rageomatic
IvanaScream
Did you come to this page for Rage? Did you come from one of those touchy feely posts that I wrote last time. Well I’m returning to my radical anonymous core today. I wish there was God so I had so one to blame. Let’s play photo album of Rage’s life.
Snap
And you see way back , in pretty sepia. It’s Rage, before he was Rage…the old self. The lost little boy. What’s he doing? Well he’s crying. Why? Well he’s in fervent prayer. He’s about 12 years old and he’s begging god to please give him girlfriend, a little woman he can be have a special relationship with. Little pre Rage doesn’t want to grow up and go to college to find someone. Little pre-Rage is lonely right now. He wants someone to hold him, someone to love him and kiss him and make him feel special. Hot tears are rolling down his face as he talks to his Father. Not the abusive one in the room next door…no his real Father in heaven.
Snap
It’s a midwestern summer…1993 at Jesus Camp. Rage is talking to a girl. She has beautiful grey eyes the light of a false dawn and as warm and soft as flannel blanket. Her angelic face is framed by ringlet curls of brown-black hair. Her name is Victim. She’s caught between girlhood and woman hood as she like pre-Rage is 12 years old, but she bears it gracefully. She has sought him out to have a good talking to. pre-Rage is scared. He really likes her. What is going to say? She says…everyone seems to be forming into little couples here…thats not what I want to do, but I really like you and I want to be your friend. Promise me you never ask me out. pre-Rage swallows hard. He wants to marry her. “Ok, but you have to promise to marry me if we are still single at 30.” She agrees.
Snap
1994. It’s pre-Rage and Victim sitting together. They are such good friends. The write each other emails all year when they are not at camp together.
Snap
1995. There they are again! Those crazy friends! The spend every camp together.
Snap
1996. Oh no, pre-Rage is the camp life guard! He is still Victims friend though.
Snap
1997. Its amazing! pre-Rage has tried to go with different girls, lots of them. He has tried a long distance relationship with every girl he is friends with from camp! Every girl except Victim.
Snap
1998. Pre-Rage sneaks away from the pool to have long talks with Victim.
Snap
1999. Pre-Rage and Victim sitting together by the cabins, by the pond, by the chapel. What a loving friendship they have…
Snap
What’s this earnest conversation? Why that Victim telling Rage that she thinks they should go out. Rage doesn’t want to break his word though. What sort of husband would be make? He asks for a week to think about it. He prays and fasts and talks to anyone he trusts for advice. He decides that it is OK. He has wanted to marry Victim for 5 years now. He tells victim…yes I would like to go out. He’s about to tell her that he needs to ask her father permission to to court her. When she says…
NO! She doesn’t want to be another one of his ex-girlfriends.
Snap
It’s 30 seconds later. Pre-Rage is on his knees. He didn’t want to be own them but they just gave out. He can’t see. His eyes are welling up with tears. Telling Victim he wanted to go out with her was the most eye contact he had ever made with a woman before. His mother used to slap him for making eye contact. She thought it was disrespectful for children to look into their parents eyes, as if they were equals.
Snap
2010. Look it’s Rage, the way we know and love! Gone is the bushy mop of hair, it’s shaved to the skin. Gone are the big Farmer glasses. Where their used to be a pathetic love for Jesus there is now a little gem of hate. He got an email from Victim today. Wants to be friends.
Snap…
Look, it’s Victim crying for 2 solid hours, just like little Rage did. Victim just found out that Rage hadn’t made her wait a week just to be mean because he didn’t like fat girls. Victim just found out that Rage wanted to marry her and she broke his heart.
Snap
Look! It’s Rage throwing up in wastebasket. Good thing facebook chat doesn’t have any video or sound! Victim is telling him about the 27 guys shes fucked in 8 years.
Ok…cut the crap…I can’t cry type and write in 3rd person at the same time. 27 guys…by beautiful little girl…My beautiful little…Grace…because she deserves a better name than Victim. And it wasn’t the 27 guys in 8 years that made me cry…it was when I offered to take her and her latest man to dinner and she had to refuse…because they can’t be seen in public together….because he is 30 years older than her. Grace is 29. She’s fucking a 59 year old man. Man number 27. Beautiful little Grace is looking up with those huge grey eyes saying “Will you love me now?” to a senior citizen. He’s not really her boyfriend she explains…just kind of. They are faithful to one another…but he isn’t marriage material. So they don’t go out to dinner and Ivanna and I can’t take them out for coffee. They don’t do things together other than fuck, you see.
My beautiful little Grace, with her big curvy hips, and amazing breasts, and those eyes…is fucking random dudes to kill the pain because daddy didn’t love her enough.
And want God to be real today. I want God to heal her. I want God to make her OK inside and give a good steady relationship with someone who will love and take care of her. And if he can’t do that….
Doesn’t it make you sad, Grace…being with strangers…
“Oh that’s OK” says Grace, “God made me this way. He made me to feel the pain of the world like he does, so I won’t forget how much all the sin in the world hurts him”
God…made….Grace…to…hurt.
And now, I want God to be real. I want him to be flesh and blood in front of me. So I can kick him in his little godly balls over and over again 27 times…once for every man Grace sold herself too for 20 minutes of feeling loved.
Words fail me.
I hate Christianity. I hate Grace. I hate myself. I hate everyone and everthing. I hate the illusion of God…held out to people like Grace.
12 Comments
Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI
Rage-
You don’t hate or you wouldn’t be angry. You love Grace, that first love is still there in your mind or you wouldn’t care. There is something I figured out a while ago, which made me very angry. Just as love is not the cause of pain, it is in fact my belief that hate is not what we perceive. Rage and anger are symptoms of caring, which is not always the same is love but in this case that is my perception. Hate is when you just don’t care.
I wish I had a magic set of words to make it better. I don’t. Grace reminds me of my elder sister. I went down one path based on not knowing real love and she went down a path similar to Grace’s. There is no fix until they wake up, then we just have to be there. Does this help us to stop raging and screaming and wanting to hurt god? I wish.
I may have to write out this story for you sometime, it’s complete fiction but in it my character goes to heaven and hell and beats the crap out of a lot of deities.
Strange that she would contact you after all this time.
God didn’t make her do those things. He doesn’t want her to kill the pain by having sex with strangers. He wants to heal her pain, to strip away the lies of Satan that are attached to her emotional wounds. This is the meaning of spiritual warfare as described in Ephesians 6:10-13. Maybe you feel such anger on her behalf, because you are meant to fight for her in the Spirit, through intercessory prayer.
Or you could just hate some more.
Grace is not my only friend in this boat. Most of my friends are women who are broken somehow. Let me give them numbers so as to stay anonymous. 1. Was raped repeatedly from the time she was 4. She’s barely functional sexually. 2. Raped at 12 and got pregnant. Has had 5 kids from for men over a 7 year perioud. 3. Grace. 4. A 31 year old virgin who is so terrified of sex she hasn’t been on a date since we broke up 9 years ago. 5. Couldn’t have a normal sexual relationship and was a 40-something airline pilots mistress for 7 years. 6. A 28 year old virgin who is so convinced that sex is dirty and sinful that when after weeks of abstinance, she masturbates, she feels horrible and spends days praying and fasting to get right with God.
To my eyes, the emotional wounds you speak of are two part: bad parenting and Christian guilt. The happily heathen doen’t seem to have these wounds. These are the wounds of what are from the outside spiritual successes.
These are the young women of my church, my camp, my campus group. I am the elusive “good man”…thought straight I play the role of the “gay friend”. The man makes them tea and listens to stories with love and without judgment and privately cries when they do it again because he knows his disapointment would hurt to much.
Could any action on my part save them I would. If God was real and put the same contract Jesus signed in front of me…lingering death to save them…I would sign it.
I would happily leave my wife and daughter husbandless and fatherless to save them. Could there be any more worthy way for a man to die, than in battle to save those less able? Could my wife possibly be disappointed in such a death? Alll men die, but a a few get to choose a death that matters. Maybe you don’t believe me. Maybe you forgot that I lived with suicidal thoughts my whole life. Maybe you forgot I was a self supported missionary in the inner city, more impovrished than the people that I cried out to god to save. Death doesn’t scare me. Not even a little bit. I’ve stared it down to many times. Pointlessness…now thats scary. Show me where sign Anna. Show me where to sign and with Christ-like love…I will happily die to to make my friends better. But you can’t…my sacrifice would acheive nothing but a few tears. So I hate.
My hate is clean, pure. I don’t hate my girls. I hate the system that made their fathers and pastors think it was OK throw them to the wolves. I hate the system that worships self sacrifice. I will hate the system makes kind hearted people like yourself turn away from what actually has the power to change things: actions, to that which is powerless. And I will fight that system. I will fight it with words that sew doubt. I will fight it with gentle hugs from an angry atheist. I will fight it with political organizations. I will fight it anyway I can.
I can’t make Grace Ok. But I can work my ass off destroy the system that makes new little sisters for her everyday.
I spent all day ruminating on your reply Anna, because the first thing I wanted to do was be the human sheild for Rage. That was the most thoughtless comment I have ever seen that wasn’t made by a person who is clearly a troll. I could be most of the numbers on that list, though I eventually figured it out, via routes deemed sinful and hell bound. Bondage in fact helped me figure out that sex is sex and love is something wholly unrelated. I wish that Rage wasn’t right, Anna but he is.
Rage sorry for talking about you like you can’t speak up, I know you can and did but the anguish that you feel isn’t something you are feeling alone. You do help people to recover, because our conversations help me, I help others, I am sure you help others. It isn’t a balm to this wound but it is a fact.
Thank you Kat. Thank you so much. I’ve got this picture in my mind of Grace getting railed by this random old dude and those big grey eyes that used to look at me while we talked, looking up at him with the same yearning for love, and it hurts so much.
To know that I’ve helped you…a fellow broken hope fiend…it warms my heart and makes her pain easier to bear. Thank you.
Of all the above, the post and the comments, I think my favorite is Kateryna’s response.
It made me tear up.
It’s the visual of this wheelchair bound abuse survivor, someone that most would consider unable to protect another person, acting as a human shield for a man she’s never met.
It just breaks my heart for all the shitty “christians” that don’t do a damn thing
It makes me angry with every comment about how cyber relationships are meaningless.
I love you so much, Rage.
It is a good post.
Very rageful but coherent. Thank you for, again, being transparent.
Ah darling….soon I’ll be back where I belong. Near, on, in and all the the other lovely prepositions I can name preceding the object “my beloved”
I’m sorry my comment came across as thoughtless and I didn’t mean it to be callous. I am a broken person myself, with broken people all around me. I am not anonymous and so will not describe myself as you described your friends, but if I did, I think I would fit right in. You speak to me as though I’m not a woman, as if sex is something I have only read about in the Bible or heard about from the pulpit, as if I haven’t had my own demons to overcome. You assume much.
I am so fervent for my Jesus because I have found the true healing He brings. I have seen others do the same, and find sexual wholeness and happiness that isn’t possible in the world. Sex is given as the metaphor for Christ and the church. It is the most powerful bonding agent we know this side of heaven, and we are meant to enjoy it here as a picture of the unity — the pure NOT DIRTY, blissful — unity we will find in our relationship with God.
I know this is your blog and the purpose of it is rage., But it is hard to share my heart, to KNOW that I have prayed in the Spirit for others and it has FREED them, that others have done the same for me — and to hear you say that you choose hate.
It’s OK. I knew you didn’t mean it to be thoughtless or callous. It just felt like a slap in the face to have you ask
“Why have rage when you could be interceding in prayer for them”
Oh, Anna…of course I’ve tried that when I was a believer. Thats why I commented like I did. I would really give my life to save any of them because I love them dearly. “The show me where to sign” comment was no an idle one. Truly…if me having the hell beaten out me and nailed to board could save these people I love…I would do it.
My point was that if even giving my life would not be enough, then certainly an few hours…lying on the floor ans weeping and begging Someone to help them (as I have done before) wouldn’t do either. The only way help is to just keep actively loving them and supporting them and hopping someday they get the message that they are worthy of love and decide to help themselves.
While I’m loving them, I can fight the system that helped produce them. The reason I am so fervently AGAINST your Jesus is because I never found true healing or blissful love on his watch. I found it on my on when I turned my back on the “promises” I never saw work.
“You speak to me as though I’m not a woman, as if sex is something I have only read about in the Bible or heard about from the pulpit, as if I haven’t had my own demons to overcome. You assume much. ”
I assume nothing. You are to me exactly what you present yourself to be. Any failure of my percetion is because you haven’t told me. And I am not anonymous here to you or to Kat. You both know my real name and the blog I maintained under it. I bared my soul on that blog. You know me, because I was willing to present my sexual brokeness publically. I am anonymous here to keep from hurting loved ones and because my employer, the US military frowns on my views.
And how did I write as if you weren’t a woman? I’m confused by that.
I’m not sure what I meant by you writing to me as if I’m not a woman. I was in the moment, I think.
You’re right, I have not presented my brokenness publicly, at least not in clear “tell all” terms. I am a writer who does all kind of writing (spiritual, health, parenting, magazine writing, medical editing, etc) under my real name and as a career, and until I feel otherwise I try to be careful about my digital footprint and how many people know all about me. I’m just not ready to have it all out there. I’m sure you understand.
by the way, I didn’t mean to imply that intercession means I don’t feel rage on behalf of others or for myself. Praying in the Spirit can include yelling and crying, one heart breaking for another. It can also include the WHY, and WHY DID YOU DO THIS, and WHY IS EVERYTHING SO MESSED UP. But the rage is directed to Satan, and the Spirit puts weapons in our hands. (just to clarify, these are spiritual weapons to be used against dark forces, NOT actual weapons to be used against humans)
If it helps at all, I, too, am a woman who used to be like Grace. I was definitely searching for something, mainly love from other people, but I was also searching for a way to love myself. Luckily, I finally figured that out (though I still slip back sometimes – but who doesn’t?), but it took a lot of heartache for me to get where I am now.
At the same time, I didn’t have all of the religious baggage to deal with that your friends do. I was raised a loose mix of Christian, pagan, and New Age Native American. Sex was considered a variable phenomenon, not JUST for two people who were married and in love. It was considered just another part of being human, the same as eating or sleeping or jumping. So even though I slept with a lot of people searching for love, I did eventually find it. It helped that I made friends along the way – male friends that I didn’t have sex with – who helped me figure it out.
And you remind me a lot of one of them.
And now I have to read you blog obsessively and find your secrets and how to love people like you so I can love them better. Thanks for stopping by.