CornerDweller
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Joined: 19 Apr 2007
Posts: 9
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 Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 6:11 am Post subject: Faith is easy when you have no choice... |
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...but it's like being under an iron fist when you find yourself wishing that you did.
What does that mean? I've seen too much to disbelieve. It would be like trying to convince myself the earth is flat. And I've tried! And over and over again, I have found myself wishing that I could. If I walked away, I could have a life of liberty, pursuing happiness out there in the wide, wide world. But I can't. I've tried. And I can't.
If you want to believe, then being incapable of doubt is a place of luxury. I have distant memories as to what that's like. But if you don't feel like believing anymore, if you desire to go off and live your own life, leaving it all behind... the term 'cognitive dissonance' doesn't even begin to describe it. Take the word 'torn' and all that it signifies in this context, and magnify it dozens of times over.
It's like being backed into a corner... all the time.
So with all that said, allow me to tell my story.
I am a 28 year old man. I currently reside in Las Vegas, Nevada (yes, people actually do live here) and hope to someday return to my native home of California. It's been pretty rough living here, but things weren't so great before I came, either.
My brother and I were raised more-or-less agnostic. The existence and general goodness (as opposed to badness) of God were halfheartedly acknowledged on sporadic occasion, but that made about as much difference as the fact that Beatrix is the Queen of Holland. My parents are good people, though.
I was saved at the age of 15 while in the throes of severe mental illness. Today the only diagnosis that still stands - or that has any discernible consequences - is Asperger's Syndrome, which is a mild form of autism. God healed me of what the shrinks understood to be "childhood schizophrenia" just before I turned seventeen.
Well, I think by the time I was 25 or so, things really started to suck for me in a lot of ways. There are many horrible nightmare experiences that would make elite special operations troopers run screaming into the night in their terror that I have been subjected to over and over again throughout my life... things that most of you in here would refuse to believe... things that Hollywood couldn't come up with. But that's not what's chapping my hide... because a man can get used to just about anything. But there's one thing I just can't get used to, and that has caused me to become the way that I am: woman trouble.
As a teenager I never dated anybody in the youth group I was inducted into because I was too far behind the curve to learn or use the necessary social skills. Well, that, and there weren't very many date-able girls. That youth group (back in my home area of Los Angeles) was a rare phenomenon... maybe 10% of the kids there were church kids, and attendance on a normal Wednesday could be as high as 200 (and it was an otherwise small church). Many of us were drug addicts, gang members, street kids, you-name-it. And as such, even if I'd of had the skills, there were very few girls I could have dated. Kids were always going in and out of there... you'd see some people once and never again, and then twenty more would show up out of nowhere and stay for a bit. It could be very chaotic. And of those that were saved, many were struggling (to put it gently). I knew even then that it would be unwise to date most of them. I had my share of crushes that went nowhere, of course.
Well, I almost dated one girl when I was 18 and she was 15. She all but asked me out, but I chickened out. She would have been my first girlfriend. Still, I went on to form a very deep attachment that I would pay for dearly. Well, she was on-and-off hard drugs (roller coaster ride), starting to develop symptoms of schizophrenia (her mother had it), always seemed to be inches from being turned out onto the street, and at one point she attempted suicide. Her relationship with God also seemed to change with the wind. And you know... I think all the things that happened to her hurt me more than they hurt her. That took a lot out of me.
Second time out it was an internet thing. I met her through a Christian chatroom. By day three of intensive chatting, she was claiming to be madly in love with me. Well, here's the irony. For the first and only time in my life, after what seemed like a lifetime of heartache and desperation, I finally caved in one night and said "God, if I don't ever end up with anybody, if you don't have nobody for me... I guess I'll be alright with You." And suddenly, unexpectedly, I was at peace. I was content. It didn't seem natural. I expected only more misery and disappointment, and could only hope that the desire would diminish and wither over time.
Literally, the very next day, this girl that I'd been talking to for all of three days, who lived up in northern California, professed her undying love. Together with the fact that she looked real hot in her picture, and my figuring that it couldn't possibly be a coincidence made me go "woohoo!!! After all these years, God is finally rewarding me with a woman!!! How 'bout dat!?"
If I wouldn't have been suppressing my instincts and better judgment, I would have realized that it was more along the lines of a terrible test. This chick turned out to be nuts. She told me she had AIDS and had but a few years to live. I freaked out and ran like my backside was on fire, but then three days later I came back and said something along the lines of "you don't deserve to be abandoned because of that... and maybe I'll end up being the one who holds your hand on your death bed." A kind heart, a rigid and towering sense of ethics (common in people with Asperger's Syndrome), and a lifetime of crushing desperation will do that to you.
Well, shortly after I went up to stay at her house for a week, it hit the fan. She embezzled a bunch of money and disappeared, and when they found her she was shacked up with some girl, having gone back to lesbianism. Then I found out that she lied about having AIDS just to mess with me, as well as having lied about just about everything else. This all went down during the week of 9/11. So while I was having my heart stomped on by a steel-plated knightly riding boot, I also had to deal with the fact that the 21st century had just begun with a bang and that World War III could very well be just around the corner, with me as one of its billion or so combatants due to the biggest draft since 1942. Not fun.
Even after all that, I offered to take her back. She thought about it a bit and said no, with her mother as the intermediary. I got the picture and took off... an amazing amount of damage done.
Two long lonely years later I dated again. The next one was the least screwed up... on the surface. She was the middle child and oldest daughter of the senior pastor at the church I was going to. Well, once I started dating her, I left my old church (had been looking for a reason for a while) to attend hers, which was three freeways away in another part of the city. (That's L.A. for you.) It lasted about a month. Things were going great the first half of that month... I was flying high as a kite, and it felt like I was finally gonna get a break.
Then it got weird. The communication shut down, and the more distant she got, the more frantic and desperate I got. Obsession (another Asperger's trait) overtook me to the point that I was nearly barfing, day-in and day-out. After three days of cloistering myself away from all human contact and sleeping 14 hours a day (I normally sleep 6) I reached the breaking point and decided to end it. So I fired up the computer to type up a letter, and lo and behold, she had beaten me to the punch via e-mail.
It never got to the point where we were boyfriend/girlfriend (according to her), but if it would have, we would have been each others' firsts. I think she tried to date some guy when she was in high school but it was similarly underdeveloped. I was about 23 or 24 at the time; it was the year 2003. I recently heard that she's dated a whole lot of nobody ever since, and is retreating ever further inward into her own little world, and it doesn't surprise me. I've got issues... she's got issues... issues, issues, issues.
There was one sentence in that e-mail... if she would've left it out, I would've been juuuuuuuust fine. It said "but maybe we'll get back together in the future." So in my mind, the word "over" was superseded by the word "hiatus." I figured... all I had to do was play my cards right, and I'd get her back. She strung me along for the next year or so, because I was still at that church and still saw her at least once a week, oftentimes more. Well, it's not so much that she strung me along... it's that she couldn't bring herself to tell me the truth. (The truth is, she didn't mean those words at all, and just kinda threw that half-baked clause in to soften the impact.) All she could do was treat me with ever more nastiness and bitterness, hoping that I would eventually get the picture.
Well, stupid and stubborn me... desperate and clingy... it only made me try harder. Which made her amp it up even more. Things were getting very ugly and I would daresay that it (and a large interconnected plethora of related events, dynamics, etc.) nearly caused our young adults group (and possibly by extension, the entire church; it was a very twisted web that was being woven) to go down like the Titanic. That was the worst two years of my life, because after she told me the truth, very bad things (heck, worse things) continued to happen, which was why it wasn't just one year of madness but two. (A two-fer-one special!) I can't even begin to go into detail as to all that went down, and you can already tell I don't hold much of anything back. It was the worst experience of my entire life, and it dragged on for two whole years.
In the span of that two years, I expended everything I had to keep our group and that church from blowing apart. That church would have died much, much sooner than it did if it weren't for me, my brother, and another guy who was capable (whether he wanted to be or not) of seeing what was going on. I think I'm pretty good at what I do... under normal circumstances. My brother and I made for quite a team, and the other guy could be useful whenever his heart was in it. But throw matters of the heart into the mix, emotions and whatnot... well, that job (as abstractly and vaguely as I can put it, it entails the defending of the fortress) already takes enough of a toll on anybody 'lucky' enough to get collared with it. So... to make an already beyond harrowing situation much, much worse....
Parts of me got all crooked, and rife with painfully glaring, dissonant contradiction. I came to hate her with a flaming passion, and even more so her psycho uber-manipulative best friend who was trying to ruin my life, her life, and the lives of others. It must have been what daytime television is like in the 5th or 6th circle of hell. The experience broke me. Almost literally, parts were falling off. I had to go into behavioral cognitive therapy because, literally, I was experiencing cognitive malfunction. It worked to a satisfactory degree, I can say. But you know the one thing that helped the most in moving past all that as much as I could? Moving to Vegas, baby! And getting away from those people. That was in August of 2005. I've been here in Sin City ever since.
And then one year later I was on the pathway to becoming a raging drunk, avoiding church and associating it with only pain and disappointment, and feeling more lonely and desperate and bitter than ever. An all too familiar situation here in Sodom on the Sand. But still, I could not slip away... I'd seen too much, knew too much, had been shown too much....
I tried dating this foxy 40 year old woman (a "cougar", as such a creature is often referred to as). Came real close to losing my virginity. All I had to do was clean my apartment up a bit and buy condoms, and boy howdy was I debating it... and while I was debating it, she was practically demanding it. But then she started saying all this stuff about me being husband #3 and the father of kid #2, so I switched to level 3 emergency alert status and initiated Operation Cut-and-Run.
There was this other time where I almost lost my virginity to a heavily tattooed and notoriously psychotic girl in the bathroom of the bar across the street from my pad... were it not for the bartender intervening and causing the romantic moment to evaporate. That's also the place where I met the older woman.
The last time I went to that bar (last Thursday) I was solicited by a high-dollar escort (I had fun annoying her with my imperviousness to her charms) after narrowly averting a hostile challenge from an ex-convict who was twice my size. Man, I hate that place. I used to be a regular but then I realized how much the place sucks, even compared to all the other open-24-hours lowlife-filled video poker-featuring Vegas neighborhood dives. I was there last Thursday because I felt I needed a few whiskeys to help temporarily deal with the situation that is going to cap off this excessively long introductory post of mine.
So now for the finale... the event in a series of events that leads me to this here website.
The quiet desperation of involuntary celibacy (it refers not just to sex, but dating and romance in general!) caused me to scour the web looking for answers, and I eventually stumbled upon a relevant support group. That's how I met her.
I went back to L.A. for a month in winter just to stretch my legs for a bit. Her and I met up just to hang out. Our last time out in that month, the very day before I was to head back to Vegas, she kissed me. It was wonderful. But then I had to go back.
We talked it out over the phone. I called her a few times a week. Well, in February, I confessed as to my "religious beliefs" and their dictates about sex, basically telling her that I couldn't be in a romantic relationship with her because of that, and that I needed to get right with God. Well, she got kind of weird about it (understandably so) so I waffled on it. We kept talking.
I went back to L.A. for a week in March just to see her. We fell desperately, passionately in love. We decided to give a relationship a try.
Well, she came out here to Vegas to spend the weekend with me. She left on Sunday. Her and I came very, very, very, very, very close to sleeping together on Friday night (a short while after she worked up the courage to say "I love you"). But I just couldn't. In the heat of the moment I fell apart, and in her passion she slapped me across the face, screamed, and then burst into tears.
I kept falling back on the language of postponement. "I need time." She said we could take it slow, and that it was okay. Even though she kept bursting into tears and seemed to be getting increasingly frustrated and upset. And understandably so. Fully.
Saturday was nice and wonderful. We had a lovely dinner, went for a walk through gardens... it was great. The perfect date. By the end of the night, we were officially boyfriend and girlfriend. The first time ever, for both of us! She lost her virginity about a year ago and has had several partners, one of whom was a "friend with benefits" for a short while, but she had never had a real romantic relationship ever before. And I had never had anybody who had ever called me their "boyfriend." She went home on Sunday morning.
Sunday and the first half of Monday I was on Cloud 9. "Wow, I finally have a girlfriend! Oh, wow!" It felt like all the bitterness, the heartache, the stigma of being involuntarily celibate, all the loneliness, all the loathing... everything... had just gently evaporated. I was looking forward to the future. Love. Sex. Popping the question. A small yet tasteful wedding. Married life. And after four or five years of the DINK lifestyle (dual income, no kids) with weekend cocktail parties and vacations in Europe, the pitter patter of little feet around the house. (All in that order.)
But then, out of the blue, the conflict and turmoil and dissonance that I had been sitting on, trying desperately to contain, just blew up in my face like Mt. Saint Helens.
I dug up my old theology books and scoured the web. Was there any way I could justify entering into a sexual relationship with her? Previously, I had the dropped the "not until marriage" bit on her and she thought it was totally out of the question, and insisted that there had to be compromise. I was willing to look past her agnosticism... ehhhhhhh... unequally yoked isn't exactly up there with adultery, and if she'd agreed to my terms, it wouldn't have been up there with fornication, either. Or at least that was my logic.
As I scoured the web trying to find some kind of justification, any kind of justification, or rather... a "pass"... I came across this website. I read several of the threads. I read something by... uhhhhh... I think "David" is the name? Something along the lines of "sex is marriage." So I came to the following conclusion: I've been avoiding God for a while, dancing on the fence, but to go through with it would have been for me to fully turn my back on Him, and on my brother and on the few others that I am accountable to. I thought to myself, "well, it would just be on a temporary basis, and then if her and I got married or if we broke up, it would be okay again and I could repent." But that just rang hollow and made me feel that I had grown pretty pathetic.
I just didn't have the heart or the wherewithal to resort to that. And she deserved better than my sorry butt. So I did what I felt was the right thing to do.
Oh, by the way, I was warned in a dream (by someone with a very frightening track record) to not enter into a sexual relationship with a woman until the time was right (you know, marriage and all, to the right one), or that very bad things would happen. The person who had this dream... I would trust her with my life and the lives of others, that's how frightening her track record is. Most (though not all) of her dreams come with the clause "if you do Y instead of X, then you can avert these things from coming to pass." And since most people have tossed her warnings aside out of obstinacy (or because they thought she was crazy), her gift has proven itself many a time. She is to be ignored at your own peril. That was the biggest factor in all the turmoil... by far. She was given that dream for a reason. She's one of the reasons (well, her track record and all) why I can't disbelieve.
So, Monday night, while in tears, I called her and said "I can't be your boyfriend." "Are you serious?" she gasped. I was. "I can't compromise on my religious beliefs. I just can't resolve it. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." "I knew it, I knew it... just when I thought I was finally in love... I knew it...." She burst into tears and hung up.
I was devastated. I had just broken her heart.
Tuesday rolls around and I call her on the phone in response to a text message. That phone call went very badly. It started out friendly but then it devolved into her insulting me, my faith, etc. etc. Understandably so. It's normal for a woman to be that way when she has been rejected. And because she doesn't share my faith, my reasons for rejecting her make zero sense to her. It's all so much irrationality and craziness to her. But still, she loved me desperately. She began to become hysterical. "I love you!!!" she shrieked. And she shrieked it again. I mumbled out something along the lines of "I will always love you... as a... human being." (Which is true. She is a beautiful person.) She shrieked and howled. Then she mumbled something unintelligible, said with mocking bitterness "I guess I'll just give my life over to God" and then I heard this unearthly wail that strangely faded out. A few seconds later the call got terminated.
My immediate thought was that she had just thrown herself off of a bridge! I nearly vomited. I thought "Oh God, oh God, what the dream warned of actually came true even though I tried to do what was right! Why, God, why!?!?"
I began debating whether to call the police. Fortunately my roommates were there, and we put our heads together. 1) She doesn't have a history of suicidal behavior; 2) she would have been peppering her speech with hints, warnings, innuendos, outright threats; 3) she's deathly afraid of heights and couldn't have gotten to such a tall place in the time the phone call lasted, starting from the destination where I knew she was (and was sure she hadn't left); 4) I would have heard all the noise if she was where she could have suddenly thrown herself in front of a truck or a train or something. I tried calling her. Her phone rang... went to voice mail. I left a message saying that I just wanted to make sure that she was okay.
An hour or so later she text messaged me. Saying that she was okay, that she wanted to know if I was okay, and that she loved me and missed me terribly. I showed it to my roommates and they said she was probing... still trying to bring me back to her. My heart broke a little bit again... already broken. I texted her back, saying "I will always love you for the person that you are." She texted back, saying "I thank you for your love. Goodbye [my name]." The 'goodbye' struck me as ominous (I would have preferred 'good night'); it made me think of the phrase "goodbye cruel world!"; but my roommates said not to worry.
And that was last night. The last I heard from her.
Hey, I really did and still do love her. She's a great girl. Just an ordinary girl. She's not a bad person. She doesn't believe what we believe so there's no way I can judge her by our standards.
If I could walk away from God, or at least degrade to some lame liberal/non-orthodox line of theology, then I could have had a nice first girlfriend. Her and I could have been boyfriend and girlfriend. We seemed pretty compatible. Who knows, she could have been the mother of my children? Not that I'm too keen on the idea of kids... but get this... she wasn't big on kids or marriage until she fell in love with me. Next thing you know, we were talking about those things as if it were natural.
It was almost like I could have married her before she went back to L.A. Almost.
But I threw it all away... if only to obey the Letter of the Law... a line of reason that she is understandably scornful of. It seems like such a cruel law. I could have been so happy with her. I could be so happy right now as I type this... but now there's this sucking hollow feeling. I feel like I just threw away the best thing that ever happened to me. And she is just devastated. What hurts worst of all is the pain that I have caused her. I feel as if I picked up a kitten and threw it in the fireplace. I feel like I deserve to be stabbed through the guts with a red hot poker. I've broken her heart, and mine... and for what? The cold iron law... the impassive black words on dull white paper.
Today I just had this deeply bitter sense of resentment. It just doesn't add up or seem fair or make rational sense that I should have gone and done this to her, to us. If life were fair, if I were entitled to an ordinary life instead of being backed into a corner, I could be in love right now with the girl of my dreams. The one thing I always wanted... more than anything else. And now I have nothing. Nothing. I have nothing. And she has nothing. I've brought us both into heartbreak and ruin.
Now I have nothing to look forward to. I was planning on going back and forth regularly during the summer because I'd have more flexibility then, and we were going to develop our relationship. But now that's not going to happen. I have nothing to look forward to, as far as I can look ahead.
Well, since I went and did this to her... I might as well start going back to church, since I've "made my stand" and effectively chosen one side of the fence over the other.
But that doesn't seem very appealing. I'm trying to pray (more than I have in years) but it's not easy. I find myself more apt to curse at God than anything. It just seems like a dead end. No joy. No purpose other than to be kicked around doing one dirty job after another that just takes its toll. Nothing but watching churches do things other than what they should be doing, succumbing to things that could be easily dealt with if faced up to, falling well short of their potential... to the point that perhaps their potential (i.e., Mark, Acts, Ephesians, Revelations) isn't even attainable in this age.
And worst of all... no woman, no wife.
Where is my wife? Where is she?
I know if I left the church for good I could find a woman to love and marry. I know I could.
But every church I've been to... there weren't any marriageable women... or if there were, I just had zero luck with them. I don't know what it is... it's like I'm cursed. And I went to two churches for the better part of a decade where single young women (aside from the senior pastor's daughter) were all but non-existent. Nothing but married women young and old, widows... and young men, many of whom were as lonely and desperate and frustrated and angry as I was. Many of them.
Many.
I think this is a major problem in certain places. Maybe it's a West Coast thing? I'm told that in the Bible Belt there are churches that are just bursting at the seams with beautiful marriageable young women. Well, heck, out in these parts it's often difficult just to find a church worth going to in the first place. From what I understand, the West Coast and Nevada (simply by virtue of Las Vegas being in it) is the most unchurched part of America. And Las Vegas is (surprise surprise) the most unchurched city in America according to statistics. Well, they're building new churches... way out in the suburbs. I live in the middle of the city and I don't drive.
I am a Californian... going back to the 18th century in some strains, the Great Depression by the latest strain. Now I'm a Las Vegan. This is all I've ever known. Life in the wild, secular west.
Where are the young Christian women in need of a husband? I'll volunteer! *Raises hand* Here I am! Right here!!! Come'n get it!!!
Or at least a coupl'a dates? Dinner and a movie? Is that too much to ask!?
Why not me? Why others and not me? I feel like I am cursed.
Well, here's something I left out. Back in 2003, about half a year after the pastor's daughter dumped me, I woke up one morning and shook my fist at God. "I'm going to find me a wife, and you're either going to help me or you're going to stay out of my way!!!" He answered back "when you can show as much zeal for finding the one lost sheep out of the 99, then we'll talk." How did I react to that? I fell into a months-long depression and cut off all contact with Him.
Even then when I was far closer to Him than I am now, I couldn't fathom having as much zeal for the Great Commission as I do for somehow putting an end to this lifetime of bitter, crushing desperation. And now, more than ever, I wish I could just walk away. At this moment in time, the window of opportunity is such that I probably would have a decent shot at getting her back if I called her tomorrow night and told her that I've changed my mind.
But I can't.
But a man has needs. A man has needs.
And I have this terrible fear that God still wouldn't give me anybody even if I did what He told me to do. Maybe it's just a test... and there's no reward for me after all, other than the privilege to serve Him until I die all alone. And I'm so afraid right now. It burns. It burns.
That is my deepest desire. To have somebody. To love somebody and be loved. And I live in fear that God couldn't care less about that. Or that He wants to deny it to me so that I'll suffer like some kind of saintly medieval ascetic, minus the "voluntary" part. And I don't want that at all.
I want a wife. |
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