Mage (two of five)
Nov. 23rd, 2011 02:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aumentouFollowup to part one. Part 2 of the paired story is here.
It may seem strange to think, since these days I know lots of weird shit about lots of different things and learned a lot of it from books, but I wasn't particularly studious at school. Or at least, I wasn't particularly studious at high school. At junior school I'd been an annoyingly religious freak who didn't care about popularity, games, or other people's opinions, but did care about doing well with my studies because my mother had taught me that it's good to be educated.
High school was different. It wasn't a bit different either - not the usual "Oh no, I only know a third of the people here!" that everyone else says they had. It was a completely different type of school, a completely different town, and a completely different me.
Aunt Judy and Uncle Eric lived in Leicester. They weren't religious, didn't have kids and didn't particularly want them, so having two girls with very religious backgrounds dumped on them probably wasn't very nice for them. Looking back, and trying to be fair, I think they tried hard. I think they did alright by Diana, but I'm not sure what anyone could have done for me.
You must understand this: I had been trained into belief from childhood. I didn't "have faith" in God. I knew he existed! I talked to him every night, and I knew he listened! I asked him to let me do well in school, and so I did! I asked him to give me the strength to ignore all the mean children, and he granted it!
And then... well, I already told you. He didn't help them. But he could have! He can do anything! So why didn't he?
There are many answers. One is that the divine does not interfere in this world. Speculation as to the "why" of that has gone on since forever and will likely continue until the end of humanity. It doesn't matter why, really. Knowing the divine does not intervene directly is enough. Still, as answers go, it lacks something. Satisfaction, mostly.
As a child, it simply didn't occur to me. I knew that God intervened and that prayer worked. Why else would we bother praying?
Some people believe that there are other, malign, forces acting in the world that can thwart His will. That did occur to me, but I dismissed it out of hand. After all, I knew that He is all-powerful. How can anything act against His will, if He is all-powerful?
So, it had happened, and He had chosen to let it happen.
Some people believe that God allows such things because it makes a greater whole. That the tragedy here has knock-on effects that cannot be seen. That although something looks bad in the short term, in the long it is a winning move. That we cannot comprehend the pattern, so we should just trust to Him to make it right.
This was suggested to me by a priest. It is of course untrue. For one thing, it would mean the divine is playing a game with us. For another, for an all-powerful being, there is nothing that can be achieved with tragedy that could not be achieved some other way. At ten years old, I knew God could do anything. There was no way their deaths could achieve something their lives could not, particularly since they devoted those lives to His service.
No. It had happened. He had let it happen. Or perhaps He had made it happen? Either way, for the just, there was only one option: War on God.
I was eleven by the time I reached that conclusion. My capacity for waging war against the Almighty was pretty limited. Still, I knew what my mother had taught me He wanted: for me to be good at school, good outside of school, say my prayers, forgive the sins of others, spread his message of love, and turn the other cheek.
I broke as many of thos as possible. I worked at school only when it was easier to work than to avoid it, or when I was actually interested. I argued with the RE teacher almost constantly. I stopped doing all the "good deeds" my parents had shuffled me into, and started saying curses at night instead of prayers, knowing full well God would hear them and hoping He'd feel some pain. And when others did things I didn't like,well... suffice it to say I got in a lot of fights. In fact, I was nearly expelled every year for the first three years of high school.
To be fair to my younger self, many of the people I got into fights with did actually deserve a beating. I'd got as far as hating God, but I'd not realised that my whole moral system was built on christian rules. So, apart from things that were obviously religious, I hadn't changed it. I got into fights pretty much every time I saw someone being bullied or teased beyond what you might call friendly. Considering there were fifteen hundred kids in that school and most of them were bigger than me, that meant I had an awful lot of bruises and scabs. It also meant I learned
They didn't all deserve it though. I'm ashamed to say it now, but I spent time picking on anyone christian. I laid into them, verbally, trying to break their faith. I was a zealot, trying to show them that it was all a big lie. Sometimes they argued back. Sometimes I managed to provoke them into fighting.
They sent me to counsellors, and to priests, but they did no good. It was atheists who set me (somewhat) straight. I had several good science teachers, who taught about the world with no reference to divinity at all. Considering I'd been sent to a faith school in my earlier years, this was very strange to me. The idea coalesced in my head that one way to fight God was simply to ignore him. To deal with the world, not Him. To understand the "how" of everything, and not care about the "why". The feeling was there for a while, but the thought didn't come until later. "Careers advice" was given by form teachers in the third year, and we had changed teacher that year. Mr Simmons taught biology, which meant I had a certain amount of respect for him. He sat me down and tried to talk to me about careers. We ended up talking about religion, and he told me outright that it would be better to fight God by ignoring him That I didn't need to beat the faith out of people - time and better education would do a far better job.
After that, I calmed down a bit. I still got into fights with bullies, but between being more discriminating about when I fought, and being a lot bigger, I was winning more and people were backing down more. I started actually having friends, most of who saw me as a shield at first, I'm sure. I started paying attention in my classes, although I still didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. I still argued with the RE teacher - but even there, it was calm argument, not screaming. I started playing to hockey and doing athletics stuff after hours, and that helped a lot too. It's easier to keep calm when you're tired.
In the fourth year, Stevie's mum got sick. Stevie was a swot. We'd been lab partners in biology a few times, and I'd beaten up two other boys for saying I was his girlfriend, but we were friends. His mum had cancer, and with all the various treatments she had she became unable to look after herself, so she had nurses round a lot. The one who was there the most often was called Kerry, and she was the nicest person I ever met. I decided then, I wanted to be a nurse.
After that, things were fairly uneventful. I passed my exams well enough, went to college, passed there, went on to University and did a degree in nursing. I did all the usual things, I think. I tried drugs, I had flings with boys, I drank more than is healthy but less than is dangerous, I wore outfits my mother probably wouldn't have approved of, and I experimented with musical genres until I found things I liked... after which I wore outfits my mother definitely wouldn't have approved of. I stopped thinking about god, except sometimes to note that my life ignoring him was happier than paying him any attention, and I got on with things. There was nothing really unusual about it. I didn't make it onto the university hockey team, because had to put too much effort into studying, but I did keep fit. I swam, I climbed a bit, I went to the gym, and I took up Kendo mostly because it looked like fun.
I was, broadly speaking, satisfied. My life was mapped out, and I was following the route. I had odd twinges of "Is this it? This plan?", but everyone has that. The only strange thing was the dreams. After a night at a party with some remarkably good hash and most of Led Zep's back catalogue, I dreamed of Icarus, flying. Not from anywhere or to anywhere, just flying. The dream came back a few times, and sometimes I was watching him fly, and sometimes it was me, flying. It wasn't particularly frequent, or worrying, so I put it down to the drugs and got on with things.
I talked to a counsellor about it once. He thought it was because I'd never been in love. That the flying was a metaphor for love, and the winged man was the one I wanted to be in love with.
I suppose I should also talk about Diana. She spent school being a teachers pet and getting lots of A's. Then she went off to be a lawyer. Does that tell you enough? It should.
It seemed she didn't care. That she was happier there than with our parents. That she never loved them at all.
Is that fair? Maybe not, but that's how it seemed.
Either way, she had some sort of breakdown while she was at university. She collapsed, and then got herself back together again. Seemed like the pressure of constantly over-achieving had finallyt got to her, and then one week she'd just got over it. Just snapped out, and become even more focussed. Weird, but there you go.
It may seem strange to think, since these days I know lots of weird shit about lots of different things and learned a lot of it from books, but I wasn't particularly studious at school. Or at least, I wasn't particularly studious at high school. At junior school I'd been an annoyingly religious freak who didn't care about popularity, games, or other people's opinions, but did care about doing well with my studies because my mother had taught me that it's good to be educated.
High school was different. It wasn't a bit different either - not the usual "Oh no, I only know a third of the people here!" that everyone else says they had. It was a completely different type of school, a completely different town, and a completely different me.
Aunt Judy and Uncle Eric lived in Leicester. They weren't religious, didn't have kids and didn't particularly want them, so having two girls with very religious backgrounds dumped on them probably wasn't very nice for them. Looking back, and trying to be fair, I think they tried hard. I think they did alright by Diana, but I'm not sure what anyone could have done for me.
You must understand this: I had been trained into belief from childhood. I didn't "have faith" in God. I knew he existed! I talked to him every night, and I knew he listened! I asked him to let me do well in school, and so I did! I asked him to give me the strength to ignore all the mean children, and he granted it!
And then... well, I already told you. He didn't help them. But he could have! He can do anything! So why didn't he?
There are many answers. One is that the divine does not interfere in this world. Speculation as to the "why" of that has gone on since forever and will likely continue until the end of humanity. It doesn't matter why, really. Knowing the divine does not intervene directly is enough. Still, as answers go, it lacks something. Satisfaction, mostly.
As a child, it simply didn't occur to me. I knew that God intervened and that prayer worked. Why else would we bother praying?
Some people believe that there are other, malign, forces acting in the world that can thwart His will. That did occur to me, but I dismissed it out of hand. After all, I knew that He is all-powerful. How can anything act against His will, if He is all-powerful?
So, it had happened, and He had chosen to let it happen.
Some people believe that God allows such things because it makes a greater whole. That the tragedy here has knock-on effects that cannot be seen. That although something looks bad in the short term, in the long it is a winning move. That we cannot comprehend the pattern, so we should just trust to Him to make it right.
This was suggested to me by a priest. It is of course untrue. For one thing, it would mean the divine is playing a game with us. For another, for an all-powerful being, there is nothing that can be achieved with tragedy that could not be achieved some other way. At ten years old, I knew God could do anything. There was no way their deaths could achieve something their lives could not, particularly since they devoted those lives to His service.
No. It had happened. He had let it happen. Or perhaps He had made it happen? Either way, for the just, there was only one option: War on God.
I was eleven by the time I reached that conclusion. My capacity for waging war against the Almighty was pretty limited. Still, I knew what my mother had taught me He wanted: for me to be good at school, good outside of school, say my prayers, forgive the sins of others, spread his message of love, and turn the other cheek.
I broke as many of thos as possible. I worked at school only when it was easier to work than to avoid it, or when I was actually interested. I argued with the RE teacher almost constantly. I stopped doing all the "good deeds" my parents had shuffled me into, and started saying curses at night instead of prayers, knowing full well God would hear them and hoping He'd feel some pain. And when others did things I didn't like,well... suffice it to say I got in a lot of fights. In fact, I was nearly expelled every year for the first three years of high school.
To be fair to my younger self, many of the people I got into fights with did actually deserve a beating. I'd got as far as hating God, but I'd not realised that my whole moral system was built on christian rules. So, apart from things that were obviously religious, I hadn't changed it. I got into fights pretty much every time I saw someone being bullied or teased beyond what you might call friendly. Considering there were fifteen hundred kids in that school and most of them were bigger than me, that meant I had an awful lot of bruises and scabs. It also meant I learned
They didn't all deserve it though. I'm ashamed to say it now, but I spent time picking on anyone christian. I laid into them, verbally, trying to break their faith. I was a zealot, trying to show them that it was all a big lie. Sometimes they argued back. Sometimes I managed to provoke them into fighting.
They sent me to counsellors, and to priests, but they did no good. It was atheists who set me (somewhat) straight. I had several good science teachers, who taught about the world with no reference to divinity at all. Considering I'd been sent to a faith school in my earlier years, this was very strange to me. The idea coalesced in my head that one way to fight God was simply to ignore him. To deal with the world, not Him. To understand the "how" of everything, and not care about the "why". The feeling was there for a while, but the thought didn't come until later. "Careers advice" was given by form teachers in the third year, and we had changed teacher that year. Mr Simmons taught biology, which meant I had a certain amount of respect for him. He sat me down and tried to talk to me about careers. We ended up talking about religion, and he told me outright that it would be better to fight God by ignoring him That I didn't need to beat the faith out of people - time and better education would do a far better job.
After that, I calmed down a bit. I still got into fights with bullies, but between being more discriminating about when I fought, and being a lot bigger, I was winning more and people were backing down more. I started actually having friends, most of who saw me as a shield at first, I'm sure. I started paying attention in my classes, although I still didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. I still argued with the RE teacher - but even there, it was calm argument, not screaming. I started playing to hockey and doing athletics stuff after hours, and that helped a lot too. It's easier to keep calm when you're tired.
In the fourth year, Stevie's mum got sick. Stevie was a swot. We'd been lab partners in biology a few times, and I'd beaten up two other boys for saying I was his girlfriend, but we were friends. His mum had cancer, and with all the various treatments she had she became unable to look after herself, so she had nurses round a lot. The one who was there the most often was called Kerry, and she was the nicest person I ever met. I decided then, I wanted to be a nurse.
After that, things were fairly uneventful. I passed my exams well enough, went to college, passed there, went on to University and did a degree in nursing. I did all the usual things, I think. I tried drugs, I had flings with boys, I drank more than is healthy but less than is dangerous, I wore outfits my mother probably wouldn't have approved of, and I experimented with musical genres until I found things I liked... after which I wore outfits my mother definitely wouldn't have approved of. I stopped thinking about god, except sometimes to note that my life ignoring him was happier than paying him any attention, and I got on with things. There was nothing really unusual about it. I didn't make it onto the university hockey team, because had to put too much effort into studying, but I did keep fit. I swam, I climbed a bit, I went to the gym, and I took up Kendo mostly because it looked like fun.
I was, broadly speaking, satisfied. My life was mapped out, and I was following the route. I had odd twinges of "Is this it? This plan?", but everyone has that. The only strange thing was the dreams. After a night at a party with some remarkably good hash and most of Led Zep's back catalogue, I dreamed of Icarus, flying. Not from anywhere or to anywhere, just flying. The dream came back a few times, and sometimes I was watching him fly, and sometimes it was me, flying. It wasn't particularly frequent, or worrying, so I put it down to the drugs and got on with things.
I talked to a counsellor about it once. He thought it was because I'd never been in love. That the flying was a metaphor for love, and the winged man was the one I wanted to be in love with.
I suppose I should also talk about Diana. She spent school being a teachers pet and getting lots of A's. Then she went off to be a lawyer. Does that tell you enough? It should.
It seemed she didn't care. That she was happier there than with our parents. That she never loved them at all.
Is that fair? Maybe not, but that's how it seemed.
Either way, she had some sort of breakdown while she was at university. She collapsed, and then got herself back together again. Seemed like the pressure of constantly over-achieving had finallyt got to her, and then one week she'd just got over it. Just snapped out, and become even more focussed. Weird, but there you go.
