Bit of a painful re-read … but it is what it is, and I’m still fucking here ;)
14 if I’m not mistaken…I’m not sure why there’s so much pressure on ‘being’ better…acheiving…striving…deciding…not fucking up…at this age. 14 years of life and you know sweet fuck all, but think you know everything. And I think this is how it should be. Confidence building, learning, fucking up and learning from your mistakes, figuring out what you like and don’t, figuring out what and who you are. Instead of waiting till your 40 something :0
This is where I started my descent…well, I was aware of the descent anyways. Church and religion played a huge part of my life up until this point. Whether I liked it or not or agreed with it or not, it was engrained. Church peeps, church music, church rules…religion and all its restrictions and limitations. Its do’s and don’ts…making sure your soul was A O K just in case you got hit by a bus and ended up in front of your maker in the latter part of a day.
Btw – this was a Pentecostal movement, or religion whatever you like to call it. Christianity…the kind that didn’t believe in homosexuality, abortion, smoking, drinking, fornication, swearing…Jesus dies on a cross and raises from the dead three days later…that kind of religion. Because it was so ‘heavy’ it was hard to see the good in it all…it still is sometimes. I get that it gave peeps some kind of peace…but all I could ever see was hypocrisy and judgement. And I was probably partaking in the same ‘sin’; but really…isn’t that what 14’s all about? Having an opinion and voice and figuring our whether it’s a worthy one to have or not?
I remember having a ‘God encounter’ at about this age…a real one. And it moved my soul. So I don’t have any doubt that there is an entity that is bigger and more awesome-er than us. However my belief on where this entity resides and what they are, has changed. After this God encounter, I felt a whole heap of peace, not like I had ever felt before. And it was fucking great! I slept without nightmares for about a week. Then I became agitated again.
How is it, that someone can be ‘touched’ by God, and not see things differently? As I peered around our church, I saw a whole heap of people who were quite content with their hum drum lives…were happy with their flash cars and full pockets…and bellies…they had no need for anything else…and church was just a motion they committed once a week; like taking a daily shit. They had no need for anything else. And as far as I could tell, they obviously couldn’t read! The shit that was Biblical was not practiced at all! We used to have a huge Sunday feed at church, after service. Every Sunday. And we all ate well. You could go to the shop afterwards, and there were kids there, scraping together change, to buy bread. The church was in a crap ass neighbourhood by the way…I could write that in a move PC way, but I’m sure you get the drift…It was the neighbourhood where poverty resided on every corner; parents drank and kids wandered…that kind of place. The church had set up in that neighbourhood, so they could ‘reach the lost’. Pfft. I’m not to sure who the hell was lost actually.
So my attendance at this place started becoming somewhat of a mission to see who I could piss off and who was actually practicing their religious beliefs. I don’t think I realised what I was doing at the time, but I was pushing buttons left right and centre, to see who was really on the reals. And I managed to piss plenty of them off…they didn’t like my ‘attitude’ and told my mother I needed more ‘discipline’…that being a good spanking! But that just fuelled the fire for me. How is it that I needed twacking and they could sit on their fat asses while the ‘lost’ remained lost? Surely there were bigger concerns than my ‘rebellious, defiant and Jezebel’ attitude? Well, apparently not. After a few good ‘prayer sessions’ and ‘renouncing of demonic spirits’, which apparently came from my cultural heritage and the fact that my mother had been a fornicator in a previous existence…they thought their job was done. They could stand in front of their maker and say that they had assisted with the upbringing of the solo mothers kid.
Actually, that’s not fair…there were a few that did do what they preached…that walked the talk. One dude, taught me to drive. Poor bastard lol. He had been a skin head in a previous existence. He knew the ass end of life and didn’t take for granted anything that he was given. He was a good dude. Then there was another couple that had been drug addicts in a previous existence and decided that they would ‘follow Christ’. They were still human…good people. The guy schooled me in Bob Dylan :)…that dude was deep.
Underneath everything though, I was festering. I was angry on angry. I started to hate school. Hate dance. Hate church…more than usual…I hated feeling. I hated thinking. I hated the people I was around.
I had a couple of really good friends around this time. They were sisters and both looked like they were bred for the Aryan Nation…blonde blonde; bright blue eyes. They had a nice life. Farming girls. Horses. Mother and Father. They were good people. But they didn’t relate to what I felt. And as far as they could see, I had a good life too. Which I did, in comparison to some. I was warm, fed, went to church, lived like a Pakeha.
I was still smoking at this time but because I needed numbness I ventured off to find other things to achieve that. I found sniffing / snuffing, whatever you like to call it. I found pills. I found cheap alcohol. And if you blend all those together they make for an awesome little numbing cocktail.
It’s kind of surprising in hindsight, that I went down this pathway. I had seen my asshole Uncle ping himself up many times with poppies stripped down for the opium or other white substances. And it had always terrified me, watching him change from erratic and violent into subdued and violent…not a pretty picture. But my cocktail didn’t seem so bad I guess…so there wasn’t really a comparison for me at that time. I just wanted numbness.
I told my mother what had happened to me at 4. She cried. I was ‘prayed’ for. It didn’t do much for the overall internal picture really.
4th form was ass. I was put in the top stream Maths class, surprising to me as Maths was not my best subject. And even more surprising was that academically I was doing pretty good. The teacher however, was one of those types that liked to ridicule and belittle publicly, in the hopes that her students would somehow learn better. Myself and another brown brother lol, decided to ask the 4th form Dean, to be moved into another class, as neither of us understood what was being taught and we didn’t like the way we were being treated. So it turns out, that a percentage of brown kids, from a low socio-economic background, were required in each stream. We were the lucky two that had been picked for this particular stream. If he was to move us, it would throw out the government requirement. Pftt to that. We both walked out in the end and attended a different class. Maths for dummies!
Socially, I was floundering. I found my peers shallow and trivial. But I guess this is the age where that’s what should be practiced, in all fairness. But I didn’t fit and it was becoming more and more obvious.
I was still dancing, and dancing well…but I was struggling. I’d go to school stoned, drunk, snorted out or all of the above; just to get through the day. I wanted to explode but didn’t really understand how or why.
#mystory
kpm ©
