111. stone

This post is Part II of the previous entry, which talks a bit about the effects of growing up in a fundamentalist Christian home.

The golem in some ways is like a zombie, save that it is wholly artificial. Both are animated by magical means and are (generally) completely subject to their creator’s bidding. They appear alive, but are soulless and empty—half-living, if you will.

The latter part of the last post talked about the effect that our Christian upbringing had on my two younger sisters and me, and the various ways that we have been affected as adults by what we experienced as children. (I should say that my sisters are still conservative Christians, and go to the same church as my parents.) My youngest sister has bi-polar disorder. My younger sister has gone through therapy for anorexia and still thinks she’s fat. As for me, though undiagnosed, it’s likely that I have borderline personality disorder.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders fourth edition (DSM IV-TR) defines borderline personality disorder as:

A pervasive pattern of instability of interpersonal relationships, self-image and affects, as well as marked impulsivity, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:

1. Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment.
2. A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation.
3. Identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self.
4. Impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., promiscuous sex, eating disorders, binge eating, substance abuse, reckless driving).
5. Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, threats or self-injuring behavior such as cutting, interfering with the healing of scars (excoriation) or picking at oneself.
6. Affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood (e.g., intense episodic dysphoria, irritability or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days).
7. Chronic feelings of emptiness.
8. Inappropriate anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g., frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights).
9. Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation, delusions or severe dissociative symptoms.

I’m broaching incredibly personal territory by sharing any of this, but that’s what this blog is about, I suppose; and looking objectively at this list, 1, 2, 3, 6, 7 & 8 are definitely true of me. I won’t share too much, but do want to cover the more major aspects of BPD for me.

Anyone who has known me for any significant period of time knows my temper is one of the more unfortunate aspects of being my friend. It rises quickly and sometimes violently, and growing up I pointed to my red hair as the cause. One of the reasons I suspected bi-polar at first was the rate at which my moods shifted, which could be violent and sudden. My mood could go from calm to agitated in seconds, then to depressed hours later.

My temper only got worse during the teen years, when the pairing of puberty (and the subsequent rush of testosterone) and the awakening of my then-aberrant sexuality caused some significant emotional disturbance. There was also the frustration of living under my parents’ thumb and policing, which was seeming more unreasonable, but so much of it had to do with living daily with the dark secret that I was gay and making sure my Christian parents never knew anything about it.

Probably the most significant factor of why I think this is BPD is the violent reactions to rejection that I’ve had over the years, and how practically every relationship I’ve had has operated under the shadow of the fear of abandonment. I form intense attachments with people fairly quickly, often with wild expectations of how those relationships will pan out. This is known as idealization and devaluation, wherein when the attachment is good a person’s positive qualities are exaggerated. When it goes bad, the opposite is true. (This is ultimately what happened with Seth.) Idealization/devaluation is normal in childhood development, and eventually a child grows out of this stage—unless a trauma occurs.

A possible cause for this is that when I was about four, my mom became pregnant with my youngest sister. For some reason—possibly something I’d heard/read about families only having 2.8 children, and not understanding decimals at that age—I assumed this meant that I, as the eldest, would have to leave to make room for the new baby. Since a family could only have two children. My parents didn’t find out about this until shortly before my sister was born, so for months I’d lived in terror of abandonment; and even when they assured me I wouldn’t have to go, at age four the fear was still palpable.

I also tend to identify strongly with people and causes, sometimes to the point of obsession. My personality, which I’ve known for a while can be chameleonic, will sometimes change slightly to adapt to my surroundings. Again, this has to do with the fear of rejection and trying to be as acceptable and likable as possible. However, the driving fear in all of my relationships (friendships or romantic) is that the other person will eventually get bored or I’ll offend them so grievously somehow and they’ll reject me. It’s incredibly pervasive.

In many ways I feel like a half-formed person, like a golem. My parents even expected absolute obedience from us growing up. While I’m able to write about this and articulate feelings, the terrified child lives on in me and filters all of my experiences. It makes it so that I’m unable to truly feel positive emotions, because to an extent I’m always living in fear, always trying to gain my parents’ approval through friends, co-workers, peers, etc.

But it never feels like enough.

My parents have admitted that they made huge mistakes back then. But they can’t turn back the clock, and I’m stuck with finding the way out of the forest on my own. Therapy is expensive, I’m flat broke, and friends (well-meaning as they are) can only help so much…

110. scattering

“The purpose of satire, it has been rightly said, is to strip off the veneer of comforting illusion and cosy half-truth. And our job, as I see it, is to put it back again.”
— Michael Flanders

One of the most fascinating creatures in mythology is that of the golem, an animated anthropomorphic being in Jewish lore created out of inanimate matter (traditionally clay) and brought into being by a sorcerer or rabbi who inscribes the word emet (אמת, “truth”) on its forehead, or by a tablet with the word inserted in its mouth. The golem is described as being but a shadow of Man (who himself is but a shadow of Almighty God), without a soul and unintelligent but perfectly obedient to the will of the one who animated it. Usually in golem tales there is an element of hubris, with the creation turning on its creator who realizes the error of his ways in the end, or it begins to attack gentiles or other Jews, the point being that god alone has the wherewithal, wisdom and right to create life.

On a similar note, last week I finished watching the anime series Fullmetal Alchemist, which centers on two alchemist brothers who are trying to restore their bodies after a disastrous failed attempt to bring their mother back to life through alchemy. *Spoiler alert!* The main antagonists in the series are beings known as homunculi, human-like creatures created out of the failed attempt to bring someone back from the dead through alchemy. These beings resemble humans but do not possess souls and thus have human-like consciousness but cannot experience emotion.

One of the purposes of this blog is to attempt to synthesize the experience of becoming an atheist after over twenty years of living as an Evangelical, fundamentalist Christian. My earliest recollections involve church and my parents’ faith practice, of reading from the bible as a family or praying together. In some ways, leaving Christianity was like ending an incredibly dysfunctional marriage. However, beyond that, I haven’t talked too much about my parents, who I cut ties with on Christmas Day this year, or the effect our upbringing had on my two younger sisters and myself.

Some who read this blog know my family does not approve of or accept me as a gay man, insisting that gays are broken heterosexuals, and I think that had my parents known about me as a teenager that they would’ve attempted to get me into reparative therapy. However, I want to stress that my parents were never intentionally abusive or cruel, nor do I believe they are bad people; and I believe they genuinely love me, but their theology has shaped (and warped) their views on the world and humanity in a particular way.

My sisters and I grew up in a fairly strict home. We were homeschooled, and a significant portion of our education had a heavy Christian slant. A few weeks ago I cleaned out my old bedroom at my parents’ house and found notebooks, papers and books from those years. Reading it as an adult made me wince. It was such blatant inculcation. For a long time we weren’t allowed to watch television, and even then our watching was closely monitored, our viewing restricted to wholesome, educational programming. While I am thankful to have been exposed to as much classic black-and-white films as we were, we grew up in a cultural vacuum. We spent a lot of time at church volunteering or at different programs (yes, we did AWANAS, and both my parents were leaders).

A peculiar phenomenon of Protestant culture is the morbid fear of pride and self. My dad’s life verse comes from John 3:30, “He [Jesus] must increase, but I [John the Baptist] must decrease.” Consequently, my parents were always afraid of their children becoming conceited or prideful, and our upbringing reflected that. Again, I don’t want to paint my parents as monsters, but we were rarely praised or affirmed. We were punished, and punished often, sometimes for the smallest of infractions. There was one instance where my dad got carried away with a spanking when he thought I’d cursed god. I hadn’t, but he insisted that I had taken god’s name in vain. I still hate my father for that.

There were also a number of occasions where they threatened to send us away to work at the farm of a family friend in Nebraska for misbehaving—along the lines of, “maybe you’ll appreciate what you have here.” This threat was never acted on, but when we were little the thought of being shipped off was terrifying.

As adults, my sisters and I confronted our parents about the fact that we rarely felt loved, accepted or safe growing up. We’ve each manifested this in different ways. All three of us threw ourselves into various pursuits to work for the approval of our parents. My younger sister is a ballet dancer and in her teen years developed anorexia for which she has gone through years of therapy to overcome. While probably not related to our home life, my youngest sister has bi-polar disorder and has substituted a dog for having a boyfriend.

As for me, I pursued music performance, partly to fulfill an aptitude for it but also to win the approval/attention of my father who is a professional trumpeter and college professor, going so far as majoring in music composition for a career in music (which never went anywhere). Despite all of that, I’ve still never felt like any of it’s been good enough.

For a long time I’ve struggled with depression, and for a while wondered if I might have bi-polar disorder too. It’s much more likely though that I’m dealing with something known as borderline personality disorder, a veritable clusterfuck of a diagnosis, consistent with my home life growing up and a lot of the behavioral traits I’ve manifested over the years.

However, I’ll cover that next time since this Starbucks is closing.

G’night, everyone.