May 18, 2008 02:12
Brahms, you bastard, making me cry like a big baby. Fuck I feel so much better now.
The fact that I was brought up Catholic means that in my youth I was subjected to a number of adults in authoritative positions slamming me for taking the lord's name in vain and trying to explain to me why it was wrong. When I was a young kid I was a self proclaimed Catholic, as brainwashed as they come by the promise of bliss and redemption in the afterlife thanks to some guy named JC (being tortured by my classmates and constantly depressed, it was a very seductive message), but I could still never grasp the reasoning behind why saying "jesus christ!" was a bad thing. Something would shock me, I'd exclaim it and a teacher would immediately appear out of no where to chide me for taking the lord's name in vain. In vain? I'm shocked, I'd think, I'm calling out his name to make sure he's still there, to verify that the overarching order of the universe still persists despite this thing I've witnessed which seems to unbalance it. Yeah, okay, the vocabulary was a little different (I was 10!), but that's how I felt. But now adays when I say it, it's kind of the opposite. I think I'm verifying that he isn't there, to remind myself that there is no overarching order to the universe or if there is I certainly can't presume to know it's design. Something threatens my sense of reality, so I remind myself that no sense of reality will ever be accurate and complete, and so I let it be threatened.
But it actually kind of bothers me that I so frequently say things like "god, would you look at that!" or "jesus fucking christ!". I might as well being saying "Buddha, that sucks!" but the choice of words has been ingrained in me thanks to years and years of being told not to say it.