deicide diaries: a 19yr

old wrestles with God and decides to stop wrestling bcuz they suck at wrestling and nothing makes sense to them rt now what is this.
by mario lemafa

Do you believe in fairies?...If you believe, clap your hands! -Peter Pan

Tape 1

Memories in the tapes The kids spent sunset Friday till sunset Saturdays waiting, resting very little. Church service was every Saturday. The elders woke up early around 4am, as if this was an ancient tradition. Few people left early; most would stay for evening service. There are cultural differences of religious practice in Christianity. Pacific Island communities can spend the whole day at worship.

Tape 2

I think when pastor passed away unexpectedly, a fissure from all of the mourning and heartache came upon our community. Nobody was able to rise from this tragedy unscathed. The shadows were darker for a time it seemed.

Tape 3

1998

At home, we werent allowed to watch television; when my mother went to work Shaun and I would guiltily turn on this small TV and quietly adjust the antennas wrapped in tin foil.

I remember we were watching this movie starring Chuck Norris where he was a detective fighting this guy who was actually Satan (or maybe it was the other way around). That movie follo wed conveniently by the episode of The Simpsons where Bart sold his soul to Milhouse set me off. For an entire month I whispered to myself I will not sell my soul to the devil, I will not sell my soul to the devil, I will not sell my soul to the devil, at school, at home, everywhere I went. I would be awake at night in bed whispering to myself in my head. One night, I mind fucked, slipped over my new mantra and accidentally said, I will sell my soul to the devil.

I literally thought I was doomed! How stupid I thought myself to accidentally sell my soul! I prayed, and prayed that what I did would be taken back.

I still wanted my soul.

Tape 4

My first experience praying for somebody in the hospital was when Auntie Sowow (more like great aunt) was put into intensive care. She used to make these mean white cheese quesadillas for me and my brother when we would visit her and her family. I remember how she would bring them out from the microwave all melted and chewy. Shed reach out her hand and put one in mine; her fingers were so bony and her skin, so soft. We were all seated in a circle. My cousins were sobbing, uncle was shaking, and our family was tearing up. There was a box of ice cream from Jack-dad from work and wed console ourselves with popsicles. One of the nights we left after an especially intense prayer session, as we were driving off, a white bird flew across the windshield and flapped away into the dark. Mom said it was Auntie Sowow leaving.

Tape 5-10

The sun rises and sets on the earth every day.

I like to believe myself as having a rational spirituality. I mean, I never settle my beliefs until Ive probed, investigated, and viewed them from many perspectives.

I strive for honesty and genuineness in my life. And I say strive because it is a struggle to do this consistently.

Tapes 11-13

I was 10 years old when I gave my first sermon; I spoke with gusto from the pulpit telling the seated rows of people things I really couldnt comprehend at the time in a language I learned to forget. Children are brilliant but I was born with a timer that rang 15 seconds late. After I had finished and it was lunch time, several of the elders took me by the side and suggested that I should really think about becoming a minister. The idea wasnt new- my mother up to this point continued to have us memorize Biblical texts and would say that she knew I was going to be a great pastor every chance she got. Either it was me making a lot of money or me being a spiritual leader. At the time, I was seriously considering committing my life to studies in theology. My family has a history of spiritual leadership going all the way back to when one of my ancestors was an exorcist in Samoa. It is important to know that I feel that every moment I have to myself is one experienced at the threshold of transcendence.

While my career goals have changed, I believe that my work is tinged with this sense of longing and presence.

Tape 14

White church listened. Brown church obeyed. Black church danced.

Tape 15

There was more emphasis on the end of things than there was the beginning or middle part. I think this is why whenever I watch an apocalyptic movie, I try to register this experience into my memories. Anything tying to the end times garnered my attention. Native American legends, Scandinavian Ragnarok, and aboriginal Dream Time were examples of childhood readings. I think were waiting for something to happen to us that is more than what is actually happening to us. That we reject the possibility that we are capable of exceedingly mundane moments, vignettes, years being alive is to ignore the exquisiteness of the paradigm. Somebody must have put these thoughts to pen more beautifully than me.

Tape 16

A pale body lays limp on an intersection next to a smashed truck that is an advertisement for a collision repair shop. It was an orange blur before the yellow bus stopped it. Streaks of hair jolt an eon before the bumper breaks the veneer of three seconds.

The little thing convulses like toy springs on a trampoline before it is still with its Vans kicked up in the air, followed by age worn jeans tightly wrapped around brambles for legs, parting with a torso of flannel pleading for mercy as the buttons stretch revealing a soot black under shirt, linked to a thing that was a head resembling a golf ball caved in before it bursts back in to shape.

Two school buses stop, their contents teetering on old tufted innards, thrashing about, putting their things that are heads up to segmented glass windows.

Tape 17

Where they exceed in giving moral guidance, providing strength of inner resolve, and the parting of wisdom, I feel that most religious doctrines are lacking in explaining the meaning behind things.

Ive heard that human kind is incapable of being able to fathom the secrets of the universe and are thus unworthy of the truth. This would be the most artful denial to date.

Know Thyself.

I think Id rather struggle than wait around.

Tape 18 Youre no t the only one who thinks that replacing any song with Jesus with another name totally makes it a love ballad. From praise to minstrelsy.

Tape 19 Would the message still have reverence if it was on DVD?

Tape 20

My bus home was already beyond me. I walked a very long distance from my high school after writing an essay explaining how I thought homosexuality was fundamentally wrong. My teacher wrote at the end of my paper in red pen, what about shellfish? and mentioned that he wanted to see me after clas s. I was standing in front of a man I admired, listening to him defend for me the doubts I had inside. To have someone teach me what it meant to question and interrogate my biases transformed my life; I walked those 20 miles alone from my high school into the cold road ways of Black Diamond homeward bound; the sun passed into the darkness of winter, leaving me to contemplate and reflect on my misconceptions.

Tape 21

We squeezed underneath the wire fence into the wilderness of Black Diamond. Our nimble ste ps down hill led us away from the housing complex and deeper into nowhere. Boy and I trekked through leaf covered terrain on bike, wheeling over moss woven rock and fallen trees as the cold breeze jostled the warm air out from our lungs. Boy stops his bike, signals me to stop too, and we stand in the center of a clearing covered in leafy down, semishaded by a massive tree. Around me leaves are falling in the sun. I see that the blue sky and clouds are above me and I stand in awe. Boy and I talk to each other. I say something to boy. He says something too.

We both laugh. Boy looks at me very carefully, stands with his hands in his jean pockets and asks me if Ive ever kissed another boy. I tell him no. Boy asks me if I wanted to try kissing him to see what it would feel like. I say nothing. He comes closer. I am frozen. A branch crackling underneath Boys footsteps thaws me and I tell him no, but my body wants to find out what Boys lips feels like. Boy turns his head sheepishly and tells me that he was just kidding with me, that he was testing me to see how much of a man I was, and that we should keep this a secret. And without explaining, I start to ride my bike back. I stumble through each stone, cumbersome and light headed. Boy apologizes to me, tells me he didnt mean anything - I squeeze through the fence with my bike in tow and ride back down the concrete road home. The next day I hear a knock on the door and I immediately know it is Boy. I look through the door peeper and see him waiting for me. I dont answer the door; I tell my family about Boy and they take action. I never saw Boy again afterward. But I always think about what if I had kissed Boy, what I would have felt with the falling leaves, the sun, and the cold breeze.

Tape 22

I used to believe that if you opened your eyes at all during prayer, just a sliver, that the prayers power was void for you.

I remember one Sabbath a guest elder who was to pray for the sermon that was to come. He prayed for twenty minutes, his voice carrying across the congregation, rising and falling in dramatic sweeping overtones, weeping near the end in tears I swore I could hear fall into the carpet. He was so into his praying that I could hear people around me calling out the usual, Amen!, with a deference that even my ten year old self could notice. But then another ten minutes passed.

I didnt give the elder another minute. My knees were hurting, my neck was itching, and I was impatient as fuck. I opened my eyes just a peak and immediately after I felt shame that I could not wait for the old man to finish before I noticed that there were others who couldnt wait either.

To my credit, I didnt understand what was being prayed about. The language barrie r made me feel this experience to be more of a trial of patience.

Tape 23

I dont trust pastors.

Tape 24

He did not exist. Last night a friend told me that he saw nothing when he died before he was revived in the hospital. He only knew he existed when he was alive again. When he said this, a ping like a fallen pin on an empty champagne glass sounded in my head. And on the tip of that pin were all of the most important questions I thought were important to askthe kind of questions I asked when I looked up at the sky and there were stars I never knew through bruised, battered eyes; when I was next to someone I cared for very much and wanted them to move again but knew they couldnt; when I alone was walking in the dark somewhere, the shoes I wore hurting my feet like hell, knowing it was going to be a long night ahead; when I was staring blankly at the ceiling wall doing absolutely nothing very meaningful. I saw in me a stone. I held this stone in my hand and threw it at God and killed Him. Her. It. And I stopped asking questions. I stopped wondering. -I stop wondering -At least, for now.

Tape 25

This is the most honest I will ever be to myself. I cannot, I refuse to believe in God until my pride is subjected to the truth. I will not bend to the truth until I know that God is true. I must be proven false, I must be put into shame, for my pride has been made to be above gods own. I must be put to shame, forgive me.

Tape 26 Going to a Church

Here are some suggestions and things to keep in mind:

1. If you are really wondering what a church is like or have forgotten what one is like, you will have to go to one. Some churches are very tactful, some are overbearing, some are quiet, some are loud, some are frauds, some are sincere. 2. I advise that highly educated people visiting a church REFRAIN from eye rolling. There is a built-in camera in every Jesus crucifix which will shoot laser beams through its eyes if it detects any trace of disbelief. Well, most times the crucifixes dont work. The church being visited is usually too underfunded to replace batteries. 3. Pastors kids are generally the most troubled, misbehaved, and troublesome of any children in the church community. Theyre quick to note any ironies, hence their resistance to bullshit as they grow older. 4. Seriously, if a church doesnt have a baby room, say goodbye to any hopes of receiving a riveting, moving, epiphanic message. Crying babies can fuck things up. 5. When you visit a church with pews or chairs sit down in one and feel around the bottom edge of it. Sometimes, you can feel your fingers sinking into marred, sticky chewing gum. Those are the remains of conscientious church goers. 6. When you need to use the restroom at a church be very mindful to go before or after the elderly use them- this is a sign of respect but also prevents you from having to experience the dreadful smell of elder shit which is never flushed. Also, take c are to flush any toilet or urinal you use and to wash your hands because church people are prone to gossip, and it s just a healthy thing to do. 7. Walk out of the church if ANY church leader points you out specifically and wants to welcome you to their community in front of everyone during service. This is a sign that the church leader is probably new, a church practice noob, and does not recognize how embarrassing this experience can be for new visitors. 8. If there is an offering, pay no more than $20 or make your check out in the churchs name you are visiting. Your generous donation of $200 will probably be taken out of the offering plate/bag by a kid pretending to put some money in. 9. Stand up when others around you stand up. Sit down when others sit down. Do as the Romans do, in this case, the reformed heathens. Truly, show respect to church goers- everyone, as you do, has a story. Respect yourself and go to explore with an open mind. Ask questions. Be critical, be fair, and dont be an asshole.

Tape 27

I got cold feet waiting in the water as the third robed person in line to be baptized. I was sixteen when I made a personal decision to uphold and honor Jesus Christ as my lord and savior- to remove myself from a life of pain and suffering by a dedication to all that is right with GodtheFatherandtheHolySpirit (I was raised to say the trinity as a packaged entity not as separate wholes). This was it; this was the moment that would bind me to an everlasting relationship with God, as I knew him then, as I would know him forever. I closed my eyes briefly in disbelief that I was here in the water waiting to be reborn. I was afraid in the ever growing tepid water. I was afraid of failing God - of being failed. Promises are important to me. I must keep promises because if nobody else d id, if God couldnt, then at least I would know it is possible; I would know that promises could be kept. But to doubt God openly was blasphemous so I kept it to myself. Here I was, eager to have a promise fulfilled for me and the rest of the communion who were christened. And then, as my eyes opened, I saw the pastor hold his hand high above the crying audience. Was I really ready to commit? Have I made the right decision? Doubts were dismissed as the pastor spoke eloquently in Samoan of me and the new l ife I would lead. At this, he said, Amen, gracefully held with his other hand a wet white cloth to my face, and dipped me into the water. I was immersed in darkness. It felt like a long time: Was the pastor drowning me? Did I die? Am I dead? Is this an out of body experience? Willing hands reprieved me from the void and returned me as I gasped for air to a world of light. My mother told me before I made the decision to be baptized that those who choose to follow God are the ones the Devil will try hard est to turn away from the path. That everything would be thrown in their way. That the temptations would be so great. The trials would be the most difficult and failure felt the hardest. I stand on a fence a mile high, an eternity both ways. I walk on the fence slowly learning so eventually I will be able to run great distances on it. I will grow so heavy in speed that the fence will sink, it will shrink, and with no fence I will be free falling. Well, thats what I think to myself.

Tape 28 I feel like I lost my best friend.

Tape 29 I still like gospel music. That does not change.

Tapes 30 - 35 My church is too nice to excommunicate me.

Tapes 36 49

Ive been wondering whether Ive woken up or if Ive been spiraling downward. I dont think Ill ever be one -sided. I think Ill constantly be checking in and out. Most would think this a bad thing to be. But the discourse is necessary; if I have stopped asking questions it would mean that I have gotten complacent in living. Paul Valrys quote resonated with me: Art is never finished; it is only abandoned.

God was my art. And now its time to leave it with the tapes. At least for now.

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