I too was an atheist for many years after the loss of my faith until I recently went through a brief pagan phase. I'm now essentially an agnostic although still atheistic toward the biblical god. If divinity exists I suspect it to be in the form of the old gods, waiting for humans to turn away from the false mono god and worship them again.

I talked to my cutter on the phone yesterday. Looks like I will be visiting him during spring break week. I haven't seen him in about a year and look forward to touching base with him and his partner.

george2u2 (imported) wrote: Mon Feb 27, 2012 10:01 am I'm now an atheist. Looking back over many decades and my growing in a religious home, I see that the most sexual abuse I ever had was from well meaning but ignorant church leaders.

I couldn't be baptized until I stopped "Playing with Myself" for a year.

When I told the preacher I liked men. It was the "Pray the Gay away" and Get married and it will all go away.

So much for inspiration from his imaginary heavenly friends.

There was always the threat of hell, (Hell was what I was going through in life, not after death)

I'm still legally married to my wife of 33 years, but she has been bedridden and institutionalized for decades.

She knows I have a new boyfriend. I've taken her to Gay meetings, she knows of several people who I've had attractions for in the past, and I think that she would be kind to Darrin as well. Darrin is the one who is afraid of of meeting her. He's met the kids and my son in law, and has no problem with them.

SHAME is the thing that you have to let go of. The whole world can be against you but if YOU internalize shame, It is the elephant in the room. Internalized shame can not be ran from. Just face it. Just like Job, in the bible, he feared God and lost everything. When he turned it around to LOVE god he got everything back and more.

I understand the anxiety, How crippling it is, How nothing seems interesting when you are depressed.

You are lucky to have Tony, and I'm fortunate to hug Darrin.

Oh, how I wish we could give you a big group hug, Show you how to hop, skip and run into fulfilling employment.

However I wish I could do that for millions of others looking for work.

One fellow was looking for work, and asked his successful uncle, what he would do if nobody would hire him.

His uncle paused for a moment and went on to tell him, That is exactly why he went into business for himself. He couldn't find a job either.

Being ashamed is, as best I can make useful sense of the human condition, the ultimate human tragedy. It is the most devastatingly damaging human brain condition I have ever been able to identify.

When I was about 18 months of age, the age when socialization typically teaches young children to be ashamed, my encounter with being shamed by older people who had learned the ways of being ashamed and shaming others was so fraught with deadly, psychologically shattering peril that I summarily rejected ever becoming ashamed of anything about my life and life experiences. That was a fully conscious event for me. It is, by now, so deeply embedded in my permanent memory as to be, in every way I can recognize, as to be, methinks, eternally indelible.

A few years ago, there was a minor traffic incident at a traffic light in which another driver drove into the side of a small trailer I was pulling with a car. Because of what other people had done and were doing at that intersection, my attention was, for a couple seconds, reflexively directed toward probable danger, and I inadvertently entered the intersection while the traffic light for me was "yellow." I did not enter the intersection when the light was red, and did not "violate" that traffic light.

Another driver called the police, and I waited for the police to arrive. The police officer asked me questions which I answered truthfully, and in answering, never indicated in any way that I thought that either I, or the other driver, was actually "at fault." It is my best guess that the police officer decided that I realized I was at fault (something absolutely untrue) and sent to me a traffic citation in which he claimed, falsely, that I realized that I was at fault.

That eventually led to a trial, during which I stated my finding of being innocent. The police officer was not a witness to the collision of the other driver's car with my trailer, and so had no valid testimony to offer regarding the incident itself. At trial, the other driver never indicated that I was at fault. When came my time to "cross-examine" the police officer, I asked the officer whether he understood that everything I said to him about the incident was of situational attribution and therefore could not possibly be about my being at fault. The officer indicated that he had not so understood. I then asked the officer, in effect, "So, you did not understand what I told you, and you did not ask for clarification?" The officer agreed that he had not understood and had not asked for clarification. That, according to due process, totally erased his testimony about my being at fault. With zero testimony in court to the effect that I was in any way at fault and no testimony in court to the effect that I had "violated" that traffic light, the judge ruled that I was guilty of violating that traffic light based on clear and convincing evidence.

I have two transcripts of that trial, which differ in one critical and essential aspect. The court reporter got part of what I said completely wrong, I understand that the trial was electronically recorded, and the corrected transcript has an accurate version of what I said.

My conclusion, yet only slightly tentative for now? The Anglo-American Adversarial System of Law and Jurisprudence has, in the United States of America, gradually enough to escape blatant attention, morphed itself into a prima-facie unconstitutional established religious cartel.

What is my best guess as to why that judge found me guilty in the total absence of any valid testimony of my being at fault in his courtroom? My best guess is that the judge has so intensely internalized shame as to be so brain damaged from shame as to be incapable of doing any better at recognizing what happened in his courtroom.

Oh, yeah, there is more. After the police officer confabulated the false notion that I realized I was at fault, I set out to learn how to correct that confabulated falsehood. Along the way, I spoke by telephone with the acting city attorney, who promptly informed me of two lies he would allow me to tell in court, my choice. I informed him that I would not tell any lie in court. He told me that I had to enter a plea and had to accept one or the other of his two lies as my plea. I told him that I would not enter any plea. He told me that I had to enter a plea. I guess he was clueless to the fact that I had read the relevant Wisconsin statutes and accurately understood that, if a defendant does not enter a plea, the judge is mandated by statute to enter a not guilty plea on behalf of the defendant. So, to test the veracity of that acting city attorney, I said, "If I have to enter a plea, I will plead contempt of court." The acting city attorney immediately "hung up the phone" without saying a single word to me.

Have situational factors assigned to me the role of being a whistle-blower regarding what has, perchance unwittingly, become an authoritarian coercive religious establishment which has become, according to its own rules, tragically unconstitutional?

An adversarial system court judge rules that I violated some law I did not violate, and I set about to inform the adversarial system that its adversarial methodology has violated me (and everyone else, including its most sincerely religious adherents).

But then, in another post, I commented about my liberal arts college life phase and my having studied, in college, "contemporary religious thought." Without identifying myself, as that college has, over the years, had many students, I surmise that I can safely name the college: Carleton College, Northfield, Mionnesota. And I can safely name my contemporary religious though Carleton professor. Ian G. Barbour, who gave the Gifford Lectures and was awarded the Templeton Prize during the 1990s for is work directed toward understanding process philosophy and process theology as a unified field. Barbour was a college physics department chairman prior to studying religion at Yale and becoming Professor of Religion and Physics at Carleton.

My formal education includes ways of studying the realm of religion as a field of fully proper scientific inquiry. The non-overlapping magesteria notion of Stephen Jay Gould and his cohorts is, in my personal and professional view, of the realm of pseudo-science, from a human brain biology perspective.

If you are traditionally orthodox, my best hunch is that you may tend to deem me to be a form of heretical apostate.

And yet, is not every finding of scientific inquiry which replaces, or adds to, prior scientific orthodoxy necessarily and inexcapably of the work of scientific heretical apostates?

As for nobody being willing to hire me; some folks did hire me, and I recognized as they did so that my being hired might be a transient experience. Having anticipated that during my early childhood, I started a business, which I continue to operate, while in sixth grade. In my business, I have never fired any employee. Perhaps that is because I have always been the only employee of my business.

If I believed more in luck than in conscientiously directed effort, I suppose I would deem those of us who have found meaningful relationships and who are Archive members, to be among the lucky ones.

I've been somewhat down today. There are times when I miss working and today has been one of those times. It's funny, when I was working I would have given anything not to have to work and now that I'm not working there are times when I would give anything to be able to work again. Today I miss having coworkers to interact with every day. I miss having a reason to get up every morning other than just seeing Troy off to work. I miss having something to do besides the little bit of upkeep our small apartment requires. I miss having a sense of purpose. Of course I miss the income too but that should be taken care of if and when my disability is approved. I think the main thing I miss is the social interaction. I feel so isolated sometimes being at home alone. One can only watch so much tv and surf so much internet. Oh well, maybe I'll feel better when Troy gets home.

EunuchAusTX (imported) wrote: Tue Feb 28, 2012 5:56 pm I've been somewhat down today. There are times when I miss working and today has been one of those times. It's funny, when I was working I would have given anything not to have to work and now that I'm not working there are times when I would give anything to be able to work again. Today I miss having coworkers to interact with every day. I miss having a reason to get up every morning other than just seeing Troy off to work. I miss having something to do besides the little bit of upkeep our small apartment requires. I miss having a sense of purpose. Of course I miss the income too but that should be taken care of if and when my disability is approved. I think the main thing I miss is the social interaction. I feel so isolated sometimes being at home alone. One can only watch so much tv and surf so much internet. Oh well, maybe I'll feel better when Troy gets home.

I feel your pain.

I've recently lost my job of the last three years. I've been off for a month now, and I've had a few low days.

I didn't lose my job due to anything I did or didn't do. Unfortunately for me, my employers recently moved locations. They moved to a much larger and more expensive building. Despite it being "bigger and better" they failed to think about parking or easy access. The new place has neither.

Well guess what? Because customers couldn't easily get in and out, our clientele dropped off by less than half. Twice the size of the building. Twice the costs of operation. Half the income. It was simple mathematics. Some of the staff had to go, and I was one of that number.

Despite being consistent in my sales, and remaining one of the best ranked salespeople, I was full-time, and had only been there three years. There were three full time people in my department. They laid off the guys who had been there the least amount of time. Myself - 3 years. One other guy - 2 years. Laying us off, they only had to pay five weeks severance(total). If they laid off the third guy (who I consistently outperformed) they would have had to pay out 10 weeks severance. He has been there ten years, and kept his job. They also kept a part time hire, who doesn't sell a tenth of what I did. They kept her, but changed her status to that of temporary employee.

I'm home now, and looking forward to collecting my unemployment for a short while. I've paid into it for more than twenty years. Since I was 15 years old, I've worked full time, with only one year off for film school. Yes I worked full time during High School too. I figure I'm due some time off.

I haven't had time to feel too lonely, or miss my co-workers though. My landlord has me collecting rents, doing evictions, and some odd jobs on top of that. I used to be her full time caretaker, on top of working full time, but I'm not sure I want to go back to that. If I did, I'd lose my unemployment, and it is a job that pays no benefits. Still, the last couple of weeks she's kept me hopping, and I've had no end of people to talk to, and keep me occupied.

The first couple of weeks I was pretty down. I got in a bad habit of sleeping in later and later. by the second week, I was going to bed when the sun came up, and getting up when it set. It took me three days to change my sleeping habits back to something normal.

Depression has always been something I struggle with. Becoming unemployed suddenly, was a shock to the system, and there were a lot of days I didn't even leave my house. I feel like I'm over the worst of it now, and like you, I'm looking forward to collecting back some of what I've paid into for so long. It may turn out to be a good thing after all.

I visited my dad yesterday. He was in good spirits, although he still misses my mom terribly. I sometimes get the feeling when I visit him that he's just waiting to die so he can be with her, but I didn't get that impression this time. He was talking about future visits with my out-of-state siblings and overall seemed to be in a good mood. Of course I always miss my mom when I go to visit my dad. I still half expect to see her in the kitchen working on dinner or something. It's been 16 months since her passing and I'm still not quite used to the idea of her being gone.

I went to pick up my meds today and found out my discount card for my Saphris is no longer valid. Without it the copay is $150 a month which I can't possibly afford. Fortunately I have a month's worth of samples that my psych gave me in January. Once that runs out I'll have to see if he can prescribe an alternative that I can afford and that will do a comparable job. It sucks because I've been doing pretty well with the Saphris as part of my regimen and I don't really want to have to adjust to a new drug, but I guess it can't be helped.

I’ve been thinking about Chris lately. Chris was a fellow student in my high school drama class back in 1984-5. We were both kind of misfits so we wound up becoming friendly with each other. He was a year younger than me. I liked him but didn’t think too much about him—he was just another classmate. That all changed one day early in the spring semester when Chris informed me not only that he was gay, but that he was in love with me.

Now, I’d had the inkling since I was thirteen that I might be gay, but at sixteen the idea still terrified me. All I knew about being gay was what I saw on tv, which was that your family disowned you and you got AIDS. So here was this kid confronting me with a part of myself I just didn’t want to deal with. I told him I was straight and pointed out that I had a girlfriend as evidence. He asked if we could still be friends and, not wanting to look like a jerk, I said yes. So we continued like that for a while. Somewhere along the line we exchanged phone numbers and began to have conversations on the phone after school hours.

As this was going on my gay side began to assert itself a little bit and I became intensely curious about what it would be like to be with Chris. Eventually I worked up my courage enough to admit to him that I was curious. He let me in on the fact that another of our drama classmates was gay and the three of us began to hang out together at lunch. I felt a sense of belonging with them that I didn’t feel elsewhere and in truth I was attracted to Chris, but I just couldn’t work up the nerve to act on that attraction. As our friendship developed we spent more and more time together. I had my driver’s license and would visit him at his house. Occasionally he would get his parents to drop him off at my house. We’d listen to music together and talk. And the more time we spent together, the more conflicted I became. I began to want Chris, both physically and emotionally, but the more those feelings asserted themselves the more afraid I became. We spent much of that summer hanging out together and my conflicted feelings just about drove me insane.

You would think I would just stop associating with him, especially after he transferred to a different high school the following fall, but it wasn’t that simple. I couldn’t act on my desires, but I couldn’t stay away from him either. I was torturing myself, and I suppose I was torturing Chris as well. He made it clear he was willing to settle for my friendship but wanted more, and I gave him just enough encouragement to hope that I might one day return his love.

Finally I went away to college, where loneliness and my own internalized homophobia drove me to become a born again Christian. I had promised to keep in touch with Chris, but after my conversion I began to see him as a negative influence and touched base with him less and less often. By spring semester I had pretty much completely fallen out of touch with him.

I saw him a couple of times that next summer, but a year apart and my newfound religion had created distance between us. He’d had a boyfriend while I was gone and was no longer harboring any strong feelings for me. I was still somewhat conflicted about my feelings for him but the possibility of anything happening between us was more remote than ever. I suppose it was inevitable that we would drift apart at that point. The last I heard he was attending college somewhere in Pennsylvania.

I’ve thought about Chris many times in the years since. I’ve wondered how different my life might have been if I’d been able to accept my gay side and return his love. I don’t know if we would have stayed together, but I’m sure that many of my post high school choices would have been different. I’m sure I wouldn’t have attended a Christian college and gone overboard on religion, with all of the bad choices that led to (giving up music as my major, getting into a dysfunctional relationship that wrecked my grades, eventually dropping out of college altogether, the list goes on…). I’m sure I wouldn’t have spent all those miserable years in the closet. And I can’t help but think that depression and anxiety wouldn’t have had nearly the impact on my life that they have.

I’ve wondered many times how Chris’ life turned out. Wherever he is, I hope he is happy. I hope he is successful. I hope he has someone special to share his life with. I hope that if he remembers me, he remembers me as a good friend. I know that I, for one, will never forget him.

Troy starts his vacation tomorrow! I get to have him with me for 9 straight days. We're going to Dallas Sunday to visit my cutter and then to Six Flags Over Texas on Monday. We may also work in a day trip to Six Flags Fiesta Texas in San Antonio. Other than that we'll just be hanging out at home and around town. I'm really looking forward to it.

Had a great visit with my cutter and his partner yesterday, followed by a great day at Six Flags today. The New Texas Giant is freakin' awesome! Going to take it easy tomorrow, have a friend over for dinner Wed., then to Fiesta Texas on Thur. What a great vacation!