Wednesday, July 12th, 2023, 15:29

Mood: At work

I'm on my lunch break at work currently. There's some times in the year--notably at the start and end of each semester--where it's tough goings being in higher ed, and there's way more work to do than you want. But it's pretty universal that summertime is extremely chill. It's easy to keep on top of things and not get too overwhelmed. That is, unless you're me and have multiple jobs and spend the summers doing research. Then you're always busy. I get to work until like 9pm or 10pm today for that reason. I definitely inherited my mother's penchance for juggling multiple jobs, which is sort of a problem psychologically--especially the part where, if I struggle to maintain multiple jobs and keep up with unpaid domestic labor, I feel like I'm a failure--but also, what if you get fired from one of your jobs? You should always have some way to generate a source of income for yourself.

Anyway, I'm reading more of The Long, Hard Road Out of Hell and I'm getting two takeaways from it. One, Brian Warner is a pampered baby bitch boy. I regret using his chosen moniker in my last post, because I think it's more befitting to address him by a name he despises: a name that denotes exactly who he is. Like I'm not saying that he isn't traumatized or abused in childhood; he is, but there's a very specific traua that accompanies doing without. As you get further into the part about his childhood, he doesn't really shy away from admitting that his family has money--and actually he doesn't ever really shy away from it ever, or downplay it. It bewilders me in retrospect, that a man who was accused of leading goth kids* to ruin and massacre, is named Brian Fucking Warner and had parents with enough money to send him to a private Christian school.

Second, and more importantly, I've really been debating hard these days if it's appropriate to raise children with a religion at all. The Quakers would agree with me, but few other religions--including my own, both the ones I was raised under and the ones I align with in adulthood--do. I have been suffering a lot lately with intrusive thoughts of a religious nature. Something bad will happen and it will be my fault because I didn't pray or manifest hard enough. If I do something to enrage God, like I'm too egocentric or not humble enough or whatever, then I'll be punished for it. Maybe God will kill Siren because He realizes I am not a fit mother. (Can you tell I was raised Catholic?) While obviously we can't pinpoint my mental illness on religion--I would be mentally ill regardless if I was raised atheist or not--there's an undeniable trauma associated with many aspects of a religious upbringing.

So many parts of this book, I find myself actually sympathizing or relating to Brian Warner, because he had a religious upbringing and was bad at it and punished for it. Fortunately my religious upbringing lasted only until I was eight, but I continued living in a city whose culture is heavy on the "spiritual" m a n i f e s t i n g side of things, as I call it. Can children consent to religion? The more I think about it, the more I doubt it. How is a child, even one that's thoughtful and precocious, supposed to know that there are so many psychological consequences to religion?

Anyway. Just things. I need to update this site. I don't like the layout anymore and the facts about me are out-of-date too. I don't even have blue hair anymore.

Whenever the subjects of 90s goth and Columbine come up, I think about how my aunt was worried my cousin might shoot up Calabasas High because he had pierced nipples and a trench coat.