serene | Cleaning out the old webmail folders (Reply)

[Warning: contains atheism, violence, and rape. Don't read if such things upset you.]

Cute-poet-chick has cancelled our old ISP because she got DSL, so I have to clean out my old webmail folders. I will be posting some of what I want to keep under private filters, such as poems I don't want to inflict on people, but a couple of things I'll post either publicly or friends-only. Please please please feel free (as if you don't already feel free) to completely ignore me today as I get all faux-prolific.

[Context: Mark wanted to know why I became an atheist. I've left in stuff that was just to him, 'cause I'm lazy.]

(Also known as "The Day I Saw God and Left the Church")

[Note: I have ten emails from you in my inbox, all of which I plan to reply to today, so if you wanna skip this long one (I don't know how long it'll be, but I assume pretty long) for the time being, feel free. Copy sent to aol. Also, maybe I oughta, but I don't save copies of this story. Retelling it helps me continue to process it and keep it in perspective. Questions are welcome; I don't mind talking about it. It's also okay if you wanna just read it without responding. There, enough disclaimers? ;-)]

In 1983, I attended a Revelation seminar and became a seventh-day adventist. I loved the church, it was good to me and for me, and though I hold some things against it, I was happy and pious in a genuine way while I was an adventist.

In 1990 (wow, twelve years ago last Thursday), I was working two jobs. Temp secretary by day, convenience-store clerk by night. I wasn't all that happy about working alone on the graveyard shift, but I was a block from my house, and I thought I needed the money. My brothers would come in and keep me company while they played video games, so I really didn't mind it much. Always been a night person.

On March 21, my brother left around 2 am. Not sure about the time, but around there.

We weren't supposed to come out from behind the counter while working alone, but then again, there were things we were supposed to do in the store before the boss got in at 0600 (heh). I was filling the coffee machine at around 2:30, 2:45. Alone in the store, I was facing the street door, with my back to the dairy case. A customer came in. I must have said hello to him, but I don't remember it. I really didn't give him another thought as I filled the coffee filters and he went over to the dairy case. The next thing I knew, he grabbed me from behind. I was so confused and startled. I looked down and saw that he had stabbed me in the abdomen from behind with a hunting knife.

He told me to take my clothes off and lie down. I did. He raped me while I bled all over him, but I'm not sure if he got hard, because I remember wondering why I couldn't feel anything. For a moment (and this was hard to deal with, as I was a very godly girl in those days) I tried to enjoy it. I was a virgin, and I think my natural make-the-best-of-it personality took over to an absurd degree.

Anyway.

I was compliant. Let him kiss me. Tried to lie still. Stared at him the whole time, trying to memorize his face. He seemed almost catatonic, like he wasn't really there.

All this time, I was scared but calm in a weird way. I was certain I would be dead within fifteen minutes (don't know why fifteen minutes was what I thought, but there you have it), but I just told god that I hoped he would take care of me and that I was ready to be with him. Over the guy's shoulder, I saw a vision -- it was as real as anything I've ever seen. It was a cliche all the way through, but it comforted me. A being in a white gown, hovering a few inches off the floor. I assumed it was god. Later I thought it might be an angel, before I decided it was senseless to give a name to it. Anyway, I felt protected by it, and I felt warm and calm even as I was staring into this person's eyes and readying myself to die.

Then suddenly he changed. His eyes got wide and he looked terrified, almost as if he'd awakened and realized what he was doing. Then he raised the knife and I knew he was going to kill me. I stopped complying. I kicked and screamed and screamed and kicked, and he yelled at me to stop screaming. I begged him not to kill me. I lied and said that I had three babies without a daddy and they would be alone. I offered him money.

"But what if they catch me?"

"I swear I won't tell anyone anything about you."

I offered to let him take my driver's license and, if I blabbed, he could come back and kill me. He accepted. He let me get up and put my apron on and I talked him into taking some money from the cash register. I was hoping he would hit the button so they could get a fingerprint, but he made me do it. He didn't take my driver's license. He left and I got on the phone to 9-1-1. A man came in looking for his keys and stayed with me until the paramedics came.

I learned a couple of things that night. First, that when we die, no matter who's with us or not with us, we die alone. We get to face that on our own. Second, it's possible to calmly face death. I had been terrified of dying until that night. Now I know I can manage it when it comes. And last (maybe most practical), I learned that there are *very* few life-or-death situations in life (at least for people in my current socioeconomic position), and that gave me a decent sense of perspective, I think.

In subsequent months, but beginning the very next day, I decided that no one who isn't gonna die my death is gonna live my life. I decided to start trusting myself and stop letting others decide what was right, and what was right for *me*. I stopped going to church and started reading everything I could get on spirituality, religion, philosophy, and non-theistic systems. I was an agnostic for a long time. It was (and is) my position that it would be impossible for me to prove a non-being, and that I hadn't enough evidence to prove the being in question in any affirmative way.

What made me stop calling myself an agnostic was the realization I had one day that I was requiring more certainty of godlessness than I required of anything else in my life. God had not chosen to reveal itself to me unambiguously (some would say the 'angel' was unambiguous, but I'm sorry, something that comes when one is bleeding to death and then disappears doesn't count), yet I was making all these life decisions based on it. I turn the key in the ignition a thousand times and something happens, I'm gonna believe something will happen the next time. God fails to reveal itself today, and a thousand other days, I think I'm safe acting upon a reasonable belief that it doesn't exist. Kinda like my faith in electricity -- I have none. Just a reasonable expectation that it will work. Certainly I have a reasonable expectation that there is no god, so I call myself an atheist, though it is still my belief that I don't know for sure about the existence of a deity. I'm pretty damn sure it's not the gods of modern-day christians/jews/muslims, if it exists, but if it exists, it is its job to reveal itself to me. If it wants blind faith, tough. I don't want a deity on those terms, and I see no clear evidence that I should. After all, what use is my intellect, if not to hold ideas in my mind, examine them, find them whole or lacking?

And if it sent me an angel to prove its existence and is disappointed in me, well, I'm disappointed in it, too, so we're even.

*smooch*

"My atheism, like that of Spinoza, is true piety towards the universe and denies only gods fashioned by men in their own image, to be servants of their human interests." Santayana http://www.serenepages.org