Tuesday, May 06, 2008

The Beast

I don't often talk about my past. It happened a long time ago, and bears little relevance on the present and the future. I almost never bring it up in casual conversation, and sometimes I like to pretend it doesn't even exist. My upbringing was strange, and it has resulted in a very, very complicated creature.

For nearly my whole life, I have been at least two people. My parents are rather overwhelming in their belief system, a faith which makes only a certain kind of sense from a certain point of view. This belief has a great number of holes and self-conflicting concepts, which became apparant to me at a very early age. I have mentioned previously that I have always been sexually aware, as far back as I can remember.

For perspective, I should mention that I can remember learning how to walk. I remember pulling myself up on the curved wooden dowel of the balcony railing leading up from the stair in our front hallway, and teetering my way over to the couch, and reaching out with little hands to grab the plush green velvet, trying to make those first few steps before falling.

When I was three and a bit, I would listen to the sermons in church, and do very well at making sense of them. It became apparant that my awareness, my constant arousal, would be viewed by others as a Bad Thing, and so it became a shameful secret that had to kept at all costs. It was my first act of true independence. I refused to believe that there was something wrong with me, and that people themselves were confused as to the truth of what God had to say about sex and sexuality.

The downfall of the faith presented to me was held in its utter refusal to consider itself as anything but Undeniable Truth. There was only One Way, The Way, Our Way. We are Right, everyone else is wrong. I considered this when thinking about who I could trust. How did they know they were right? What proof was there besides their Big Book, which happened to agree with them? Wasn't that a self-referencing definition? We know we are right because we have this book that says we are right, and we know that Book is right because it agrees that we are right.

Lots of people have books that say they are right. And some of those books are in specific disagreement.

Here is my argument for Why Everyone is Lying to You, Even Though They Honestly Think They Are Telling the Truth, Age 3:

If I want to know whether something is true, I ask my Mom or Dad. If they don't know the answer, they ask my Grampa and Gramma, Uncles and Aunties. They ask their Friends. They ask the people around them. When everyone talks about it and agrees on something, that Thing is considered the Truth.

I am a boy, walking home from Church. I have parents, and grandparents, and they have a Bible. They believe this book to be the Truth, and they believe that it is True because everyone around them agrees that it is true. They are right, and everyone who does not agree is wrong.

On the other side of the world, right now, at this very moment, there is a boy walking home from Temple. (I always pictured these people on the Other Side of the World as walking upside down, as if the sidewalk was on the ceiling) He has parents, and grandparents, and they have the Quoran. They believe this Book to be the Truth, and they believe that it is True because everyone around them agrees that it is true. They are right, and everyone who does not agree is wrong.

Two boys, two completely different Truths. Obviously, nobody has the Truth, they just think they do, and any answer you get is going to be biased towards what they think they know- but they don't really know. No one does, despite any claim they may make to the contrary. And everyone, everyone, Mom and Dad, Grampa and Gramma, Uncles and Aunts, their friends from church, is making that claim. That it is Truth, that it is Fact, and that there can be no other Way.

They beleive this is true, because everyone around them agrees that it is true.

That is Why Everyone is Lying to You, Even Though They Honestly Think They Are Telling the Truth.

Being the bright young lad I was, I was also not unfamiliar with the term heretic. And so there I was, three years old, never being able to trust another living soul. My parents are overwhelming enough when they agree with you, nevermind when you disagree. I couldn't fight them, and I would never be able to convice them. There was no one to turn to, everyone around me was in on it, and so on that day, walking home in that small town in the middle of Nowhere, Alberta, I simply split myself in two.

One boy who smiled and nodded, who held all the right answers for all the troubling questions, who learned the faith by rote, and did his very best to uphold all the principles contained within it. The show, the shell, the Very Good Boy. A genuine beleiver of The Truth as it was presented to him. Not a trace of disbelief, not one sign of doubt. My parents, my mother specifically, is highly observant. An act would have never held, it had to be real.

I took the other boy and buried him in a cage, as deep and as darkly as I could. I did not kill him, though I attempted to later on several occasions; he was a source of immense power, indominible, indestructable. He has no rules, he is not fettered by cultural thinking. He doesn't care how many people agree or disagree. He is built to survive, by any means nessesary. He cannot be persuaded or negotiated with. He is savage, brutal, and unforgiving. He is lust, fury, and power. An animal, neglected and tortured. The Beast.

We have an uneasy truce these days, the wars of youth long since left behind. I feed him, admire him and pet him, he comforts and strengthens me. We work together more often than not. He brings a certain nobility to me, fearlessness, courage. There are times when one must bend to social pressure in order to fit in and succeed. There are times when bending results in a greater evil being allowed to unfold. We stand together, fight together, love together.

A very complicated creature indeed.

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