Playlist

I love to find music that speaks to me when I'm working through deep crap. Here's what's on my playlist lately.

P!nk: Fuckin' Perfect

Tori Amos: Girl

Tori Amos: Precious Things

Amanda Palmer: In My Mind

Roy Zimmerman: Jerry Falwell's G-d

Losing My Religion (Or "Throwing the Baby Out With the Bathwater")

In my head, I already hear people asking me "Well, sure your childhood faith was crazy-cakes cultish fundamentalism, but the Catholic church isn't like that. Why throw the baby out with the bathwater / tar everyone with the same brush / insert the metaphor of your choice here / judge a radically different institution for the same crime?" In short, why isn't the title of this blog "Ex-Pentecostal" rather than "Nascent Nullifidian"?

Fair question. And the answer is two fold, really, one arising internally, and one externally.

In the first place, the internal reason: my judgement is suspect. I was indoctrinated into a cult. Brainwashed. I was literally unable to critically evaluate my belief in G-d. That faith system had multiple highly effective techniques that were designed to shut down critical thinking, judgement, evaluation. In the light of that, my conversion to Catholicism is highly suspect. In Catholic terms, it fails to meet the standards of full consent of the will. Unless and until I tear down every single false assumption that my latter belief was based on, that latter belief is suspect.  If you've inherited land, and you build a big fancy house on it, and then you find out that there's a sinkhole under your big fancy house, you don't keep living in the house. You inspect the soundness of your house. You determine if the structure is still sound. And even if it is, you can't just keep living in it. You have to move the house to solid ground before you can relax in it. 

In the second place, the external reason: the Catholic Church has made serious, grave errors. They have persisted in these errors despite calls, exhortations, and demands that they stop and correct these errors. The sexual abuse of children in the Catholic church is not even the biggest sticking point. The biggest sticking point is the cover up. Yes, there will be predators. Yes, the predators will probably be in the Catholic Church in roughly the same proportion as the rest of society. Yes, some of them will escape detection until they have hurt people. No one expects the Church to be filled with only perfect people. No one expects the Catholic Church to be prescient. What we do expect of the Catholic Church is what we expect of every reasonable, responsible institution in the world: when predators are discovered,  you do not spirit them away to Rome out of the reach of prosecution, and treat them like royalty. YOU CALL THE FUCKING COPS. 

Look, I was not molested by a priest, but I was molested. I was maltreated sexually, and it was not invisible. There were signs and symptoms. People knew or suspected. Teachers talked to my family. Doctors talked to my family. I was blamed, and ignored. The perpetrator had hurt other people in the same way. People who could have intervened, instead looked the other way. People ignored what was right in front of their faces. People took the cheapest, crappiest, most useless advice in the universe: "Ignore it and maybe it will go away." 

Now, I don't expect perfection, but I expect more than the absolute, rock-bottom worst humanity has to offer. My family were poor, drunken, uneducated, completely fucked up, inbred, redneck, hillbilly scum. If you claim to be the source of truth, and the foundation of faith and morals, if you claim to be the institution founded by G-d Himself, then by G-d Himself, you have to do better than that! 

In the light of the Church's repeated choice to protect itself, its reputation, its wealth and its standing against the very advice of the G-d they claim to worship (something, something, something millstones), it is a fair question to ask: Where is your G-d? If you can swallow the camel of wholesale child rape, yet strain at the gnat of the ordination of women, you have no grounds to defend yourself when people suggest that perhaps right and wrong mean less to you than power and prestige. 

If you are indistinguishable from the world, then it is not unfair for the world to look at you and conclude that you are no more, no less than the rest of us. It is not unfair for you to be painted as merely one other stripe of screwed up humanity. And frankly, it is an obscenity for you to demand otherwise. It is an obscenity for Benedict XVI, and John Paul II to write over and over and over and over that the sins of the laity are "profoundly disordered", "intrinsic evils", and "anathema", while repeatedly maintaining that the sins of the hierarchy are nuanced, complex, and moderated and partially excused by the prevailing culture of the times. 

I AM THAT I AM

I've been thinking a lot obsessing about G-d lately. If there is a G-d. If so, what he/she/it might be like. The less certain I get about any knowledge of G-d, the more I feel an expansiveness and a love connecting me to lots of other people and things. WTF, right?

A week or so ago I wanted pictures of sunrise from the mountains, so I got up before dawn and drove north of Boulder to Flagstaff Mountain. Only I didn't actually check the weather or anything. I got there, and it was already a grey bucket of suck. It was cold, overcast, and had I concentrated on what I wanted instead of what I got, it would have been ugly and unwelcome. Instead, I focused on the here and now, on what was right there in front of me. This tree, this icicle, hanging from this rock. This mist swirling around my feet and shoulders.

I ended up having the most amazing experience ever. It started to snow. Black ice formed, and the dogs and I slid our way down the mountain. There were wild turkeys. There were elk. There was holiness and connection and light and love. I pondered the "mountaintop experiences" of my misspent youth in Pentecostal holy rollerism. I concluded that maybe they were all wrong and stupid to attribute a mountain top experience to G-d when maybe it was just the mountaintop.

Later that week I told my friend Irim about the experience. She reminded me of the name G-d gave himself in the bible: I AM, meaning "this present moment." That resonated.

Yesteday I went to contemplative mass at the liberal Catholic parish. There was music and there was silence. We had reflection questions. This was the one that spoke to me.

"In Matthew, Christ the King is described as a shepherd.  Some modern shepherds are using technology to keep track of their sheep: a collar with a heart monitor senses when sheep are in distress and sends a text message to the shepherd, along with the sheep’s location.  If you could send a text to Christ the Shepherd, what would it say?"

After making my way home on public transit, I texted my priest the following: "Dude. What the fuck are you thinking? Where the hell are you? Get your ass back here. Do you have any clue what these wolves are up to?" #textstojesus

Later in the mass we did the sign of peace in silence. I felt an echo of the mountaintop as I held and hugged people in silence. Eucharist was immediately afterwards. Eucharist is the center of the life of the church for me. It is the reason we come together. I was scared, and I was yearning. I cannot say that I believe currently. I cannot even say I want to believe. I want to tear down everything that is false, and rebuild what can remain, no matter how small. So I stood in line, and when Mother Kae put communion in my hand I literally COULD NOT say "Amen". I started to cry. I said "L-rd, I believe. Help Thou my unbelief."

I took the Body of Christ and ate. I took the Blood of Christ and drank. There was no connection, there was no Jesus. There was dry bread. I choked on the dry bread. There was wine. I had a sip of red wine, and there was nothing except a slight improvement in the ability to swallow the bread. I stumbled back to my chair. I sniffled quietly. I let the tears fall. I remembered the mountain top, and I remembered I AM, this present moment. And I thought "Even in dryness, I AM. Even in unbelief, I AM. Even in nothingness, I AM. So this too is G-d. This too is this present moment. This too is presence.

And it was better marginally less bad.

Eating the Ghosts

When you see a new counselor, you have to do something called a trauma history, and lay out in some kind of organized manner, the things that have hurt you deeply enough that you need recovery from them. I have always hated that. For one thing, I don't know this person yet, why should I trust them with that much? Second, because it just feels unreal to me. It doesn't seem possible that one person should have had such a shit hand dealt to them. And so I hate it ever so very much.

Several years ago I wrote a trauma history on register tape, and when I went to the therapist's office, I flung it on the ground dramatically and we both laughed when it rolled under the couch. That sucker was long though.

I've used a lot of different metaphors to talk about healing from pervasive childhood abuse. That it's like an onion: you heal in layers. The outside being the easiest, and most superficial, then the interior layers getting more raw, more intense. Currently, my favorite metaphor is that healing is like trying to untangle a box of necklaces after a move. It's challenging to figure out what to untangle first, because no matter what chain you pull, it's attached to every other chain. Try to tease out the roots of your eating disorder, and BAM! suddenly you've pulled "Why I hate sloppy kisses" into your lap. Pull too hard, and suddenly every damn issue you've ever had is laying on the floor in a giant mess and you can't take a step without triggering yourself.

I think the Gordian knot at the center of my pile of necklaces is tied up with my faith of origin and my father's insanity with regards to faith healing. I was raised Pentecostal Assembly of G-d. To me it was just church. I had no context to put it in, and I didn't know that it was a relatively small, recent Christian denomination. I did not realize that it was born at the turn of the last century and came of age during World War I. I couldn't articulate that it was a desperate attempt to claim control in a world that must have seemed increasingly out of control. No, to me it was just The Truth.

I was born with a condition called amblyopia. Crossed eyes, in the vernacular. I remember being dragged to many optometrists and opthamologists from the time I was two. It was universal consensus among the doctors that I needed corrective surgery to save my vision. It was my father's opinion that surgery was bullshit and that Jesus would heal me. In fact, I remember one painfully embarrassing visit when I was quite young, pre school age, so four or less, when my father had coached me to tell the doctor to "Go fly a kite because Jesus will fix my eyes." I asked over and over if it would REALLY be okay for me to say something so rude. Random Opthamologist: I'm sorry. I'm so, so very sorry. Really. My dad was a dick, and I was an idiot. In my defense, I was four. So, um, yeah. That happened.

Anyway, by the time I was seven, my mother had won the argument, and Dr. John Edwards of Saint John's in Tulsa, Oklahoma did the corrective surgery. But by that time it was cosmetic only, just a clip of the muscles so I wouldn't look weird, and kids wouldn't make fun of me. My brain had already decided that my left eye was a troublemaking little bitch and it was totally going to ignore it from here on out.

However, the interesting part is what transpired BETWEEN the ages of four and seven. At some point in there, my father decided that just praying on our own wasn't doing it, so he started taking me to faith healing services. Most of them were at our little church, some were at other little churches, and a few were far away in bigger churches in Oklahoma City and Tulsa.

It worked like this. They would have a sermon, and during the altar call, the preacher would ask for people to claim their healing from Lord Jesus. Sorry, LORD JEEEEEESUS! The sick person would walk up to the altar, and the preacher would anoint them with oil. I always got olive oil rubbed on my eyelids. Then he would lay hands on them and ask G-d to heal them. It was pretty sedate and ordinary (for a Pentecostal service anyway).

But a few times a year, we would have something called a revival meeting. Revival meetings were to call the faithful back to true repentance, and renew our "zeal for the L-rd". Revival meetings lasted one or two weeks, and instead of going to church three or four times a week, you were there every damn night, and twice on Sundays. We usually had a guest preacher there, and our regular Sunday giving was expanded to nightly "love offerings".

The guest preacher was always bigger, louder, more everything than our local preacher. The music was always bigger and louder too. And so the healing services were bigger and louder. On this particular night that I'm remembering, there was a loud, booming, angry sermon, and then they gave the standard altar call and my father led me up to the altar. The guest speaker picked me up and stood me on the altar. He took my head in his hands. He called for our pastor, my father, and all the elders of the church to lay hands on me with him. I remember being excited, and scared all at the same time. Then he started screaming at me and shaking my head. He was praying in tongues, and in English all at the same time, all mixed up. He kept ordering the "demons of blindness to leave this child of G-d in JESUS'S NAME!" Every time he said "In JESUS'S NAME!" he would either give my head a violent shake, or he would hit me. My pastor kept whispering that if I just believed enough, G-d would heal me.

I don't know how long that went on, but at some point I decided to make a deal with G-d. I would prove to G-d that I believed. Now, I was terrified of the dark. My mother's not-so-helpful advice that "there's no reason to be scared of the dark. The dark can't hurt you. Only what's IN the dark is scary." was, unsurprisingly, not helpful. I decided that the offering I could make to G-d, to prove that I believed in him, was to voluntarily remain in the dark. I would close my eyes, and not open them till the next morning, at which time, I would obviously be healed.

So I closed my eyes and I prayed to Jesus with all my little heart. I clung to my daddy's hand on our way back to our pew. I kept my eyes closed until the service was over. I kept them closed on the walk to the car. I kept them closed on the drive home. I got undressed and ready for bed with my eyes closed. I kept my eyes squeezed tight shut as I climbed into bed and eventually fell asleep.

The next morning after I realized I was awake, I was afraid to open my eyes. Eventually though, I did open them, and my eyesight was unchanged. I couldn't make sense of that, because I had prayed, I had believed. I was completely confused. But my father wasn't confused. He had listened to the sermon, and he knew what was wrong: demons.

The next time my mother brought up the subject of  eye surgery, my father relented and told her she could do whatever she wanted because "the devil has that one anyway."

This is another one of those things that I never forgot, I just forgot how it felt. I can't imagine being that five year old girl, standing on that altar, surrounded by old creepy guys with their hands all over me, while a screaming maniac alternately shook me and hit me, yelling about demons the whole time. I LIVED THAT, BUT I CAN'T IMAGINE THAT. I know I must have been so scared. I don't know how an entire community could look at that as some kind of religious theater, and not just run up and snatch that poor little girl up, hold her tight, and tell them all that they were wrong and what they were doing was evil. I CAN'T IMAGINE HOW MY OWN MOTHER SAT THERE WATCHING THAT.

But yes, that is the center of it all, as far as I can tell. That is the fracture line of my brokenness. And everything else spirals out from that. The molestation that I couldn't stop. My father's belief that I was evil, and thus a whore. All of it.

I Love My Fat

I've been in therapy on and off again for twenty five years.

I've been dieting on and off again for thirty five years.

At some point those two things were going to intersect. And so they have.

This latest round of examination and poking started off by me being wildly successful at weight loss.

I'd started at 347 pounds in October, 2012. By January of 2014 I weighed 184 pounds. 184 pounds was exactly one pound less than I weighed when I graduated from high school. In high school I felt fat, ugly, freakish, and unloveable.

One of my best friends was a guy that I was crushing on so hard. He confided one night that what he really, really wanted more than anything, was a girl with my personality but who looked like Connie. Ah, Connie. Green eyes, curly brown hair, big tits, tiny waist: your basic nightmare. He elaborated, explaining that while I was smart, and deep, and passionate, and we could talk about anything, she was shallow and boring and annoying. "So, why her and not me?" I asked. "But you're not pretty. She's so pretty." Cue Tori Amos in 3. . . 2. . . 1. . .

Precious Things

Incidentally, I found out later that they dated. It didn't work out.

I was also raped at a graduation party. When I weighed 185 pounds.

Over the years, I gained weight. Some years I would gain a little. Some, a lot. And I hated my fat. I hated myself. I knew I was not pretty. But hey, it wasn't okay to be pretty. Pretty girls were whores anyway.

And over the years I slept around. A lot. I fucked guys I barely knew. I fucked guys I didn't like. I fucked guys I was desperately crazy about. I had sex  that I wanted to have. I had revenge sex. I had bored sex. I had a lot of sex I didn't want to have, because I couldn't say no. I wasn't a prick tease. But I wasn't a whore either. Why wasn't I a whore? I mean, I was whoring it up big time. I was probably the whoriest whore that ever whored, except for the money thing. But when you're an evangelical Christian, it doesn't really matter that no money exchanged hands. Prostitutes take money for sex. And yeah, all prostitutes are whores, but this is the thing:

Not all whores are prostitutes.

Sometimes whores are just women who like sex. Women who cut their hair. Women who wear too much make up.Women with long fingernails. Women who want to look attractive for men. They're whores.

Not me. I was ugly. Everyone said so. I didn't care what men thought of me, OBVIOUSLY. I mean, sure, I'd paint my face. Whore! And yeah, I'd paint my nails. Whore! And the hair! I dyed my hair as red as I could make it. Fucking cheap trash whore! But I wasn't pretty! LOOK! I'm fat! So not pretty. Not a whore.

So, in my bumbling, inept, oh-my-g*d-really-i'm-free-i'm-on-my-own-i-have-no-idea-what-i'm-doing-here-do-you-think-they-can-tell way, I used my fat as my armor. I used my fat to enter this crazy world called sexuality. I put on my fat to deal with the utterly toxic task of becoming at home in my adult female body in just the same way that a scientist puts on the thick gloves and stands behind the lead-lined glass to handle radioactive materials. 

But that was then, and this was now. And I was looking in the mirror and seeing pretty. I was seeing strong, and confident. And I was okay with that, or trying to be okay with that.

I shared on my blog, on my facebook, I talked about losing weight. People asked me about losing weight. My girlfriends praised me. My husband praised me. And then, the shit hit the fan, because other men started noticing, started congratulating me. Started complimenting me.

Started calling me pretty, gorgeous, attractive.

What the actual fucking fuck?

What do I do with that? Why are they saying that? Don't they know that I'm a GOOD GIRL? I'm MARRIED! I'm MONOGAMOUS! WHY ARE THEY CALLING ME A WHORE??

Weight loss totally fucking stalled. I probably lost fifty pounds losing the same four pounds, between 185 and 189 over and over and over again, but I wasn't going anywhere. My workouts got erratic, my food prep got crazy. My sex drive crashed, hit the floor, and died.

I wasn't stupid. I knew this was related. I got myself a therapist.

However imperfectly, my fat has been my security blanket. It is not the enemy. It has helped me (inadequately, ineptly, clumsily) resist the enemy.

Can I replace my fat? I know I can lose weight. Not hard. I'm still floating within 3 pounds of 247. I've lost, and kept off, 100 pounds. That was easy. But can I find another set of armor? Can I fearlessly look in the mirror, both when I see ugly, and when I see pretty? I don't know. That's the focus of my work right now.

Total Waste of Bandwidth

Back in 1994 I found and began participating in a vibrant online community via IRC. I remember one of the mods of our channel at one point pontificating that "personal blogs are a total waste of bandwidth." I promptly (in 1996) began a blog and titled it "Giselle's Total Waste of Bandwidth." It's long gone now, and even the revamped blogger version was quietly retired around 2010.

Why am I bringing this up? Because I'm thinking about why I'm here, writing this, exposing myself this way. Do I want to change the world? Maybe. Do I want to help other people? Sure. Mostly I think I want to join a bigger conversation. There are wildly courageous women out there, women who practice radical honesty. Women who aren't afraid to be who they are, no matter whether someone likes them or not. Well, they are afraid, but they do it anyway.

Amanda Palmer

P!nk

Tori Amos

Sarah Morehead

Felicia Day

Marlene Winell

Whitney Way Thore

I want to be like them when I grow up. I want to grow up. That's why I'm telling my story. That's why I'm putting this out there. That's why I don't care if it's a total waste of bandwidth. Because I have a story. I have a truth. I matter.

Parting Curses

"I am going to college."

For almost a decade it was my secret-but-not-secret dream, my way out, my cherished talisman that I wrapped myself around in the dark when I was terrified. I was eleven the first time I made a believable promise to myself that one day I would leave. (I had dreamed of running away and living like a hermit in the wilderness for five years already, but those schemes involved living in caves or on deserted islands and I had no path or roadmap to follow to make them happen.)

I had finally stood up for myself, and in the resulting chaos I left the house without permission, and without telling anyone where I was going. I walked aimlessly around the streets of the small town where we lived for hours. I walked past the library, past the small store, wandered the neighborhoods, hung out on the empty and deserted fairgrounds. I wanted to never go back. I wanted to run away, but I was too afraid (realistic?). I had literally nothing: no snacks, not a change of clothes, not a book, not even a pencil. I couldn't think of anywhere to turn, anyone that might help me. I couldn't figure out how to earn money, where I would sleep, how I would eat. Finally, after sunset, I gave up. I wandered back home but I promised myself that I would Get. Out. Teachers had promised me that I was smart, that I could earn something magical called "scholarships" and I was going to do it. Someday, somehow, I would go to college.

When I let myself back into our house, things were calm and quiet. The earlier threats and explosions of anger were ignored. The whole series of events became yet another thing that We Do Not Talk About. It probably would have made me crazy, but the barn door had been left open and that horse had run away years before.

So, throughout the tumultuous teenage angst that followed: bullying by my peers, my budding sexuality (and poor choices of partners / situations), the inevitable questioning of my religion, emotional estrangement from my mother, and my father's death, the idea of escape to college became firmly cemented in my mind as the Only Way Out. As I got older in school and kept getting good grades, participating in extra curricular activities that I could use on applications, I realized that not only was I going to escape, but I wouldn't be judged! In fact, I was celebrated. I was going to be the first person in my family not only to graduate high school, but to go to college.

The latter half of my junior year and my entire senior year were filled with ACT testing, retesting, college visits, research, planning, financial aid applications, and DECISIONS! Where would I go? What would I study? Ironically, I put almost no thought into a major. College was an escape from abuse and nothing more. "Going To College" was an end goal in itself. I put no more thought into what I would do once I got there than I put into what I would do once I got to heaven. It was the acceptance and arrival that was important in each case. What one would do there seemed irrelevant, irreverent.

By the summer after graduation, things were more or less settled. I had decided on a college. It was in state, for the cheaper tuition, but it was the more liberal, more cerebral college. Not the agricultural college that most of the other (few!) students who were going on to college had chosen. I had financial aid in order, housing had been applied for, and I had been accepted. Now it was just a matter of waiting. I had a part time job for the summer, and I had my first vehicle (purchased with my own money!) a little Honda Spree. I remember fondly zipping up and down the back roads to do whatever I wanted: buy pizza, go to a movie, play D&D with friends from church, and stargaze.

There was one complication: I had a boyfriend. Not a creepy, older guy that I snuck out and had illicit sex with. Nope, a real, legit boyfriend.  A boyfriend that my mother adored. He did not want me to go to college. He drove by a small house in my hometown that was for sale, and he wanted us to buy it. We could get married, he said. I wouldn't need college, he said. He would work and support us. I would stay home. We would have babies. On the weekends we would work on the lawn. We could go to the church I grew up attending. And we could support my mom in her old age. It would be wonderful.

"Are you insane?" I kept asking him. I'm not doing that. I am going to college. Come with me. Move away. Eventually we hashed it out every possible way and I realized that there was no compromise, so I broke up with him. I tried to give him his class ring. He wouldn't take it. He promised to wait for me. I said "Don't do that." He said that I would "get it out of my system" and when I came back, realizing that the outside world just wasn't all that and a bag of chips, he would still be there waiting for me. He let me out at my house, and I threw his ring into the car just before he drove away. He slammed on the brakes, found the ring, held it out to me for a long time, and when I refused to take it, he dropped it in the driveway and drove away.

Eventually I picked up the ring, carried it inside and gave it to my mom. I asked her to give it back to him when he calmed down. She called me every kind of idiot and told me that no one would ever be as good to me as he was and that I was making a terrible mistake. I stomped into my room yelling and just before I slammed the door, I said "If you think he's so great, YOU marry him! I am going to college!"

Three weeks before I was supposed to move into the dorms, I came home from my job. I stepped into our living room, and I froze in place. There sitting in our threadbare, hardscrabble, ugly little living room, in the space where the ugly, second-hand, out of tune and impossible to keep tuned black upright piano with broken keys had sat, was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen:

a brand new, cherry finished Kohler & Campbell spinet piano. My mother was so excited. It was an early birthday present for me. I sat down. I played it. It was the most beautiful thing ever. I played it for hours and hours before I thought to ask any follow up questions.

Why did you get me a piano now? What will I do with it? Where will I keep it? Where did you get the money to buy this?

Because I always promised you one when you were little, but we could never afford it and I didn't want you to move away from home knowing that I'd not kept my promise. Well, you can't take it to college, obviously. I'll keep it safe here for you. I used the money we saved for you for college to buy it.

You what? You did not. You WHAT??

And then The Boyfriend showed up. The Boyfriend showed up in a pretty little candy apple red Mustang with a white interior. I just bought it he said. It's not finished yet he said. But I bought it for you. I'll totally restore it, and it'll be just yours. You can use it to commute to the junior college in Seminole. He had already put a down payment on the house on the corner. We'll put your new piano in the living room. We'll get married. We'll be happy.

They sent me to talk to my pastor. He was happy to give me his time.

You have always been too smart for your own good, he said. The devil has always had an easy way to deceive you, by making you rely on your own understanding he said. You need to stop being so arrogant. You need to stop putting yourself in harm's way by thinking too much. You cannot go to college, he said. I was on his playing field, so I played by his rules. I got out my bible. I turned to the book of Romans, chapter 1.

"For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made,his eternal power and G-dhead; so that they are without excuse:" I said "See? It says here that G-d's truth is revealed in his creation. And I laid out my only original theology for him. I said "Truth cannot contradict truth. If G-d has made revealed truth available in the scriptures, and has made revealed truth available through what we can observe, then those two things cannot contradict each other. If they temporarily appear to, then we are misunderstanding one, the other, or both of them." He shook his head sadly and he said he was very worried about me, that he was afraid I was taking a first step on the road that would lead to destruction.

He said that if I persisted in my arrogance, I would fall in with a bad crowd. The world was an evil, dangerous place, and of course Satan was prowling about looking for fools who thought they were wise in order to deceive them. I would lose my faith, and I would end up burning forever in hell. He said "I hope and pray that you change your ways."

I said the only thing I could think of by then, my mantra, the only thing that would save me. I said "I am going to college."

Tinted Chapstick, Cowl Neck Sweaters, and Whores

I was sixteen when I learned that prostitution was a thing, that people, usually women, sold sex for money. And yet, I was only thirteen years old the second time my father called me a whore.

 It was Valentine's Day and I was over the moon excited. Dreamy Mike McDreamypants*, the middle son of our Pentecostal minister was coming to pick me up for the church youth group's party. I had a serious crush on Dreamy Mike. So serious, in fact, that I was COMPLETELY OVER John Schneider as Bo Duke. I had the locking diary with several pages covered with our names doodled together surrounded by curly hearts to prove it. My mission was to find SOMETHING to wear that would show Dreamy Mike that I was totally pretty enough to be noticed. Challenge accepted!

 Now, being a "Good Girl(TM)" (read: totally brainwashed fundamentalist Christian growing up in the little shiny worn off spot on the buckle of the Bible Belt) I didn't want to dress like "Those Girls(TM)" that I'd heard about in Sunday sermons my whole life. You know, the ones that were brazen hussies who only existed to lure men into sin. No, I wanted to be someone he could consider in the role of "Future Wife". So, I had to go through my closet very, very carefully.

 After trying on and discarding almost everything, I came up with something I was proud of. I wore a black long sleeved body suit with black slacks. Over the top of the plunging neckline of the body suit, I wore a cowl neck sweater dress in turquoise and green. I had a turquoise necklace and a ring that matched, and I braided my requisite ass-length brown hair into two long braids secured with matching turquoise and green ribbons tied into bows. Going into the bathroom, I daringly applied cherry flavored tinted chapstick, looked in the mirror, and nodded in approval. No skin showing below the neck, except for my hands, and everything matched. I was ready.

 Believe it or not, thirteen-year-old fundamentalist Christian girls don't exactly have the healthiest self-esteem. So, being ready nearly two hours early left me plenty of time to fret. My mother was out with my older brother shopping for a new refrigerator, so I went to show my Daddy how I looked.

Later, in college, as the owner of a boa constrictor  and the one responsible for feeding it live mice, I would reflect on how naively, and innocently I walked into my father's room hoping, no, LONGING, for his approval. I showed off my outfit and I'm sure I babbled about the party, Dreamy Mike, and L-rd only knows what else. I may have even pirouetted.

My father was an evil, psychotic man. I can say that now with the perspective of thirty some odd years of space and time between us. But at the time, he was my Daddy, the closest thing I had to G-d on earth. And I loved him. His words had the weight of authority and of truth. And they fell on me harder than the belt he used to whip me with when I was even younger.

"You are a dirty whore." he told me. He called me boy crazy. He told me that I was no good, and that I was of the devil. He tore into me with absolute rage. He said that I had ruined he and my mother's lives, and that he wished I'd never been born.

I can't recall how that felt. I can imagine, of course, but I can't remember feeling it. I know it was totally unexpected, and that it was devastating. Some shred of self-respect and sanity floated up to my awareness, and I clung to it like I was drowning. I remember thinking "But I'm adopted. You don't accidentally adopt a baby." Now I know that I dissociated hardcore.

Recently I had the opportunity to watch Gone With the Wind on the big screen. Yes, it's a romanticized version of a racist narrative that was never, ever true. And yet, Scarlett O'Hara's "Well. I can't think about that today. I'll think about that tomorrow." reminded me so much of myself. I stumbled out of my father's room. I scrubbed off my tinted chapstick. I read a book while I waited. Dreamy Mike picked me up and I went to that party. And while I never forgot my father's outburst, I put it aside. I can't think about that today. I'll think about that tomorrow. But tomorrow never really came.

Oh, sure, it took me twenty, thirty years to be able to put on red lipstick and see myself as anything other than a slut. Sure, it took the same amount of time for me to be able to wear nail polish without scrubbing it off in fear that some man would get the wrong idea. And sure I never managed to think of myself as pretty without feeling like I was in some way dirty, flawed, sinful, needy, or otherwise broken and deserving of punishment. But think about it? No, that never really happened. I ran away from those feelings until I couldn't run any more.

To be continued.

* Dreamy Mike McDreamypants is a pseudonym. OBVIOUSLY.