This is my story. Some of it will be funny for sure. Most of it will be unbelievable to some. All of it will be as authentic as possible. Make of it what you will. Learn from it what you can.
I was born on March 31st 1973 in a small sleepy beach town called Santa Cruz. The youngest of five kids, by the time I came along my mom was tired. She was also enlivened by the promises made by the Elders of the imminent end of this System of Things. Unlucky for me, I was born into a Jehovah’s Witness household and my mom believed the world was going to end in 1975. This would be the last predicted year the Organization would outwardly make ever again because, obviously, the world did not end in 1975. You would think they had learned their lesson when their predictions of 1918 and 1925 hadn’t come to fruition either but who am I to judge. I will say thank God the world didn’t end in 1975 because Depeche Mode wouldn’t release their first album Speak and Spell until 1981.
My mom and I spent a lot of time together when I was a child. “You aren’t like most girls, that’s why I like you.” My mom actually hated women in general, loathed might be more accurate in terms of how she looked upon them. Mom made it clear that if I wanted to stay on her good side I wouldn’t “pull any of that bitchy, catty, bullshit.” I learned very early on how to regulate the massive amounts of fear and terror residing in my little body by getting very sick often. Being sick was the only way I got a pass from my mom to be soft. I knew that it was okay to be physically unwell as long as you didn’t get emotional about it. This is also, I believe, how I honed my empath skills. It was okay if I felt everyone else’s emotions as long as they weren’t mine. And that is why I have a hard time figuring out who’s emotions I’m feeling in large crowds and more often than not end up overwhelmed and saying something, anything, rarely making sense knowing I will absolutely spend the rest of my life feeling awkward about it. It’s much like when you’re out for a meal and the server says “enjoy your breakfast!” And you reply “YOU TOO!” But on a completely different level, for instance, in my world the server will say “enjoy your breakfast!” And I will reply “I hope your dog is okay.” Or “I hope your day gets better” because somehow I know they are having a horrible day because their dog is sick. Anyway…
My mom would tell me the stories of the weeks leading up to the day I was born over and again throughout my life, it took me a long time to fully understand the implications of these stories and how they would affect me deeply even to this day. “I was so excited” she said “Because I thought by the time you were two the New System would be here and we would be living in Paradise on Earth.” On its face this statement doesn’t seem too incredibly terrorizing but when you get to the deeper meaning of it you will understand. In order for the New System to be here we all, basically, have to die. I saw this played out in the JW children’s books, the only books we were allowed to read as Jehovah’s Witness kids. My Book of Bible Stories was a freaky book if you were a kid. Honestly, it’s almost freakier seeing it now as an adult! I will never forget the nightmares from the images of Lot’s wife turning to a pillar of salt for looking back on Sodom and Gomorrah as they were fleeing. After seeing that terrifying image I started the ritual of forcing myself not to look at anything I wanted to see, for instance, someone would say “look at that dog it’s so cute!” And I would do everything in my power not to look as though my very life depended on it. To this day when anyone tells me to look at something I have to force myself to actually look, it’s fucking exhausting!
When I was about five I accidentally ended up at the neighbor girls birthday party. I was playing in the front yard unattended, as children did in 1978, when I noticed there were lots of kids my age across the street having fun, eating cake, playing games. That’s when one of the parents noticed me “Amanda, come on over, you want some cake?” I was there for probably ten or fifteen minutes when I heard one of the kids say “HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BECKY!” I nearly choked on the sticky sweet vanilla cake in my mouth and immediately ran home. As I ran I began to chant “Jehovah, I’m so sorry. Jehovah, I’m so sorry.” Of all the places to be! Five year old Jehovah’s Witness kids definitely did not belong at birthday parties. “Jehovah, I’m so sorry. Jehovah, I’m so sorry.” It was common for my parents to remind me that Jehovah saw and heard everything. It was also common for JW kids to believe that Satan was lurking in the shadows waiting for us to make mistakes so he could swoop in and claim us for his own. In this moment I was certain Satan had sent at least a dozen of his demons to intercept and torture me but somehow, to my disbelief, I made it home. Immediately I ran up the stairs to find my mom and tell her the terrible thing I had done.
As was common for the entirety of her life my mom was in the bathroom. I waited outside that dark door listening to the little AM radio blaring on about something having to do with traffic in the Seacliff area, “what is traffic?” I wondered, while my heart pounded with the taste of Satan cake on my lips. I looked down at the water squirting flower ring still on my tiny finger begging Jehovah to forgive me. When my mom opened the door I quickly confessed “I WENT TO A BIRTHDAY PARTY BUT I DIDN’T KNOW IT WAS A BIRTHDAY PARY AND AS SOON AS I FOUND OUT I LEFT” and then I started to cry heaping hot sloppy sobs. My mom looked at me with an all too familiar harshness in her eyes and asked “Why are you crying?” I said “Because I wasn’t supposed to be there but it was fun and I like birthday cake and the kids were all happy and the parents were nice and…” My mom replied with one question “Would you rather have birthday cake or everlasting life?” Our relationship was life giving decomposition, the manure from which magnificent things grow, mingled with pain and bellyaching laughter oscillating from north to south at a rapid rate. We loved and respected each other and knew deeply that we would never get what we wanted from the other.
She is in the trees
I see her in Autumn leaves
Whispering through the wind
She is eyes on me in the crosswalk
That quizzical tone questioning
She is my voice of self talk
Anchoring me through the storm
She holds me down when I am hovering
Somewhen between here and there
She is amazingly everywhere
I peek her out of the corner of my eye
Floating by on a cloud drinking a cup of coffee
With a wink and a smile she calls to me
Sugar lump don’t take yourself so seriously
She learned this from experience
A life spent in anticipation of paradise
She suffered this life for the next
Always waiting for the day
Not realizing she had the power
To create everlasting joy
In the here and now