He never let himself vomit.

"God: out of mind? Out of sight!!"

So read the poster in my mom's dorm room at Catholic boarding school.  She was a 16-year-old atheist and my dad a 23-year-old, narcissistic Jesus freak when they met. For drugs? For sex? For the cruel destinies of broken hearts, drawn to deadly tragedy for the promise of healing and the dream of love?  I can still hear his well-practiced versions of these stories, stories of how I came into the world.  I won't bother to quote him here.  The story of how they met was always his prelude to her godlessness and the brave work of angry violence he had to embrace in order to lead her to true salvation in Jesus, always told in a drunken stupor, during that short window of tender albeit panicked concern for my soul sandwiched between threatening to rape me and passing out.

I watched his purple, trembling lips struggling to form words punctuated with his tears and heartfelt pleas for honesty.  Honesty is hard, especially when an unsatisfactory disclosure on my part usually lead to a beating, if he hadn't passed out yet.  I remained silent, unless he pressed me.  I understood his premise, and it made sense. Apparently people lie and work to divide family members.  I had not discovered this yet for myself.  Still, if anyone was going to try to cause trouble, I wanted to be as open as possible.  Mainly, I wanted to limit, as much as possible, the amount of physical punishment I would have to face.  Problem was, I didn't really have much to confess, not the kind of stuff he was looking for.

 I had cheated on a test. He smirked.  There crouched in the field behind our mobile home, stuff happened, words were exchanged. I only remember the beautiful trees and the swirling, pre-vomit discomfort of my sinking, drowning soul. Reader, thank you for holding my hair while I fill your tupperware with this shocking filth.  Thank you for helping me flush my inherited shame down the toilet in our shared mental experience. Thank you for holding my pain in your awareness, allowing me to get out from under carrying it alone.  My dad fed me lies and self-loathing.  I've held it all down too long....

Someday, I'll say, "Dad: out of mind? OUT OF SIGHT!!!!!"

© Copyright Ernest Samuel Christie III 2013