I have not allowed myself to think in depth about the purpose of my writing. There’s multiple facets to it, some of which are simple, some of which will require deep searching within myself to comprehend.
I think one reason I have started doing this is that I find that people are rarely very open. They are closed off, even from those they are close to. A lot of people sugarcoat their feelings, brush them under the rug, or pretend they don’t exist. Often, I think they do this completely subconsciously. I think a lot of people don’t even know what they think most of the time, or they don’t care enough to think about things. But, I think if someone is sad, depressed, or feels unfulfilled in some sense, that they have no right to sulk if they are deceiving themselves. Emotional turmoil is rooted in self-deception.
That’s part of why I wanted to start this “project”, if you will. To put something into the world that I believe it lacks.
Another reason is that I can’t sit still. I have learned this recently. They say idle hands are the devils playground, or something like that, I don’t remember. But personally, if I do things that I know do not matter for long enough, I will get antsy. I will forget what to do with my hands, and I will seek cheap escapism usually in the physical form of alcohol or nicotine or the emotional form of getting lost in a deep dark crevice of my imagination, overthinking, and believing the worst thoughts imaginable. There have been many solutions I have found to this. Most of the time, I created these solutions unwittingly. I did not know that I was creating a solution because I couldn’t even name the problem back then. This writing is one of those solutions. Playing and writing music is another solution. That one is interesting, because when I started playing guitar and bass and (restarting) piano, I did not know that I was solving a problem within my head. When I started writing and producing my own music, I was similarly oblivious. With hindsight, I know now exactly what I was doing.
Providing I stick with this project, and continue writing as much as I can for as long as I can, maybe I can have something to pass onto my children or their children. I often think about how little I know about my parents. I asked my special Possum today (whom I will be writing more about in the future) if she ever wished that she knew her parents more intimately.
“Sometimes” she said.
I think sometimes is enough to justify this effort. I wish that I knew my parents better as well. I wish I knew my grandparents better too. But from my experience, the past couple generations are just as fucked as we are, but in wildly different ways. My parents, for example, cannot show weakness. I don’t think my grandparents can either. That’s probably why they don’t talk much about their life, beliefs, or traumas. On the other hand, they might not show emotion for my sake. They might think that if they were to show these feelings, that I might go through a crisis realizing that my parents are human too, and perhaps just as clueless as I am. I have thought a lot about that the past few months.
On my birthday late last year, my dad came down to visit. He helped me get some groceries and he brought me and my Possum out for lunch. It was the first time one of my parents was able to really talk with Possum and it made me very happy how we got along. We dropped Possum off at work and my dad brought me home and helped unload the groceries. We ended up talking for a little bit, which we rarely do.
I told him about the type of people I met in university, specifically in philosophy class. They concern me for the future. They are wannabe revolutionaries with absurd and prejudiced ideas about ethics and a regressive and totalitarian ideology. Had I stopped thinking at 16 years old, I perhaps would’ve ended up just like them. But that’s not the part of the conversation that stuck with me.
In talking about philosophy class with my dad, I mentioned the group project I did. It was a presentation on James Rachel’s Active & Passive Euthanasia. I can genuinely say that I had a lot of fun doing that presentation. I got to hone my public speaking skills, I got to read and become intimately familiar with a hugely influential philosophical paper, and I got to tell my peers about it. They watched me intently, their eyes followed my hands, they sat quiet and still, and they laughed when I wanted them to. It was something I might like to do in the future again one day. Anyways, I told my dad about the presentation and he told me that he believes, without a doubt, that when his father was in the hospital and about to die, that the doctor illegally administered him a lethal dose of morphine. Opa was days away from certain death, he would’ve drowned in his lung fluid, or something like that. And my dad told me that he’s certain that he received euthanasia. I’m glad. I think that was the right decision. It was, however, interesting that it took 17 years for me to hear that part of his death.
My dad also told me something that stuck with me a little more. My great grandmother on my mom’s side is still alive. She’s 106 years old as of writing this. Her eyesight and her hearing is going, and she applied for euthanasia.
“Living to my age,” she apparently said “Is a curse.”
She was, however, denied euthanasia. The psychologist who saw her told her that he can’t recommend euthanasia for constipation, since the only real health issue she has is constipation.
I think the doctor that likely administered my dying grandfather euthanasia made the right decision. I do not think it was right to refuse my great grandmother euthanasia. Human beings have complete autonomy over their own body and their own mind and nobody can tell them what to do with it. Sure, one might argue, but that does not give her the right to the euthanasia needle as that does not belong to her. I would say that’s a good counterargument, but that there is a bigger picture. The euthanasia program in the country where I live exists to help end the suffering of people who are mentally sound and declare that they no longer wish to live in the painful circumstances in which they live. I believe that if tinnitus is an acceptable condition for euthanasia (which it has been administered for) then being 106 years old ought to be an acceptable condition as well.
I guess something I was going to say before I got sidetracked was that I don’t mean to be hard on my parents or my grandparents. After all, I haven’t put that much effort into speaking to them regarding their beliefs, feelings, and the things that they lived through. I plan on driving about 5 hours North eventually to see my paternal grandmother for what will likely be the last time. My dad has said that she is losing her marbles and that she fell and hurt her hip not long ago. I remember when he told me that she hurt her hip. I was playing a bar show he came out to see. During intermission I went and talked to him about family things when he told me she’s not doing to good. I thought his eyes welled a little bit with tears when he said that, but I couldn’t believe it. I have never seen my dad cry. Even though the evidence of my eyes dictates that I saw it, I still don’t think I can believe it.
A lot of information goes missing throughout generations. I wish to preserve some of that in a very selfish manner. I want to preserve myself, my thoughts, my beliefs, my feelings. Maybe my children, when they are old enough, or my children’s children will be able to read this and maybe it could help them.
Because the fact is that I’m going to keep this going for a long time. I’m going to write a lot and I’m going to do it honestly and openly. Like a patient etherized upon a table. Because if I were to tell a lie, then this whole project would be worthless. That means I’m probably going to have to share some ugly things about myself. There are a lot of ugly things about myself that I had to come to terms with.
When I was just graduating high school, I spent a lot of time with unambitious, unprincipled people. Granted, we were barely adults, but I spent years with them and they never seemed to change.
There was about seven of us when we were still in high-school. Eventually that turned to six which in turn became five, then four, then they all became strictly online friends despite living in the same town, then I stopped speaking with them completely.
One of these people in high school was a girl who I believed, at the time, was pretty. In hindsight I believe she just did her hair and wore the right dresses, otherwise she was as plain as religious girls often are. But that didn’t stop me. At that age, I was incredibly insecure and so desperate for connection that I would’ve sacrificed myself for a shred of it; to speak honestly with someone, I would’ve deceived myself.
Nothing good can come from contradiction.
She was friends with the other girl in our group, and she started hanging with us more often as she didn’t have any other friends in the school. Growing up sheltered and religious will do that to you. It’s not like I can’t understand that. I would not say I was sheltered, but I absolutely was in the primary stages of development where it mattered. I had friends back then, yes, but hardly any of them actually felt like friends. I was just as lonely as she was.
Eventually, we started spending time with each other alone. Sometimes we walked at lunch, or skipped class. Sometimes we’d go to the thrift store after school. I knew she was religious from what our friends said, I just didn’t want to think about it. I asked her out once, she told me:
“I’m not really looking to date right now.”
Again, somehow, that didn’t stop me. That just meant I needed to learn more about her religion. Maybe you can see now what I meant when I said there were ugly parts of me.
At some point, she started talking to me more about the Bible. I started reading it. We would read it together and she would bring me to her home in order to have a bible study, just the two of us.
I remember the last day of school we walked to a bench shrouded in trees and we read the Bible. She talked to me about a “convention” that she would go to in a couple of weeks, after she went to another “convention” in a neighbouring province. I didn’t hesitate to say yes. I knew that this meant I’d get to see her after graduation. I stayed in touch with her over messages until two weeks later she picked me up to drive to the “convention”. It took place on a farm about an hour drive away.
I am unsure at this point how to proceed as there is a lot to be said.
The time was probably 8:45AM. After driving the highway we took an exit and followed the road for just a few minutes. The road was surrounded by fields of wheat. There really wasn’t much out here, which made it the perfect place for the “convention”. We turned off the road onto a long driveway to a farm. Standing on the gravel road was one of the church’s pastors.
This particular church called their pastors “Workers”, which was ironic as part of being a “worker” meant that you didn’t have an actual job. The workers in fact, were worshipped in the group for having little possessions and travelling with only their suitcase and the clothes on their back. They would stay at the houses of the church-goers where they would be given food, a bed, and hundreds of dollars every month. They travelled in groups of two of the same sex, one elder, and one who learned from the elder. They also never married or had children. This all comes from a very ironic misunderstanding of the Bible. These people, who claimed to believe in the Bible above all else, believed that the manner in which the apostles were sent out in Chapter 10 of the Gospel of Matthew was a commandment which must continue to be observed. In that part of the gospel, Christ tells the disciples to leave behind their belongings as they preach to Israel. Later on, he tells them to take up their belongings as they preach to the world over. But this group ignored that part.
The worker who stood on the gravel road welcoming the cars that drove in introduced himself as Dennis and showed everyone were to park. The farm was a Spruce farm, which gave ample coverage from the roads nearby. There were a lot of buildings on the site.
There was a secret building where all the “workers” would stay. Nobody was allowed in here. There was a giant building where the workers would deliver sermons, and a bigger building where everyone would sit down to eat. There was yet another building where people would sleep on the site if they so desired.
Here’s how the days were structured:
From 9:00AM to about 12:00PM there were sermons. Everyone remained seated giving their full attention to the withered old kooks at the front of the building. In between every sermon was a hymm or two that everyone would sing together without any instruments. At some point an old lady would get up to the front and start her sermon.
“That’s Mildred” the girl who brought me there would tell me. “She’s our worker.”
When lunch time came church members who volunteered to serve the food would do just that to every one. There was probably a good few hundred people there. Everyone would sit down and eat. Young girls would walk around asking if anyone wanted juice and they would pour it if you affirmed their request. Most of the people there were sad and fat. They obviously had not enjoyed their life. They felt shame and disguised it with food. Gluttony is a sin, but these people believed what they wanted to believe, and nothing more.
After lunch, there were sermons until dinner. Hours and hours of old dementia-ridden kooks badly preaching about a poor interpretation of the Bible. If a baby cried during the sermons, their old saggy mothers would waddle them outside the barn and beat them. If that only made them cry harder (and it always did) they would take them farther away and probably do the same thing. Like an ape that couldn’t figure out how to put the shape in the right hole, they would resort to violence. I remember I went to the washrooms during a sermon and sat in the cubicle so that I could vape. Then I heard a man and his child come in. I forget what the child said but they said something followed by a loud smack and some scolding.
The child was standing, which meant that this man hit the kid in the face. I remembered being hit in the face once by my mother. I was very small, and I still remember it. That’s the kind of thing that sticks with you. I imagined myself leaving the cubicle and beating the shit out of this man. But I didn’t. I could not act on principle the whole time I was here.
I was asked by the girl who brought me there if I was spanked as a kid. I told her my parents did it for a bit but then stopped because they figured it was barbaric. She disagreed because that’s what she was told to do. As far as I’m aware, she could not think for herself. Every thing she said was utter drivel implanted into her from the workers and from her weak-willed parents.
After dinner, there was another hour or so of sermons, followed by dessert. After dessert people would leave. Only to return the next day.
The convention went on for a week. In case you haven’t figured it out, the long sermons, the food control, the farm out in the middle of no where, were all brainwashing tactics. This was a cult. They only referred to themselves as “The truth” claiming to have no name. But everyone else calls them the “Two by Twos”.
The last day of the convention, however, differed from the other days.
After dessert, there was one more sermon followed by three hymns. If you wanted to “profess”, then you would stand up as you sang the third hymn. To profess, meant that you would be a part of the church and would be required to speak in meetings. It was seen as a great Godly commitment to profess. After the professing, everyone would walk out to the lake and people would be baptized by the workers. If you had professed the year before, you could choose to get baptized if you believed you were ready.
I ended up professing. I didn’t believe in the cult but I reckoned that I liked the girl and that maybe I could believe in the Bible in a metaphorical sense. I no longer believe the Bible teaches good lessons, even the metaphors, but that is what I tried to believe at the time. After professing, workers would congratulate you, people would hug you, and you would almost feel as if you belonged to a family. But it was all fake. Being in a large group of people singing can feel that way. It’s magical, and that’s why it works.
On the last day of convention, it was my turn to drive. That meant I was to drop the girl off at home. When I did, she asked if I wanted water. I said yes for two reasons. The first reason was that it meant I got to hang out with her. The second reason was that I actually was very fucking thirsty because there was hardly any water at that fucking cult retreat. So I came in for water and we drank water and she wanted to look outside at the stars, so we did. And she kissed me.
I was so desperate for human connection; I was so lost and confused; I wanted to be heard, understood, cared for. I was looking for the affection that I felt my parents never gave me. I wanted to feel like I was a part of a family in the way that my family never gave me. I wanted admiration, attention, and the love that I could never give myself.
It didn’t matter whether I believed in it or not. She was giving me the connection I yearned for, and I was in the cult for the next year of my life.
After the convention, we were together. We weren’t dating, as these people don’t like to do things, we were together in the sense that old bitter married couples are together and they sit around watching TV and being angry at each other. We hardly got any time alone, because almost every day I would come to her house and watch movies with her entire family. If I was lucky, it would just be her two younger brothers and very young sister, but often it involved her parents too. If we had time to the two of us, it wasn’t very pleasant. I was living a contradiction of my values and everything I believed in. And I was not born, bred, and brainwashed in a cult, so she would often be frustrated with my average intelligence.
Shortly after the conventions, we went on a weeklong camping trip with her family and her friends family. Of course, her friend was also in the cult. All of her friends were in the cult. I was there for a week, but she stayed for an extra week. This was one of the two weeks in five years that I was sober. Most of what I remember about that trip was the makeshift meeting we had by the campfire. I’ll talk about the meetings in the future, but essentially everyone reads the same Bible verse and stands up and gives their thoughts and sings a few hymns. I also remember playing guitar by the campfire. One of the families friends was a boy from another province. He was about the age of her younger brothers and they seemed to be good friends. I let him play my guitar as well. He played “In the House of the Rising Sun” by The Doors, I believe. It’s not a hard song but I remember it was nice to see one of the cultists do something artistic. I wish he believed that there was value in the music he played because I don’t think he believed that.
Anyways, at the end of the summer I began working full time. I also began drinking full time as soon as I turned 18. Before hand, I had to rely on friends to get me booze, and they weren’t always keen on it as they knew I drank a lot and almost always alone. They felt like they were complicit in my self-destruction and often refused my requests.
I would drive about an hour to work. I would leave early so that I could pick up a bottle of vodka or rum before work. I would drink it throughout the day. Usually I’d keep on in the car and one in my backpack at work. If someone wasn’t looking, it was easy to slip a thinner bottle into my pants or jacket and sneak off to the bathroom. At lunch, I would go to the car to drink. I drank and drove a lot. I think that was part of wanting some risk in my life and being unable to control my drinking. I was only ever caught once on a day I didn’t have TOO much to drink. So I escaped with a license suspension for a month and no DUI.
This was when the engineering firm I worked at was located in another city. It was still about the same distance as it was when we moved. The day that we moved was a bad day. It had nothing to do with work, but for some reason I drank way too much. The new offices had nicer cubicles where it was easier to hide bottles of liquor, and I didn’t have much to move, so I had a lot of time to myself. I drank until I blacked out by the end of the day. I was not forming new memories. I drove to the girls house because we had to go to a special youth meeting with the church. I was very good at hiding my intoxication. If somebody noticed my drunkenness, then that meant I was absolutely fucking wasted. Today I was absolutely wasted, but somehow they didn’t know what was going on.
I drove the girl and her brothers an hour away to the city, which meant that I drove for four hours that day. Four hours drunk. Mind you, these people never once thanked me for driving them to their cult meetings. I guess they were under the impression that it was good for me.
I feel unjustified anger as I write this. Why should I be angry? I was the one driving people while blackout drunk. If anyone gets to be angry, it’s the cultists at me.
Anyways, I’m going to keep it short and expand in the future. I drove them to the meeting and acted odd throughout. On the drive back I was angry and lashed out at people. The girl forced me to park at a McDonalds and she brought her brothers inside and called her parents and they all brought me to a hospital where the nurses obviously knew I was drunk and everyone knew. Everyone was mad and disappointed at me. Still though, I didn’t quit drinking. Even the morning after when I felt like shit and was profusely apologizing over text.
MyShelf 