brave.

One of the first commandments from God was to label everything in the Garden. Gifted with a companion, the first couple failed the first test of rule set in place and miscommunication- not asking what is this knowledge they should not taste.

Imagine that. If Adam asked Eve where she obtained the fruit she asked him to eat, would the first sin have been committed? Plucking the fruit did not cause God to punish the first couple but the first but not questioning what they choose to eat did.

I am thinking about that a lot in this isolation and selecting what I need to purchase while the world wars with the hoarding tendencies of people around me. Every crisis in the States that threatens the consumerism lifestyle, the heart of American culture, we choose to hoard. I admit some hoarding is needful in that we have more than enough to never EVER struggle. Let’s not forget to gloat about how much we have to our neighbors, however. It would not be “Christian” if we did not throw subtle shade at the other about what we own.

That is a church life essay in the works.

But thinking about that labeling we all do and my looking into the ethos of names and what they mean at the core and why naming ceremonies were a practice in other cultures. I think I mentioned how my mother’s name augmented by her calling and her need for fame made her a perfect storm to never achieve what was planned for her by the deities thus ignoring the gift of raising the children she thought she wanted.

This essay, we are looking at the name of my father wears- brave twin.

I recall a comedy skit where the comedian thanked the woman for going out with him with the subtext of by committing to being in my car, you acknowledge that I could be or become a stalker, a murderer, or a rapist and you are braving that to have dinner with him, a man. It is brave and darkly funny that we acknowledge that this is the risk she is taking. But it ignores the rape culture at the same time. Kind of like, with the invention of hand sanitizer, we opted to use that instead of washing our hands after every five uses as recommended. Or how we opt to smell good and feel good over being clean thus the number of perfumes in our soaps exceeding the cleansing quality of the product.

When my father chose his future wife over me at the age of twelve, it somewhat shocked me and mostly annoyed me as I had no precedent on how to act in this. I was encouraged to rage and desire vengeance against someone who would not bear witness to the fury or the brunt of my activities. I could understand being upset about my father’s decision but in the same breath, I know my mother and her kind of selfish behaviors caused him to want to leave as well. And the step mother has a voice in this since my father is adding her into the family dynamic. Seriously, what would be the point of getting angry yet when I don’t know the whole story.

I will never know the whole dynamic of that fallout. And to a degree, I don’t want to anymore. Both parties had their reasons and I have chosen to move on. I learned from it, however. Children are not something you can quit when you want to. So it reinforced being selective about who I choose to love. It reminded me to be careful about entering romantic relationships.

But during this global isolation, I have to live with my father again. And the fact he is letting me, I am grateful. Not only for the shower access and clean sheets. It is showing me what I learned at 15- you may be gifted with the genetics needed for the child to be brought into existence but your personality may take you out of raising a true family. That idea allowed me to not let his choices color my opinion of his gender as forever trash/sub-humans. I was never compelled to acquire a partner so the competition for one never sung in my relationships with women. There was no prize in it for me. I took the time to examine what I want in a romantic partnership in the first place. So when my father’s absence became a constant, I looked at the world around me and said, okay. he is choosing to be a common denominator instead of living up to his name. It takes a lot to be brave.

And in some ways, him leaving his children was an act of bravery. He, being the possessive controlling insidious individual that he is, would have killed me with his need to be repaid for every sacrifice raising a child demands. He is not mature enough for that. So he opted to leave.

His leaving saved me.

Visiting the home he made with his wife a year ago, I wanted to kill myself. It was a quick, absolute oddly calm judgment of what I would end up doing if I ever lived there. If I had to stay in that cold showroom home, the sheer weight of all that dead space would have killed my spirit long before I put a bullet in my head.

So I am glad he left.

But he is still human trash.