I woke up this morning at 7am (yeah, on a Saturday) and immediately started crying. I have no idea what that was all about. I don't remember any dreams.

Everyone who knows me knows that I am a person whose world view is defined by stark, extreme dichotomies. I just don't know if they realize how painfully aware of that fact I am. I hate it. Thinking about it sends me into wanting to make some rather extreme statements about myself. But I don't know how else to be. I was programmed this way.

But because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold, not hot, I will begin to vomit thee out of my mouth. Rev. 3:16

That's the verse I was raised on. There was no room for ambiguity. God was an old man who swung between sort of jolly (if still distant) and extremely fucking pissed off while wielding magical powers. That was pretty much how I saw my grandfather, too. He was a Pentecostal minister who founded the church my mother, brother, and I attended while my father lived in the basement and drank Falls City beer. My Sunday school teacher used to reduce me to tears, making pointed comments about unbelievers and their eventual fate. Everyone knew my father was an unbeliever. Only, when I got just a little bit older, I knew without any doubt in my heart that when the Rapture came (and it would be soon, it's always soon with them), I would be left behind, alone with my father. I didn't care about the plagues of locusts and rivers of blood so much as I was afraid of what would happen if Jesus took away what little bit of resistance that stood between me and my father's free reign.

They told us that demon-possessed people were everywhere. They found some element of Satanism in just about everything. Hippie peace symbols were Satanic because, obviously, they were broken crosses turned upside down! Certain movies and bands were off-limits because they had a "cult following." I'm not kidding, they were incapable of comprehending the whole "figure of speech" thing. They were incapable of any kind of subtlety.

I was part of that church until I was 14.