage. Here’s the three things you experience in church: a) lovely music that is kind of warming to the soul, b) SINNERS GO TO HELL c) your family members yelling at you to sit still, be quiet, do not embarrass us, be a perfect little angel all while you are UNCOMFORTABLE AS FUCK in a starchy dress because apparently when you go to church you need to be dressed like you’re about to meet God himself.

I was always scared I would go to Hell for one thing or another growing up: swearing, lying, stealing an eraser from a classmates desk in 2nd grade and feeling guilty so ditching it in a different classmates desk a few feet away, and masturbating. LOL During your confirmation you’re supposed to go into a confession box and confess all your sins so you can start your Confirmed Life free of sin - I didn’t tell the priest about my masturbating and when he asked “is that all you have to confess?” I said yes. So I started my Confirmed Life with two sins: a) chronic masturbating, and b) I fucking lied to a priest. So I assume I am going to Hell in a hand-basket. 

I was fortunate enough to be invited to a synagogue a few times by a friend. I remember I was TERRIFIED the first time I went. I assumed, due to ignorance and my only experience thus far, that I would be yelled at and dammed - the norm at church. I tagged along anyway, to make my friend happy, and borrowed some clothes to attend (black skirt and shoes, white shirt). I was even more scared after learning there was an even stricter dress code than Church. As I sat there, trying to understand the words the rabbi was saying for a SOLID TWENTY MINUTES before leaning over and asking my friend “wait - is he speaking English?” only to have her look at me with WTF written all over her face and reply “no....”, I was so paranoid I’d be “found out”. What I mean is - I felt like an Outsider. Like I was Intruding. Like I had “Catholic” stamped all over my forehead and everyone could see it clear as day and that someone, eventually, would stand up and shout at me to leave and curse me for desecrating a holy place with my presence. None of that happened, naturally, but when my friend and her family went to the rabbi after the service to discuss with him plans for her bat mitzvah I was shaking with fear because HE’S LIKE IN CHARGE AND WE’RE TALKING TO HIM AND HE’S DEF GOING TO KNOW I’M NOT SUPPOSED TO BE THERE. Anyway - I was never kicked out, I went back a few more times and the anxiety went away. My mom was like ‘that’s cool - it’s a new experience’ and when my GRANDMOTHER found out... well, she flipped. “DO YOU STILL LOVE JESUS? YOU’RE GOING TO GO TO HELL IF YOU EVER GO BACK THERE. YOU NEED TO GO TO CHURCH TOMORROW. YOU NEED TO BEG JESUS FORGIVENESS”. I went back a few more times and just didn’t tell her. 

I think I actually liked it better than Church. 

And other side note: whenever Jewish people happen to ask me my religion (not often but it has happened a few times working in the hospital and once during nursing school) I always feel really bad about telling them I am Catholic. I become ashamed and feel like I need to apologize. I never quite understood that, until I met a Jewish Classmate who explained that “all the Catholic’s I have met in the past have been really antisemitic”. And then I remembered my grandmothers treatment of Jewish people, including my aunt and cousins - her own grandchildren - and I realized. I feel like I owe everyone an apology on behalf of people like my grandmother.

3. Here’s my Adult Feelings. I don’t have a problem with religion. Any of them. I also don’t have a problem with anyone’s lack of religion. As long as you’re NOT AN ASSHOLE then you and I are good. I don’t go to church - I don’t care to. I do not want a religious wedding ceremony. I will PROBABLY baptize my children (unless perhaps I go the route of my uncle and marry outside of my religion in which I will allow my children to get older and DECIDE FOR THEMSELVES what they would like to do/which religion they want IF ANY - this was what my aunt and uncle wanted to do before my grandma and some other family members got involved). I will teach my children what I know - Jesus is a dude I guess - here’s easter and christmas and here’s your presents. But it’s never going to be a Big Deal. Because it’s not a Big Deal to me. 

4. Why It’s Complicated. Do I believe that God exists? I want to say yes, but I know I say it out of FEAR. I believe “I may not go to church, and I may curse like a sailor and masturbate like my fucking health depends on it, but fuck - I know I am a morally sound person and God knows this, too, therefore He can judge me in the way I conduct myself with other human beings. I don’t need to get on my knees and send him postcards for him to know I’m Good™.” However - recently I’ve had some Jesse Custer level moments of “God, I am reaching out and I really need some fucking help here” only to be met with NOTHING in response. I prayed during my Nursing School Grade Appeal meeting. Just praying for ANYTHING so I could get back into the program. What happened? Reality happened - I did NOT get back into that program. In that moment I thought: That’s it - there is no God at least not one who GAF about me. I cried harder.This month I went to a University to try and get into their nursing program. Upon arriving at my meeting I was told I had been misinformed and the school did NOT offer a Nursing Program. As I waited for the woman at the desk to grab the advisor anyway to discuss options I tried praying again - just for things to work out. They didn’t and I got angry - Of course they didn’t work, I thought, because it’s all a bunch of Bullshit.

SO yeah - it’s complicated. I verge on “It’s all bullshit” after spending about 10yrs thinking “well MAYBE it’s not - maybe it’s real - but I’ll be judged on my treatment of others, not on my practice of going to church and shit”. And even still all of it was based on FEAR. Also the sky outside has gone from green to red. What a storm.

42. What’s something you’re afraid that you’re capable of?

I am afraid that I am capable of fucking my entire life up. In two ways: 

1. Suicide2. Self-Sabotage. 

In terms of Issue 1 - I have gotten close with a lot of thoughts in the past. Three times I almost actually carried through with it. Twice spontaneously, and once was a “if no one answers my next phone call for help I am going to just give up and go swallow all those pills”. Someone did answer that phone. I called 5 people because I think deep down I didn’t want to give up, but every phone call that went unanswered I got closer and closer to ending it. My stepbrother answered call #5 on what I am almost convinced was one of the last rings. In the past I maybe had something to stop me - something saying ‘you need to live because XYZ needs you or because you need to ABC’. I’ve got none of that left anymore.

In terms of Issue 2 - I talked about it a little the other day, but my therapist isn’t wrong in regards to the fact that all my behaviors are destroying myself. I complain about being broke and yet I spend every dollar I have on garbage and food. I complain that I am unattractive and overweight and yet I continuously eat nothing but fast food and go out to restaurants by myself. I am out of shape and have high cholesterol, I continue to sit on my ass and shove fried food in my mouth. I want to get back into Nursing School but I spent all summer moping about not being in Nursing School and Having No Money and Being Depressed that I made 0 fucking effort to get back INTO it. I want to be hired as a nurse for the company I work for and yet I call out of work constantly and now have gotten FUCKING IN TROUBLE for it. It’s like I have two lists in my head. Good Wants (nursing career, weight loss, health increase) and Bad Wants (immediate satisfaction: clothes, food, vacations, etc.) and the ONLY wants I give into are the BAD ones. 

Yes, it’s hard - I’ve got the Anxiety and the Depression. I have no motivation, think everything is pointless, and have 0 hope for the future. 

But I am also lazy and impulsive and both of those things need to stop. I have coddled myself all summer and said it was OK to lay down and Give Up. Hell, LAST NIGHT I laid in bed and thought “but what if I did just give up? what if I quit my job, stopped going to school, and just decided to lay down in bed and never move again. I could be 800lbs and shit myself and then probably go to jail for never paying any of my bills - maybe I could say I’m insane and be locked up in a psych facility for the rest of my life - I could go through the motions of just existing every day.”. Of course it isn’t what I WANT with my life - I want to LIVE it and I want to be HAPPY - but this is the way I function anymore. 

I am single-handedly destroying my OWN life. And that I KNOW I am capable of now.

47. Have you ever forced or let someone take a fall for you?

I understand this to mean “take blame for you” and not “have you ever pushed someone down” but yes - I have actually pushed someone and they fell down. I shoved a friend of mine back when we were like 14 and he tripped over a log behind him and fell on his ass. He was very upset and didn’t want to talk to me for a bit until I apologized. I feel bad now because I know what inspired the push and it was REALLY SHITTY of me to do it. But yeah.

Anyway - the real question: The only thing I can remember is that time I stole that eraser from my classmates desk back in second grade but then I felt guilty (and also knew that they would recognize the eraser as theirs if I took it out) and ditched it in a different classmates desk. 

My logic there was: they wont think it was me because they’ll see it in THEIR desk and not MY desk and they will thing THAT PERSON stole it and get mad at THEM instead of me because they won’t know I did it. I honestly don’t remember the outcome of it. But I don’t think anything happened. I think, if I remember correctly, the person pulled it out of their desk and was like “how did this get in my desk” and handed it back to the proper owner and said “i found your eraser in my desk I don’t know how it got there, but here you can have it back” and the owner said “ok thanks”. and it was 100% not a big deal because they were both confused as fuck.

I KNOW I GET REALLY IN-DEPTH WITH THESE I AM SORRY BUT DO PLEASE ASK MORE.

[alexciting-blog1]

Storytime!

okay so I rarely make my own textposts, but then, up to this year, I didn’t really have any good stories to tell...

So earlier this year, I was on a religious retreat at the Mont Saint Michel with my Catholic-as-fuck private French school. Everything had been going all right, it had been a couple of weeks since the priest had done anything particularly offensive (such as tell the girls that we would all be pregnant within a decade and that it was inevitable as we are essentially baby-making machines, or imitating French Créole accents in the most patronizingly racist manner, or making fun of Muslims, but I digress)

Anyway. So we get back from the beach, there’s little less than a hundred of us, and to my dismay, they’ve separated the boys and the girls dorm buildings. Like, instead of putting us into separate dorms within the same building, the boys are staying a block away. Which means they have to walk a whole block to see us. Which sucks. Still not on topic though.

So they hand out these booklets, which have prayers and songs and biblical excerpts ect in them, and we stick them in our bags. It’s only a couple hours later, until I actually flip through them, that I gasp in utter horror.

There was a badly translated Pope speech, to which two pages of the booklet were dedicated. One of the paragraphs was useless to the point of the speech, but it had the most transphobic bullshit in it, that I’m absolutely sure is due to liberties taken by the translator. (Talking about the abomination of gender studies and teachings, and how people can’t just “change genders” yada yada “I hate social progress” bullshit)

I got super pissed. I crossed out the offensive paragraph, and wrote “les droits des personnes trans sont une urgence” in next to it (a chant that resonated at Paris Pride 2016, “Trans people’s rights are an emergency”). I was ranting about it through dinner, and through mass (although quietly because duh, mass), and this one teacher seemed pretty supportive and open-minded, so some of my faith in humanity was restored.

I went up to my dorm, grabbed a pen and paper, and wrote a petition for my LGBTQIA+ Parisian youth association (MAG) to come give one of their IMSs, Intervention en Milieu Scolaire, which translates to school intervention, I guess. The mag does these regularly; they go to schools and talk about homophobia, lesbophobia, biphobia, transphobia, and inclusivity. 

After that, I went down to the courtyard, and started asking people to sign. Over the next few days of the trip, I kept asking people to sign. The teacher didn’t want to get implicated in it, which saddened me, but she had encouraged me to speak up against it in the first place, and she continued doing that. 

Of course, in this school, during my signature collection, I witnessed a lot of very saddening displays of transphobia, but that didn’t stop me. 

Over the course of a week, I had gathered 52 student signatures, out of a class of less than a hundred. Most people I had talked to were uneducated about the issue, but very open-minded about hearing more about it and interested in my explanations. I got a lot of smiles, nods, pats on the back, and “good luck”s from people of whom I least expected it.

Once I reached my goal, I started doing research into whether it was possible to make it easier for the catholic administration to swallow, and found a bunch of french articles about the Pope talking to a trans man, even though most of them were ultra transphobic (which is why I’m not linking them), the actual Pope himself was very civil, open-minded, and never said a thing against the transgender community.

It’s kind of the same phenomenon as when something is great, or ok, but the fandom sucks. I found one website that was very Catholic and very open to trans issues, but sadly I’ve lost the link.

I then talked to the guy in charge of MAG IMSs, and gave him contact access to the people who would deal with administration at my school.

After a couple days of nervously having the petition and offensive booklet in my backpack, I finally went to hand it in, with a good friend for moral support.

I was terrified and numb while handing it in; the rest of the day, I was twisting my hands thinking “what have I done, what have I done, what have I done”

A few days later, my father (who is on the school board) came home after a meeting and asked me to sit down.

He told me that the principal had slid him the petition to him during the meeting quietly, and said “look what your daughter has been doing”

I might want to add that between the trip and that moment, I had been voted class delegate, which means that I was the one to attend meetings in the name of my class, and represent them, as well as meet with the principal on a regular basis to discuss issues.

He already knew me on a first name basis for several reasons. During my internship, there had been awkward moments when I ran into him at the bakery, he would strike up a conversation, and I would have to introduce him to my colleagues (”Hi guys! This is my principal. No pressure”)

So he had to talk to my father, explaining that it was impossible for the IMS to happen, because half of the school’s parents were ultra-Catholics who don’t believe in contraception and would pull their kids, money, and good name out.

Just a couple years ago, when same-sex marriage was legalized in France, there was a huge parent fight between my best friend’s mom (who is a professor in some kind of anti-discrimination class, maybe gender-equality, not sure) and the mega-Catholics which exploded dramatically.

His exact words were “this is how a principal gets fired”.

My dad told me that there was no way it was going to happen, and he agreed with me in my hysteric breakdown that “it wasn’t fair and that the dumb conservatives were ruining the world”. He admitted later in a conversation with my mom’s friend that he was “secretly proud of me for doing it”. 

So all I got, for all of that trouble, was a speech during the next mass: “look around you, look at the diversity, the different people from different heritages” yeah because it’s illegal to not admit a student based on their race, congratulations for being within the law and not being a total discriminatory piece of shit, do you want a cookie?

Oh and then the priest wanted to “speak to me privately” but I kept blowing him off and he kept forgetting because he’s a senile idiot, so he never even got to lecture me, yay!

So yeah. What I got out of this ordeal is that most of my classmates are decent people and that my parents are supportive. But the world is still going to shit. yay!