@ CallOut

Here it is. Sorry for it being so long. But I did cut out at least 80% and summarized. I decided, "What the 7734? I'll go ahead and post some of my story. I can wait for his."

Addendum: Oops. See you beat me to it. And not as verbose as my sorry asshole self. ;-P

The "Gentle" Love of The Church
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First off, you need to know that back in the ancient days when I was still chasing Tyranosaurs from my backyard, North Carolina literally had laws that allowed, by any definition, "schools" to use any form of punishment, up to and including, corporal punishment, to enforce discipline on "disruptive" students. Guess what this also included. Yep, churches in their "Sunday School" classes.

It all started when me mom caught me reading the labels of cereal boxes when I was only 3½ years old. She realized I was actually reading them, although I did not know what all the words meant. She then started the standard Baptist Bible Belt indoctrination by teaching me to read by using the Bible. However, even at that young age, the stories in the Bible made absolutely no sense. One and half years later, for my fifth birthday, she begifted me with the novel Childhood's End by Sir Arthur C. Clarke. There was a note attached saying I had to read the book, then write a five-page report about it. What kind of mother tortures such a young child thusly? She was just wanting me to be ready when I started school the next year. We did not have any kindergarten grade back then. I loved the story so much, I actually wrote a ten-page report.

Two months later, on Thu 08 Sept 1966, Star Trek premiered on TV. My dad always watched it. And guess who was on the floor in front of the TV waiting for him to change the channel to watch it? A few months later, me mom also forced me to start attending church with her and me siblings. However, it was the desire to emulate Spock that made me so skeptical. I loved his method of using logic and reason to deduce the facts. Thus, it was thanks to Gene Roddenberry and Leonard Nimoy’s portrayal of Spock that saved me from the vicious indoctrination employed by those heinous and reprobate Religious Absolutists. As I gained comprehension by reading other books my parents had, I truly began to see the Bible for what it truly was. A collection of faerie tales, much like Mother Goose, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, and Æsop’s Fables. Stories I did not want to read. To me, they were stupid and more terrifying than any of the stories I was reading written by HP Lovecraft and Edgar Allen Poe. Absolutely horrifying.

I can still remember the main focus of the very first Sunday Sermon I was forced to attend, and it still haunts me like a recurring nightmare: “All of you who are unsaved. All who are unbelievers. You were born of sin. You were born into sin. You were born sinful. And the only way you can be saved is to do as I say. If you don’t come to Jesus, if you don’t believe in Jesus Christ, you are condemned to Hell forever, unless you do as I tell you.”

I don’t know about anyone else, but that is the most hateful, spiteful, malevolent, and repugnant thing to say to any other person. Regardless of their age. And that was part of the very first Sunday Sermon. I was instantly estranged. Six years old and I am already being psychologically terrorized.

Additionally, the rest of that First Sunday Sermon, I sum up thusly:

To convince children that they are born evil/sinful is unconscionable (not guided by conscience; unscrupulous; not in accordance with what is just or reasonable). What kind of immoral monster is going to tell their children that they are born evil/sinful, born of evil/sin, born into evil/sin, and must have an imaginative Sky Faerie and Magic Zombie Virgin to save them? You stupid, idiotic, and retarded Religious Absolutists have it so damned backwards. Evil and sin had not one damned thing to do with it. Children are always born from love. I for one, always told my daughters they came about from the absolute love my wife and I had for each other because we were SoulMates. Literally ONE soul, ONE heart. It was an Act Of Pure True Love between SoulMates that created my daughters. NEVER that bullshit diarrhea you Religious Absolutists spew.

Even my daughters said as much when we let them go to church to “find the answers for themselves.” They said the main reason was how you Religious Absolutists taught them how they came into this world. They said it was despicable of you to say they came into this world due to a sinful and evil act instead of the True Truth. Something no Religious Absolutist is capable of speaking. Not a damned one of you.

It started with the next Sunday School lesson where I started proving to be, in the eyes of The Church, "a disruptive godless heathen." Yes. That is what they called us Rationalists. Back then, the word "atheist" was unknown. If The Church was "nice," they called you a Rationalist. If they were "indifferent," they called you an Unbeliever. If they were "heinous," as they mostly were, they called you either "godless heathens" or "Satanic pagans." That next Sunday School lesson, and the following Sermon, was about Noah's Ark and the Flood. My first question was how all those animals could fit in such a small boat. The Sunday School teacher (worst misnomer EVER) directed me to Genesis 6:15 – This is how you shall make it. The length of the ship shall be three hundred cubits, its width fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits. Of course, since I did not know what a cubit was and neither did the teacher, I had to let it drop.

I am going to eliminate the analysis I used to visualize how large Noah's Ark was. Suffice it to say, that even at about 6½ years old, it followed a logical and deductive analysis similar to the scientific method. Although I did not know what it was. I used the calculation of the volume of Noah's Ark compared to the house I was living at at that time. And realized, Noah's Ark was still too small to hold all those animals. When I pointed this out the following week, I was given the "Dunce's Cap" and forced to wear it through the rest of the class and during the Sermon. The first punishment: Humiliation.

From there, my questions became more and more difficult for any of them to answer. Instead, I was forced to wear the Dunce's Cap, or I received corporal punishment from the Pastor, and an after-church meeting with me mom and the Pastor. Many times, when we got home, me mom would use corporal punishment and I was grounded for 3 days. Sometimes me mom would talk me dad into issuing corporal punishment. Such "disruptive godless heathen" behavior continued until the Pastor of the first church excommunicated me a year later. In the second church, I was excommunicated in nine months. My "disruptive godless heathen" behavior only continued and escalated. Hell, it got to a point the "humiliations" and "ass-whoopings" only caused me to be even more disruptive. What is it they say about torture? It eventually no longer works and actually begins to have the opposite effect.

Then the finale.

The second summer at the third church, they started this new thing called, "Vacation Bible School." At least it was new at that time. It was a six-week, summer-based, "school" that started on the first week after school let out for summer and ran for six weeks. Basically, we only got a five week summer instead of an eleven week summer. Of course, I still continued being the "disruptive godless heathen" sent to the Pastor for corporal punishment every day.

Let me tell you about this third church. It was definitely more militaristic. The teachers had these gigantic ruler-like sticks in which smack the back of hand when a child was "disruptive." The Pastor also had this gigantic plank of wood for the "spankings." And every "smack" was a two-count smack. In other words, if the ruler-smaking or spanking was five "licks" (as they called them), it was actually TEN licks. Furthermore, the Pastor used a "self-rape" method for spankings. He forced male children to drop their "pants" to the their ankles, bend over, grabbing just above the ankles, then smacking the shit out of ya. Pure unadulterated child abuse. However, back then, there was no such thing as child abuse when discipline is exacted in a "school."

And the worst part. I was always a fond lover of nature, having been a Boy Scout since I was six. I also had two neighbors who were Native Americans, one Cherokee, the other Lumbee, and they taught me boatload about nature. I was always taking what I called "walk-abouts" through the woods, just to admire nature. After my first double-discipline by the teacher and the Pastor. I decided to take a short walk-about into the woods behind the church. I did not know it until too late, that quite a few of the other children, some a few years older, followed me. When they caught up with me, the two oldest grabbed my arms and pinned them behind me wrapping them around a tree. Two others asked the girls if they wanted to see what the difference between boys and girls was. Basically, they raped me. Children of the higher standing church members. Fucking Christian children raping another who was a "disruptive godless heathen."

After they let me go, I got redressed. However, I did not go back to that "school." I spent the next five hours wandering through the woods back my home. When I got home, me mom beat me for "scaring the shit out of her." Later that evening, me dad beat the crap out of me for scaring me mom that way. I never, ever, spoke about that incident. Not for over 45 years. I suppressed those memories. About five years ago they resurfaced.

Basically, a year later I grew tired of all the ass-whoopings and rapes by the other children, and I capitulated and pretended to get "saved." I even went through the baptism thing, whatever the hell that is supposed to mean. Virtual rebirth, My Ass! I even began to memorize huge chunks of the Bible. This forced the other children to leave me alone for fear that others may actually believe me since I was proving to be a better "Christian" then they. Three years later, my father informed me that I had reached the Age of Minority (13). In other words, I was allowed to decide whether I wanted to continue going to church or not. Of course, I decided to never, ever, go to church again until I could defend myself against their tortures.

Now let me give a couple definitions: Religious Absolutist — anyone belonging to and possessing an inexorable belief in any religion, especially the absolute Abrahamic religions – Judaism, Christianity, Islam – due to their absolutist beliefs system and is truly applicable to any inexorable religious believers, especially the worst subset, Apologists.

Religious Apologists — a dastardly subset of the Religious Absolutists who practices apologetics, which is the assumption of presupposed conclusions that have nothing to do with reason and rationality and actual information, creating irrational excuses and whatever conflicting ideas justifying their baseless assumptions, regardless of what the true facts are, using beguiling dialectical semantics, distorted and perverted data, emotional whiney–ass pleas, due to an indoctrination conditioning that is so ingrained they never question the veracity of the nonsense they offer, or why they need to defend their faith at all.

And another warning. This quote definitely describes me.

Francis Quarles: "Beware of him that is slow to anger; for when it is long coming, it is the stronger when it comes, and the longer kept. Abused patience turns to fury."

Now many Religious Absolutists will say I am angry at their Sky Faerie. They cannot be further from truth. I hate religion and what it does to people. It is ultimately religion that I despise with a loathsome passion. And here is mine own meme:

RMF Runyan (arakish): "I have never truly believed in any religion, especially the Absolutist religions. There is no philosophical ideology more divisive than religion. And, the worst part of any religion is that it is an ideology that is implicitly and explicitly protected from any and all criticism from both within and without. Why should any ideology, especially religion, be so privileged? Can you not see how disastrous this way of thinking can be, and is? I firmly believe, and shall take this belief to my grave, that the human species would have been much better off had there NEVER been ANY form of religion. It is due to religions, and their way of thinking, and their theological disagreements, that has created the greatest destruction, injury, death, harm, immorality, wickedness, and abuse to the human species than any other cause. The main problem is not religious fundamentalism, but the fundamentals of religion. Ultimately, it is Religion that is Humankind’s worst enemy."

And before I even get into the true nightmare, I feel you should know what my family meant to me. Although I wrote this poem for my wife in 1990 (part of my 10th wedding anniversary set of gifts), to my wife, it can be applied to the love a father also had for his twin daughters. Even to this day, I cannot read this poem without crying.

When I say, “I Love You…”
--------------------------

I say the words “I Love You”
so much that I wonder sometimes
if you take for granted
the feelings that are behind them.

I never want you to see them
as just words to begin or end a conversation.

“I Love You” is just my way
of saying that you have touched a place
in my heart and made me come alive.

You have claimed a part of my heart
that no matter what happens to us
will always belong to you.

You taught me how to love,
you broke through all my defenses,
and you comforted my fears.

You touched places in me
I never knew I had
and made me feel things
I never thought I’d feel.

You have all of the patience, care,
understanding, and concern needed
to build the kind of relationship we have,
and to build the kind of relationship
we shall forever have.

So when I say “I Love You,”
the words are not spoken out of habit.

It is my way of saying thank you for being you
and for returning some of the joy you have given me.

“I Love You”

Yes, I cried again.

Soul Shatter: Hidden Effects of Severe Physical and Psychological Trauma
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Author’s Note: I posted an older version of this elsewhere on the AR forums. I am too lazy to search for it. When I originally wrote this, and it caused me to cry, I have left those breaks in the below.

If you knew where a lightning bolt was going to strike, would that make dealing with its aftermath any easier?

For our eighteenth wedding anniversary, I made plans to drive the Skyline Drive and Blue Ridge Parkway with my wife and daughters, staying at B&Bs (Bed and Breakfast inns) along the way. Which reminds me: Why do we park our cars on a driveway and drive them on a parkway?

I cannot tell you exactly where on the Skyline Drive we were at when the accident happened. All I can tell you is that I ended up in a hospital in Charlottesville, Virginia. I have looked at the Skyline Drive near Charlottesville using Google Earth Pro and have found a couple of places where this accident could have occurred. However, I cannot say for certain… After 20 years, there would be absolutely no evidence to be seen. Additionally, they have altered the drive by putting guard rails its entire length, where needed, and actually moving it slightly further from the edges. I read about this update to the Skyline Drive in a journal article issued by the Virginia Department of Transportation (I can no longer find the article).

A blind curve. A speeding car. Lightning strikes.

We were rounding a curve on the outside when another car comes barreling straight at us. The driver managed to only clip our car on the rear driver’s side. The car began to slide sideways and towards the mountain edge. I knew if I could not get the car under control and the rear passenger tire slid off, and the chassis of the car bit, it would be over. I did get the car under some control; however, the rear passenger tire did slide off the side and the chassis bit. The last thing I remember before waking up in the hospital was the car rolling over, my wife and daughters screaming, the car flipping back right side up, then all went black.

I awoke who knew how much later. Everything is a blurred fog. My mind a nebulous fugue. A floating blob of liquid glass. A spider web over my body. A blur of white. Then, fade to black.

It was much later that I was told the details. During the times I was awake and somewhat coherent, my only question was, “Where are my wife and daughters?” When the doctors felt I was recovered enough they finally began to tell me some of the details.

According to the doctors, which I still find unbelievable, I had 72 broken bones throughout my entire body. My thought? How in hell could anyone survive that kind of damage? Isn’t that a third of all bones in the human body? 206 bones in the adult body. As they continued to tell me the exceptional amounts of physical damage I had suffered, my only thought was always, “How in hell can anyone survive that much damage?” And, “Where are my wife and daughters?” How much damage did I suffer? I’ll list what I can remember. Even after 20 years, I can remember quite a bit.

Many numerous contusions, abrasions, lacerations, wrenched joints, and punctures.

• FYI (for those who may not know the medical terms):
  • contusions = bruises
  • abrasions = scrapes, scratches
  • lacerations = cuts
  • wrenched joints = sprained joints, twisted joints
  • punctures = stabbings, piercings
• Right leg: three breaks, two in the femur.
• Left leg: three breaks, two in the tibia and fibula.
• Pelvic bone: broken in half.
• Right foot: crushed.
• Right hip: dislocated.
• Back: four breaks (and I thought I’d never walk again, but as the doctors put it, “Your back has been broken, but the spinal cord has not been severed.” Thus, yes, I was able to walk again.).
• Several ribs broken.
• Left arm: two breaks and shoulder dislocated.
• Right arm: one break below elbow.
• Right hand: nine bones broken, basically shattered.
• Right shoulder: dislocated, and scapula and clavicle broken.
• And the worst one of all: My skull was LITERALLY broken in half.

Thus, the spider web I saw was my entire body being held together in traction.

The blob of liquid glass was the saline bag hanging on the IV hook.

The blur of white and fade to black was a nurse entering and injecting whatever it was they used to keep me in a medically induced coma.

I was told I was fortunate that they did not need to perform an emergency craniotomy since the two halves of the skull could expand due to the swelling on my brain. They did tell me I was going to suffer some brain damage. Which I did, but it was not very severe. It mostly affected my creativity and artistic abilities (I really hate having lost this), and drastically limited my Total Ambidexterity. It also slowed my thought processes. No longer can I just whip snap with a witty come back. I have to sit and cogitate.

Thus, my body was shattered.

When I arrived at the hospital, I was in a coma. It lasted for 16 days before my first eye opening. The doctors then kept me in a medically induced coma for another 10 days. However, it was a total of 40 days before I was told that I was the sole survivor of the accident. The doctors actually made me suffer for 14 days with my incessant question: “Where are my wife and daughters?”

Thus, my soul was shattered.

I was later visited by the rescue workers who worked the accident site. They swore the only thing they were going to be doing was retrieving dead bodies. However, as all EMTs are trained to do, they still checked for pulses. They found I and one of my daughters had faint pulses. They went into overdrive to cut us out of the mangled car and get us airlifted to the Charlottesville hospital (and I do not remember which one). The rescue workers even told me they had no way of knowing how long our car sat on the side of the mountain before someone saw it and called 911. They did tell me that the car had tumbled some 50 meters down the mountainside. Tumbled, not slid.

Unfortunately, my daughter succumbed to her injuries five days later, while I was still in a coma. Even to this day it haunts me wondering if rescue could have gotten to us ASAP' "Could we all have survived?" Somehow? DAMN, the memories drive pain so deeply into the psyche, there are just no words…

How can one describe this any better that the term “Soul Shatter”?

[God, even writing this is bringing tears… I’ll be back.]

Well, I had a decent cry. May still continue to cry… At this point, this section diverges from the original paper.

The most astonishing fact of this incident is that the LEOs actually caught the driver that sent our car tumbling down the mountain. Although they could not prove he was drunk at the time of the accident, since several days had passed, he was known to be a drunk driver. Additionally, he was driving with a suspended license when he murdered my wife and daughters. Yes, he murdered them. I care not what the actual crime he was convicted of, he murdered my wife and daughters. As far as I was concerned, First Degree Homicide. He was convicted of three counts of Voluntary Vehicular Homicide. Voluntary, not Involuntary. He was sentenced to three consecutive life sentences.

When I first wrote this paper, he was still in prison. However, as of this writing, he was released on parole in October 2016 after serving 18 years. If he still lives, I don’t know. Don’t care. Unlike what I have said before, this is probably the only man I cannot look at as being worthy of being treated as an equal.

I had been asked if he did get out of prison if I would seek revenge. During the first few years, my answer was, “Hell yeah!” Then it became, “I don’t know,” for a few more years. If memory serves, I think after about six or seven years, my answer became, “No.” My reasoning was that if he did get out of prison his first chance at parole, he was going to be 70 years old, a triple convicted murderer (actually felon but I am biased), permanently lost all rights to ever vote again, permanently lost all rights to his Social Security, permanently lost all rights to possess a driver’s license in any state, and he was 70 years old. The only thought I had was, “I hope your fucking daughter is rich because no one is going to hire you, and you ain’t got no SSI anymore. Good luck you fucking shit. And don’t ever darken my doorstep. I just might kill you out of spite.”

I hate having that kind of attitude towards a fellow human being. However, it would be best that he and I never, ever, meet in person. I cannot be held accountable for what I may do. Besides, I am now a cynical old fart. Remember the two old men on the Muppet Show in the balcony? Well, I am far worse…

Basically, my paper delved deeply into my research into the “hidden effects of severe physical and psychological trauma, including severe traumatic brain injury.” The paper actually ended up being about another 25 to 30 pages longer than originally assigned. But the instructor took it in stride. She even said she could find no errors. (I think she was feeling sorry for what I had gone through.)

The one thing researching this paper did for me was to show me that my psychiatrist and therapist had both misdiagnosed me as having Major Depressive Disorder instead of actually having Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Furthermore, the research of this paper gave me the knowledge I needed to know and somewhat understand what I was suffering. This more or less gave me the “forewarned is forearmed” capability of dealing with the CPTSD on my own.

I shall be the first to admit that I still suffer from CPTSD on top of my Adult ADHD. I shall to the day I die. However, I am able to deal with it without having to take medication and see a psychiatrist and/or therapist. There are times depression and bipolarism can hit me so hard that I wished I had a dedicated psychiatrist and/or therapist and/or medication; however, I am also able to get myself through those periods.

The only other thing that still bothers me, many could say still terrorizes me, is that I still occasionally suffer nightmares about the accident. I no longer wake up screaming, but sometimes I awaken still in a “PTSD flashback” state where I am awake, but still living the nightmare. It is when these night terrors occur that I am truly terrified. The only time I am ever truly scared. Sometimes crying literally like a little baby. And I ain’t afraid to admit it. I have had some tell me this is true courage. Me, I don’t know about that. I just know it is the only times I am truly scared and terrified. And when these terrorisms hit…

[Sorry, had another cry…]

On a further note… There are times I get to daydreaming about my wife and daughters so deeply, I end up actually crying. Sometimes, to this day, I can find myself crying myself to sleep at night. Oh hell, the pain is so deep the only words I can find that adequately describe it is to say that half my heart AND half my soul was killed when my wife and daughters were murdered. For the last 20 years, I have been a man with only half a heart and half a soul.

And you may ask why cynical?

The other major problem is that this has made me not give a damn about this shit-hole we call Earth. Do I avoid Death? No. Not really. But I do not seek it either. Ever since the death of my wife and daughters, I could care less whether I go on living or not. I do not particularly enjoy being in this shit-hole without them. Now this does NOT mean I am suicidal. It just means I don’t give a fuck about dying. It also means I don’t give a damn about living either. However, since I am still in this shit-hole, I make of it what I can. Since I am still living, I just live. The only true purpose of life is life. What you make of it is what you make of it.

However, these god damned Religious Absolutists can make it so extremely difficult… Why can't they just leave people the fuck alone? Why can't they just keep their fucking schizophrenic delusions to themselves?

And the worst part is these damned stupid Religious Absolutists will say something like, “I understand what you are going through,” OR “I know what you are going through.” BULLSHIT!

And this is when I can explode like a supernova! No one can understand, nor even imagine what I have gone through, what I am still going through! What I shall go through until the day I die!

It is impossible to understand what I have been through unless you have gone through the same exact happenstance. In other words, I just want to live my life as I wish. I don’t care about dying. I don’t care about living. But since I am still alive, I just make the best of it as I can. The only purpose of life is life. Also understand this. If my wife and twin daughters had not been murdered, my life and viewpoint would be so drastically different…

rmfr

@callout:

I don't think I am interesting enough to be recorded live. Do you think you are?

Collaborate: I work at a university that has no religious affiliation. One of the professors here Jan De Beer, (That is a real name of a real guy my atheist friends) just published a paper in some religious journal. I was the one that he asked to do the proof reading and suggested editorial changes. He is aware of my interest in religions. The paper was on the meaning of the word "Congregation" and how it has changed over the centuries.

Collaboration is rarely an issue. The meaning of the word has changed over time and it is an interesting inquiry for both a believer and a non-believer. Everyone learns from collaboration.