January 8, 2024

Religious ramblings

I can’t sleep. My mind is whirling with too many things that it’s like a car idling in the driveway. I keep thinking about this conversation I had with an old friend of mine. It covered the gamut but my primary focus was the absurdity of sin and religion in general. I tried to bring up points of contradiction but the thing about faith brain is it’s like a snake eating its tail. One thing justifies the other with no real rhyme or reason.

This friend in particular really triggers my antagonistic nature in regards to faith. This friend I had, at one time, been in love with. We were really close friends and during a trip on spring break I crossed a boundary with him. He responded like any straight guy having an identity crisis. He fled into faith. When we returned to school after the holiday session he passed me a note between classss that he could no longer be my friend because of Jesus.

I broke down balling right there in class. The teacher sent me immediately to the office because I could not stop crying.

Years later we made amends. He says he never said that in the note and I’m like… girl, I broke down crying in second period history. I remember what it fucking said.

Having this conversation with him is really triggering, and not just because of that instance. It has been years of bullshit from the people are church and in the Christian schools I attended. I never saw more hatred and cruelty than I had in church. Once you remove faith from people they’re truly kind. I would say that I am much more caring than I was when I was religious.

I go in this roundabout arguments in my head debunking faith and how absurd it is. I attempted to do that in the conversation with this friend but I am not good under pressure. My husband on the other hand is who made me work through the bullshit to see it for what it was. He should be doing this kind of stuff… not me.

Like… I look at all of the shitty things that have happened to me and all I can think is either I’m being punished by god or it’s the devil. And if it’s the devil, I’ve already forsaken god, just let up. Kicking me lower isn’t going to make me hate god more than I already do. Then if it is god doing these things he’s a sociopath.

They go end over end for me. The thing that truly, truly killed it for me was watching my mother go through all she did. She was the most devout person I had ever, EVER seen. She walked the walk and talked the talk as the church likes to say. But she was met with nothing but heartache and struggles. A faith man would say that was just the devil trying to make her rescind her faith. Okay. Then why didn’t god stop it? If he’s all fucking powerful, why sit there and watch her struggle? As I love to say, cause god can’t cum unless you’re suffering.

Anyway… it’s funny, even now my thoughts are convoluted. I have a clear line of thought it’s just that I am so emotional about all of this that I get flustered and can’t think. And it’s because I was sold lies. I built my childhood on falsehoods printed in a book. Claims that make the assertion that they are “god breathed.” Well god spoke to me and said you’re a bunch of cunts.

I hope to one day find the peace from my religious past but I don’t think I ever will. I can never move past it because it is around me all the time.

January 4, 2024

Welcome to my Josh Talk

Today I am going to breakdown in the most simplistic way I can why I am pro-Palestine and anti-Israel. And when I say I am “anti-Israel” I am referring to the government/governing forces of Israel. I am in NO WAY anti-Semitic or referring to the Jewish people in any shape or form. The actions of a governing body do not speak for the entirety of a single culture. That is absurd. And if you think that, you don’t understand how the world works.

In my town, like most American cities, there are 4 Starbucks on the same street. Let’s imagine that one day a couple of robbers go into it and hold everyone there at gunpoint, demanding that they give them all the money in the register. Somehow, someway, the authorities are alerted and they show up in seconds. Instead of reasoning with these 2 people they just decide to bomb the Starbucks because it’s easier for them than investigating. Time is of the essence, and the local police are an overfunded military force. Y’know, for safety.

As the bomb sends pieces of building and dust miles into the sky, the 2 robbers and hostages in the other Starbucks down the street look out the window and wonder what the hell just happened.

The police, realizing that they have the wrong Starbucks, go to the other one and do the same thing. Turns out it wasn’t that one either.

FINALLY they show up to the right one and do the same thing, because they haven’t learned their lesson from the other two situations. So they have destroyed 3 Starbucks with all of the innocent people inside in the process. All of this destruction and death to get 2 people who tried to rob a single coffee shop.

And this doesn’t even touch on the subsequent deserved public outrage, the inevitable police cover up claiming it was a coordinated effort with multiple assailants, or that these were cops from a town over.

Lets pretend for a moment that everything we’re being told by the Israeli government is 100% true and that there is this intricate network of tunnels connecting all of the buildings that Hamas uses to carry out their terrorist attacks.

Now let’s say that about 75-80% of Gaza is not related to Hamas in any fashion at all, they’re just people trying to live their lives in this “country” smaller than the City of Los Angeles. If you’re a highly militarized nation (Israel) if their goal, as they have informed us, is to root out Hamas, one does not just willynilly bomb everything above this sprawling network of tunnels. They would send in a highly trained task force to root them out. You are supposed to be sophisticated and smarter than them, right?

This government is acting like the incompetent police force. With their lack of regard for human life all because their “goal” is to stop crime and to “keep people safe” by any means necessary.

Thank you for coming to my “Josh Talk.”

January 1, 2024

A Dark Post for a New Year

The concept of a “new year” is lost on me. Not in the sense that the number has jumped to a higher one. That obviously makes sense. What doesn’t is this idea of the immense possibility. “I can be a whole new me” just by the stroke of midnight.

I used to be one of those folks. Thinking that because we had ascended another hill and looked at the next surface of climb, we could and would achieve anything. Yet over the past few years I have lost that sense of wonder. I applaude those who still have it. Hold onto it as long as you can because it slips away easier than you think.

For me it broke down when I realized that my problems and troubles would continue no matter what. “New year, new me” be damned. Without a complete and utter fucking overhaul, overnight, my life will remain the exact same. Which is fine. It doesn’t stop there for me. It will not stay the same. In fact it will get worse.

Caring for someone with a progressive terminal illness doesn’t have the hope and possibility that other’s experience. My journey only gets scarier and more traumatizing. So, the mentality of “I can transcend this!” doesn’t apply. This was the same last year, and the year before. And even the year before that. For a brief shining moment at the start of 2019 my outlook looked incredible. Truly. Then on some cosmic plane the deity watching me climb the rope of fate decided to cut it, and I have been clinging to a thread that has gone slack, whose end is plummeting toward my face to knock me back down.

Sorry for being so depressing. However bleak I sound I know that is not my lot in life. Things will change, it just won’t happen with the turn of a new day. Instead it will be in March or August or even in a few years from now. Nothing is permanent. Nothing. Not joy or sadness.

This year, I know will be the hardest of my life. My husband does not have long. Even his doctor, in November, said months. How many? We have yet to guess. But I can see. I know the end is nigh. Although I do not fear it. I don’t even think about it. (At least try not to.) I attempt to focus on the now, the moments that I do have with him. He’s still here. I can still hear his chuckle, smell his breath, see the mischievousness and love in his eyes, and I get to kiss his warm forehead and know that he is here. He is safe.

Death and dying was a lesson I needed that, for me, was prefaced by a “starter course” in community college. Quite literally. Although I did not know it at the time. After that my life forced me to face its ugly reality. To learn repeatedly that the future is not predictable, definite or ever clear. It’s a dense fog, with a little illumination at best. Live in the now. Feel the now. Enjoy this exact moment because we will not have it again.

Happy New Year.

December 15, 2023

The Soundtrack of My Life – 44- Snowman

Sia has never really been on my radar. Other than the mega hit Chandelier, the only song of hers that I can think of was one teens were using as the soundtrack to their “pity me” videos. Y’know the one’s I’m talking about? It’s where they film themselves holding up pieces of paper with “their story” written in bold marker, while they sob. Teenagers (my younger self included in this statement) are so hilariously over-dramatic. I forget the name of that particular track, but it’s that one.

Regardless, I discovered this song last year while trying to shoehorn the “Christmas spirit” into me. I really wasn’t feeling it, and no amount of “balsam” scent or holiday cookies were doing the trick. Luckily Spotify has a “Christmas Hits” playlist that includes some of the most well-known holiday hits. I’d strike it up while I was driving around for work. When Snowman played from my speakers I was instantly hooked. I couldn’t explain it. I stopped the playlist and put this one song on repeat for the next two days.

Even this year, I had forgotten all about it until I did the exact same thing to drum up some holiday joy. Once again this captivated me like no other song and I was obsessed.

An internet friend of mine once told me that we tend to obsess over songs we identify the most with. I didn’t disagree and still don’t, but I couldn’t quite get why the song about a snowman would consume me so aggressively.

As I like to do, I over-analyzed the lyrics and tried to pick the song apart for it’s true meaning.

Granted… I could just be talking out of my ass as I look for some deeper meaning. For all intents and purposes it could have just been a fun song they wrote to make money. The words just fit the rhyme and it sounded festive. But as an “artist” I refuse to believe that these things are just “commercial.”

What I came to was that this song is about someone who is dying. Why choose a main character that is so fragile. A snowman is made and can only exist in winter. The time they are present is fleeting, but while they’re there you have as much fun with them in the snow, while winter lasts.

The song goes on with the singer pleading with the snowman to not worry about the inevitable, be here for me. This is the one piece of the song that I feel odd about, because it almost feels selfish to me. The singer begs the snowman to not worry and to not “melt,” for them. However, I don’t think that’s was the intention. My assumption is more of a reflection of my own insecurities.

The narrator proves their selflessness in the chorus:

I want you to know that I’m never leaving
‘Cause I’m Mrs. Snow, ’til death we’ll be freezing
Yeah, you are my home, my home for all seasons
So come on, let’s go

They are reaffirming that “I am here, I will be here until the end.”

The lyrics continue on that the two of them can run away and hide out in the north pole, a fictitious place, to escape the melt and continue on forever.

If you haven’t picked up what I’m putting down… It’s about my husband. My “snowman” and me.

This has single-handedly become my all-time favorite Christmas song. I could genuinely listen to it non-stop for days without growing tired of it. Even while the lyrics are somewhat sad if you kind of “break them apart” the music is really selling the hope of stopping the melt and finding happiness in the north pole.