It is known to some on here that I used to a very unashamed catholic. I was raised vaguely christian, and I was 15 when I joined the catholic church of my own volition to try and fill the gaping urge for spirituality that ached in my soul. As a teenager, I struggled with all forms of abuse. Familiar abuse, sexual abuse, and substance abuse. I yearned for something outside of the painful cycles of the flesh, I gazed to the heavens and prayed that there was more to life. I never felt at home in church. I felt as if I stuck out like a sore thumb. A new type of conformity where if I tried hard enough I would finally belong. The teachings of catholicism tell a story of the battle between the flesh (the world) and the spiritual. This was something that resonated with me so deeply, justified the hatred I held towards myself and the bitterness I held against the world. I was a very unhappy girl for most of my life.
When I had my son, I was 18. There is a 40 day period before the child can be baptised into the church. Forty days and forty nights I waited in fear. My son was going to die in his sleep, without being purged of his Original Sin. My newborn son's soul was going to be tortured in hell for the rest of eternity. For the first time in years, I felt the gaping hole inside of me that I had hastily plugged with old scipture return, hungrily. It begged for more. It ached and grew, nagging at my mind every night as my son lay peacefully in his cot beside me. I remember one thought lingered that I could not shake away with a bible verse - I am looking at the face of pure perfection. This is everything. And anything that wants to hurt this is evil. How could this tiny, unconcious being, be baptised into to a religion where his soul would have burned? And I realised, in this 40 day period, that everything that had led to me my "faith" was fear. If I baptised him out of fear, I am continuing the cycle. I cannot live in fear any longer.
So bible pages and rosary beads spilled out of my chest like a river, covered in blood, and there it was, the black and deep void that had made his home inside my ribcage. For the first time in my life, I gazed into it and poked it tenderly and it shivered like an abused dog. He gazed back at me. And instead of plugging him up again I gave him a saucer of warm milk and we watched a movie together and fell asleep in the same bed. I decided not to baptise my son.
"It is the feminine, correct thing to do. You make yourself small and quiet, paletable, the mediator of everyones emotions in the room. If they bite you, it is best to play dead in their jaws. Don't you make a sound" said the small rabbit laying motionless on the highway. She had not seen the oncoming semitruck hurting her way, and now she stares with glazed over eyes at the barrier she had bounded through eagerly. She thought the road was a cool dark river. I wonder if she, like the aztecs, could not hear the cars, maybe it sounded like rushing water. "At least I am in rabbit heaven and you are still closer to hell than I am." If I could use my useless wings, I could have flown over the 8-lane with 2 big gusts of wind rushing under my feathers. Stupid bunny. But now I start to hear the falcons grow near - they were quiet before, patiently waiting for something. I hadn't noticed them perched silently on their roost with their little black eyes. They don't seem to think but I know what they feel. The nervous uncertainty that builds in their hollow bones until it consumes them, and the only way it can be eased is through the wild beating of wings in the sky... Migration. Stupid falcons. They don't know they could get fat on rye and seeds in a warm dark barn and never have to scavenge a day in their lives. The sun is has peaked out from behind it's cloud and it's beating down on me. I see them circle with their hooked claws and dark feathers, them dancing around the sun's halo. I hold my breath and try not to make a sound like rabbit said.
At least the bird can fly away. She has more freedom than you, bird. You sit in your comfy nest and wait to be a farmers dinner. You make me sick.