An Existential Crisis of Eternal Proportions

So, there was that time my mom found my dad’s teeth in the street.

It wasn’t all his teeth, although as I’ve previously mentioned, my father and I share the “Celtic Curse” of poor dental health, so it would not have been terribly surprising if all 32 of his ivories (or in his case, yellow-ies) had fallen out onto the road. In this case, however, it was only 8.

Dad had a removable partial lower plate that he used to lose track of frequently, especially if he was drunk. We’d find those teeth in some pretty crazy places, but the day they were discovered on Southwest Highway was possibly the pinnacle of plate misplacement.

Mom was walking along this busy thoroughfare about a half mile from our home when she spied an older gentleman on the curb staring down into the gutter. She almost passed by, but curiosity prevailed and she asked if he was okay. He replied, “I’m fine, but I think somebody mighta been in an accident ‘cause there’s a bunch’a teeth down there.”

She didn’t even have to look.

“No accident. Those are my husband’s”.

Scooped ‘em up and continued on her way.

Of course, Mom wasn’t always this calm when it came to my father’s drinking. In the progression of Simpson sagas, The Great Plate Mystery® was followed soon after by Where’s That Gun You’re Keeping Overnight for Your Buddy ‘Cause I’m Gonna Shoot Your Drunk Ass® (a story for another day) followed by I’M DONE GET OUT®.

He moved into his own place when I was fourteen, got sober when I was fifteen, and less than a year later he was dead. (Not from a denture-losing accident and she didn’t shoot him, in case you were worried about those sagas®; he died very suddenly and tragically from a brain aneurysm).

You ever heard of ACES, Adverse Childhood Experiences? I recently discovered that ticking off every single item in the Household Dysfunction category (family mental illness, substance abuse, parental separation, divorce, death) will get you a pretty bitchin’ score, even if you didn’t experience the other issues. Let me be clear, my parents loved me and my sister deeply and did their absolute best. It’s just that their best was fully informed by their own trauma and biological proclivities and my neurodiversity and depression didn’t exactly square with their all-too-humanness.

I craved stability. I would have sold an internal organ on the black market for peace and I’m not talking about the ones you can live without, like a kidney or 60% of a liver; I’m talking brain or heart, because I literally couldn’t bear thinking about or feeling the ups and downs of our rollercoaster lives.

I needed solid ground.

Or a 24/7 emotional Dramamine with a ZzzQuil chaser.

Or a Sky Daddy who could keep his teeth in and wouldn’t break our hearts by dying on a frigid February night a month after his 50th birthday, forcing us to hire the same catering company for his funeral luncheon that we’d just used for his surprise party.

Do you not know?
Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary,
and his understanding no one can fathom.
He gives strength to the weary
and increases the power of the weak.
Even youths grow tired and weary,
and young men stumble and fall;
but those who hope in the Lord
will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint.

Isaiah 40:28-31

Even though I’d clapped back at Elfin Dervish during our agitating study about the Bible being “The Word of God”, I followed through on my declaration that I would read the whole flippin’ thing before making any decisions. Yeah, I skipped some of the “begats” and threw the book against the wall a few or sixty times, but I did read the whole flippin’ thing. And although I loathed a good portion of it, yes, loooaaathed, passages like the above would reach out and grab me by the girl cajones.

Thus, I found myself in a Led Zeppelin relationship with the Almighty: I can’t quit you, baby.

Even when I was in the middle of numerous furious arguments with Elfin Dervish after she’d say ridiculous shit like “C.S. Lewis was not a Christian!”, because he hadn’t been baptized the way the International Church of Christ taught, or when I sarcastically asked her if all the people who had lived in the centuries between the church in the book of Acts and the establishment of our church in the 1970s were in Hell and she just shrugged. Somewhere along the way, I decided that my love for Father God was big enough to put up with his unbearably obnoxious children.

NOTE: on the advice of Signore M. Tortellini, who is a dear friend and paid subscriber (classy guy), I need to make sure I’m not engaging in ad hominem attacks so I want to make something clear that I’ve previously left unsaid: Elfin Dervish is a good person who left the church even before I did and apologized to me profusely about a year ago. Like most good people who got sucked into this system, she was a victim who in turn victimized others, the same as yours truly.

I feel it’s important to say that now, because my very last time studying with Elfin and the Christian Coterie was— and I do not use this phrase lightly— butt-ugly.

The study was called “Counting the Cost”, based on Luke 14:28, “Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it?” In theory, it was a review of everything previously studied to make sure the person was ready to be baptized and become a disciple of Christ.

In practice, it was a dumpster fire of emotional, psychological, and spiritual abuse.

From the first moment, they were pushing to make me cry because tears meant you were broken enough by your sin to turn your life over to Christ. When we reviewed the crucifixion and I didn’t cry, Elfin narrowed her eyes and said, “In Acts chapter two, it says the people who heard about this were cut to the heart. Why aren’t you cut to the heart?!”

Omigod, obviously I was so evil that not only did I put Jesus on the cross, I was openly blasé about it. I still didn’t cry, but I did start to shake. A deep tremble all the way from the pit of my stomach to my face, where my teeth started chattering from stress. It got so bad, I was certain that some dude was going to find my ground-down choppers in a gutter on the FDR Drive.

Then they started pressing me again to agree that being gay was a sin, and agree that my family and everyone back home in my Catholic church was lost, because everyone in every church except for the ICOC was lost, and agree that my new purpose in life was to reach out to every single person I knew to save them because where they ended up after death was all my responsibility, and agree to come to every single church meeting, agree to only date men in the church agree to give a certain amount of money every week agree that I would be happy to be hated and persecuted for my beliefs agree to bring some modest clothing for my baptism since I would be getting wet in front of the brothers whose purity I was responsible for agree agree agree agree with everything always forever amen hallelujah—

“Stop. Stop.” Shaking violently and sick to my stomach. Clearly in mental and physical distress. “I can’t do this. I can’t. I will lose my mind. I will have a nervous breakdown. I’m sorry, I can’t. I won’t. I’m sorry you spent all this time on me, but I can’t live like this.”

Silence. A stillness so weighted, it felt like being underwater. She stared at me, carefully considering her words. What would best convey the gravity of this situation?

“Okay. But I need to tell you something. If you walk out that door, you’re going straight to Hell.”

Ah.

Not exactly the solid ground I’d desired.

Apparently, the very earth could give way and I could tumble down to the depths. My Sky Daddy had his hand on the tectonic plates and the right to pull out the one under my feet.

In the long progression of Simpson sagas, this one might be called The Great Plate Mystery Reborn as An Existential Crisis of Eternal Proportions®

Or just I’M DONE GET IN OR GET OUT®

A recommendation before you go: Just as I was finishing writing this article, I read Phobia Indoctrination by the amazing Elise Heerde on Religious Trauma Fieldnotes. It knocked my socks off (or my teeth out). Read her full series of trauma-informed psychoeducation on religious trauma, high control systems, cults, & coercive dynamics of power and control.