Ger'asene Apologetic

May, 2006

The Ger’asene Apologetic

They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Ger'asenes.
And when he had come out of the boat, there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit,
who lived among the tombs; and no one could bind him any more, even with a chain;
for he had often been bound with fetters and chains, but the chains he wrenched apart, and the fetters he broke in pieces; and no one had the strength to subdue him.
Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always crying out, and bruising himself with stones.
And when he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and worshiped him;
and crying out with a loud voice, he said, "What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me."
For he had said to him, "Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!"
And Jesus asked him, "What is your name?" He replied, "My name is Legion; for we are many."
And he begged him eagerly not to send them out of the country.
Now a great herd of swine was feeding there on the hillside;
and they begged him, "Send us to the swine, let us enter them."
So he gave them leave. And the unclean spirits came out, and entered the swine; and the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the sea, and were drowned in the sea.
The herdsmen fled, and told it in the city and in the country. And people came to see what it was that had happened.
And they came to Jesus, and saw the demoniac sitting there, clothed and in his right mind, the man who had had the legion; and they were afraid.
And those who had seen it told what had happened to the demoniac and to the swine.
And they began to beg Jesus to depart from their neighborhood.
And as he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed with demons begged him that he might be with him.
But he refused, and said to him, "Go home to your friends, and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you."
(Mark 5:1-19, RSV)

My God, My God, what have I done?


May 4, 2006

As I write this the voices are, for the most part, quiet. They make no comments or suggestions as I type. When they do pop up, I ignore them or tell them to shut up. They do not praise me as the consummate writer or tell me I am the Second Coming or encourage me to do something else, something irrational, foolish but oh so compelling. And they don’t tell me lies, lies I used to repeat to people sometimes. I am racked with embarrassment and guilt. Neither do they console me or entreat me to relax. I seem to have escaped their power, and their solace. Some of the events contained herein have been pieced together after the fact as I sometimes have memory lapses, especially when under heavy stress.
When the voices began sometime in 1987, I was under terrific stress in my abusive first marriage. My then wife was into New Age spirituality and was supposedly channeling spirits, mostly very negative and abusive, perhaps evil. This experience opened me up to the reality of the demonic playing a role in human life. I became part of a charismatic prayer group in approximately 1989, which served to reinforce and actually overemphasize this idea. My voices told me I was an exorcist. Such spiritual ideas often accompany madness; there is often a fine line between the madman and the mystic. In the world of the mad, spirits abound, saints and demons, Satans and Christs. Most mentally ill people I have met say that there is a spiritual element to their illness. Mental illness seems to break down barriers between what might be called normal reality and the spiritual realm. It is often overwhelming, resulting in much famously odd behavior and claims. I became a spiritual warrior, battling demons everywhere I went. I regularly if not constantly said prayers of exorcism and protection for others and myself for several years. This fascination made me sometimes physically ill and led to generally benign but irrational behavior at times. I believe such prayers have their place but to be preoccupied or fascinated with the demonic as I was is not healthy or logical and perhaps gives it more power. I still believe there is demonic influence on human life, but living a good life and having an active prayer life is protection enough. The non-spiritual person sometimes seems the safest of all from the demonic. Was I influenced by demons? No way to really know. It’s a possibility. All I know for sure is I have had problems knowing what is “real” for nearly two decades now. I do not recommend charismatic spirituality to any one with psychotic tendencies or any mental illness that features any problems discerning reality. It is simply too stimulating. I do not recommend New Age spirituality to anyone at all; it can be dangerous, especially in its more extreme forms.
The voices no longer seduce me with loving words into their incredible world where I am the center of the universe, where everything is about me and in me and through me. Where I am encouraged, recruited to be the Christ. Christ was and is me and I am female (At the time of this particular delusion I was attempting to live as a woman). I turn down the job but they insist. The Church’s secret is being revealed as they speak, Christ was and is a woman named Marquesa. She, I, wrote the Gospel of Marquesa on a beach in Galilee after the resurrection while the apostles, some women, played volleyball in the sand. Somewhere in the bowels of the Vatican, Cardinals are gathered ‘round an ancient pallet, sealed for nearly two millennia, reading my words, in modern English (It seemed total gibberish in about 300 AD when they sealed it up), written in #2 pencil on canary yellow legal pads 2000 years ago. It was treated as a mysterious and secret religious relic all these centuries, self-preserving and a total mystery. It was locked up in a vault many centuries ago at the birth of the Vatican and all but forgotten. But with all the miracles I performed and the tabloids proclaiming me the Second Coming, and the movies and books and special appearances on MTV, someone looked up the name Marquesa and found it referred to this ancient relic. At the same time they are reading it, I am lying on my bed, listening to them while I am writing an exact narrative of these unfolding events on that 2000 years ago beach, which is exactly what they are reading which is exactly what I am hearing (and writing) and they read their own exact words and are told to have pity on me as I lie there, experiencing all this in my New World bed in a little western town nearly half a world away. Paradox, paradox, there lies madness, there lies madness. But I cut a deal with them, they get to keep their male messiah and I publicly turn down the job of Christ in exchange for them opening up the Church’s vast riches to help the poor and set up a world wide adoption network since they are so against contraception and abortion. I am, too, against abortion I mean, but I see it as a necessary evil, but if they lightened up on contraception and did the adoption thing, and helped the poor like they’re supposed to, they could outlaw abortion without triggering a back alley blood bath. I would make a good Messiah but I still turn down the job. Somehow I know I’m not God. Okay, so how about the Holy Spirit? Same trap, the Trinity thing, you know.
Before that I was Mary, the Mary, and besides that nearly every significant female, known of unknown, before or after Mary. I was the woman behind every great creative man there ever was. The wife, the concubine, the slave, the apprentice. I was DaVinci’s servant girl, but you see, he was just a kindly, half mad eccentric who wrote down my words, and showed his brother my sketches. Mona Lisa was my “Mom”, done from memory since she died when I was quite young. You see, I have forever been the main source of creativity in this world. And the key to God’s will being done in mankind. As I tried to tell Einstein, God does throw dice with the universe, except for me. I always do His will so others can have free will. The constant thrown into the equation to make it work. But at the same time the wild card, the free radical, the warrior princess, forever ready to serve anywhere in any capacity to allow determinism. To be up to this task I was made half angel, half human, born into every generation to serve it.
I was, of course, Eve, (The whole “Fall” thing happened so that people would need each other, if no one was ever afraid, like God says, everything would be fine) and before that all the non-human predecessors back to the primordial puddle where life came into existence. I was there when God dipped His finger into the ooze to give the first sparks of Life. You see I was the cell that would one day become mankind. Before that I was a little girl in Heaven with my Daddy, God and we talked outside of time and together laid out the whole history of the universe. He would propose an idea and I would tell him if I thought it work out. I gave suggestions along the way while I played at His feet, but He did most of the work, just letting me help ‘cause He loved me so much. I’m not sure where my brother, Jesus, was during all this, maybe taking care of Heaven. He wasn’t actually my brother, but that’s what I called Him. I was never anything like God; really, I was just the human archetype, with angel added in to make me immortal. I was never reincarnated, I just lived forever. When I “died” I would just wink out or time for a holiday near heaven and then back into time into the same instant as a child. Sometimes an infant, sometimes a toddler, sometimes a ten year old, whatever worked best at the time. Always an orphan, but always “adopted” in some way by a key person in that generation. Mary was the exception to the angel and adoption stuff, I was totally human then to make it work out, theologically speaking. God knew I could do it once all by myself, so to speak. Especially with Jesus around most of the time. After Mary things changed a bit, of course, since the Kingdom of Heaven had arrived. The person, Mary, went bodily to heaven, while “I”, now Marquesa, received again my angel and went back to work. Yeah, a bit of magic, it’s called a miracle. Things were actually easier, what with the gift of the Spirit and all.
In this present lifetime, I am again only human as it is the turn of the millennium and a cusp in the history of the universe. Everybody thinks this is such an evil time, but relatively speaking, it is really the most peaceful time in history. There are no World Wars or any major wars at all, no Atilas or Hitlers or Pol Pots or Stalins. We just don’t think we’re at peace because there is media coverage of every awful thing that happens anywhere in the world. So much used to happen that hardly anyone ever knew about before the written word and, eventually, radio and TV and satellites and the World Wide Web. And there are just so damn many more people in the world and so much fear. We’ve reached capacity, population will level off soon. Evil per capita and en toto is actually the lowest it’s ever been. Satan was actually totally defeated in Jesus’ incarnation. All that’s left are his leaderless demons and the fear residing in mankind. So, as of this lifetime, there is a critical mass of creativity and Spirit in the world. I get to retire soon. Live a normal life and die like everybody else and stay in heaven. As for the Second Coming stuff, I can see how there might be some confusion, it being around the turn of the millennium and me being so famous and important and all. “Blazing across the sky.” Nobody knows when Jesus will come but the Trinity, not even me.
Not long after all the Second Coming stuff and the deal, about a week, I saved the earth from destruction a couple of times. Again lying on my bed, I was spiritually sent out to the boundaries of our solar system to confront an armada of alien warships on a mission to destroy this evil place called earth. Technologically advanced, they were unburdened by the spiritual and religious constraints on science that have plagued the earth. I was sent as the example of earth spirituality and to point them to the Trinity. They were much impressed and cowed by this great thing known as the Spirit and its ability to reside in so called humans. They opted to study this God and his amazing beauty and power. And returned home. The next day I was called to face another armada from the other end of the universe with similar results. I made vague reference to all this when I checked myself into the mental ward soon afterward, as I was so overwhelmed. They let me go the next day, just a glitch in my medications, not to worry.
The voices tell me what people are thinking and the Spirit allows me to speak to them in their minds. I have averted many suicides and other tragedies by this telepathic counseling. Sometimes I simply comfort people, other times I give suggestions but always pointing them to Jesus or the Father or the Spirit, whichever person of the Trinity serves them best.
Such is the ride I have been on, specifically for the last several months, but with ever increasing dysfunction for the last twenty years.
My voices told me for nearly ten years (I can’t pin down the time this actually began, maybe 1998) that I was actually a woman, that my image of myself as a man was delusion. The horrific Satanic Ritual Abuse I suffered as a child created this delusion. The voices supplied me with an alternate life as a girl and a woman to counter my male memories. My birth certificate was changed to male after the old courthouse in the small town where I was born burned down, something they do in Montana periodically to update their records (There is another story related to my birth certificate but that will come in the next section). Changed in an effort to keep me hidden from the cult of abusers, who viewed me as their chosen one, the one to lead them into the coming new millennium in which we would rise along the Antichrist. When these voices began in about 1987, they soon after helped me through, or perhaps into, two psychotic episodes. A third, less severe occurred in 1992 and several other times I was near psychotic, especially in 1999. The story of the abuse started coming out in, I believe, 1996 and played out in my mind usually dictated by the voice or voices, until about 2002. It has taken until this past year to seriously question the bulk of the story. I still believe I was abused at some time during my childhood but nI now doubt it to be as extensive or horrific as the narrative given me by the voices.
Perhaps I should say I do not hear my voices with my ears, they are not auditory hallucinations. I am told this makes them more like learned scripts rather than voices, which seems actually to give the abuse story more credibility were it not for all the other obviously deluded “thinking.” They occur in my mind, much like thoughts, only in a conversational manner, they refer to me as “you” and themselves as “I” or “we.” They also often use my mouth. I simply relax my jaw and they whisper through my mouth, using my tongue and jaw. For these reasons I find “voices’ a better description. I was certain for many years that at least one of them was God; he seemed to love me so. My constant conversation with “him” or “them,” meaning the Trinity, was constant prayer. I often had what I considered spiritual experiences. In the latter stages they could immobilize me as I lay on my bed, “praying.” This was not only a trance state, but also proof of their divinity. For years I was convinced that I could not live without them. I could not trust the evidence of my senses, they deceived me into believing I was a man and so many other things. I was mad, I could not handle my existence, make my own choices, I had to totally rely upon God. It mattered not that there were so many contradictions, that I suffered much, servants of God suffer, its scriptural. The problems could be my fault, through my sin, or else they were delusions, things were actually just fine. However, I am financially, professionally and personally devastated.
The impact these voices have had on my life for the past twenty years is immeasurable, as they were my guides through these years in all phases of my life. I consistently either avoided discussing these voices with counselors or psychiatrists or, when I did, I greatly understated their importance and prevalence. I did not want my God and guide to be criticized or taken away. Once, around 1998, I did mention to my psychiatrist that I heard the voice of God. He immediately suggested increasing my antipsychotic, which was already at a relatively high level, tranquilizing me too much, I thought. I discouraged the change; this was precisely the type of thing I feared, though my voices were remarkably resistant to medication as they are not strictly hallucinations, as mentioned earlier. As I mentioned, I was told by my voices to ignore the evidence of my senses, I was mad, they could not be trusted, “just trust us.” I eventually insisted that this was impossible. How can one simply ignore all the input of one’s senses, especially when faced with adverse consequences and such great contradictions? It was no way to live.
I was married for thirteen years to a very fine woman. I became convinced I was somehow justified to have an affair. I was also exempt from the moral taboo against such things because of the abuse I suffered as a child. Afterwards, when it was discovered, I was surprised my wife cared enough to be devastated by it. My voices had convinced me she did not care about me anymore, that she was unfaithful herself. She was not unfaithful, I am now certain of this. I was not exempt from consequences and not exempt for tortuous guilt. The voices then convinced me it had not actually happened, that I had been framed. I must admit to some complicity in this and perhaps most of my negative behavior. To say it was all the voices is too convenient. There must have been some character flaws driving at least some of it, though it is wrong to say that mental illness itself is a character flaw. Neither I nor my now ex-wife will ever be the same. In just the past several months I was convinced I had come into a large sum of money and subsequently went on a spending spree whose repercussions I will feel for several more years, if not the rest of my life. I now make decisions ”on my own” and feel less than confident about it, but at least what I do is relatively logical. After my destructive first marriage, I worked hard to develop a sense of personal integrity, and succeeded for the most part. This sense has been destroyed; I am struggling to regain it. I feel I will be able to continue to be stable, though time will tell. I count only a few weeks now in my new life.
There are two little boys in my life (my second wife’s grandchildren) who need me to be a man. My time with them used to be very free and fun and beneficial for all concerned. I have been a major influence in their life, a more complete and dynamic presence than their very decent but limited father. Due to my actions of the past several months (dressing as a woman, irresponsible spending, and a complex little urban neighborhood misunderstanding I choose not to go into) our time is now supervised, limited to the immediate vicinity of their home, and I was at first questioned as to how I was dressed before I came over. This is understandable, especially considering that the parents are both developmentally delayed, but I struggle to accept it, I feel frustrated and insulted and it is frustrating for the boys. My former wife tells me I just need to be patient; the parents need to see that I am stable. Time will perhaps heal, in this as in many other facets of my life.
In the face of much evidence and economic and legal necessity, I have perhaps come to my senses. I know I am poor and deeply in debt, and with consequent legal difficulties. I now know I am male, I no longer dress as a woman, and, as I said, reject much but not all of the abuse storyline. I still desire to be a woman, I have had gender difficulties from my earliest memories, but this will have to come about through “normal” channels, if at all, and not by spiritual intervention. I lived dressed as a woman for much of 1999 and 2000 and again for most of the last seven months. Without my voices to support me, it has become too difficult, too hard to take the hurtful comments, the stares, the ostracization, the bathroom problem. I face opposition in my entire family and was unable to find a suitable job, though I did work briefly for a former employer. I am trying to discern the will of God in this matter, through “normal” channels. I will be male for the foreseeable future, perhaps the rest of my life, though at this time I find this difficult, if not impossible to accept.
I do believe that God was active in my life these last twenty years, perhaps mitigating the damage at times. After separating from my first wife in 1989 things seemed to improve, a lot. I was able to overcome my problems with reality through hard work. I remarried in 1991 and, superficially at least, life was good for several years. In the past decade, though I managed to get a couple of BS degrees,in many ways things simply got steadily worse, I was less sane, the “demons” came out that I was repressing. This decline coincided with the “recovery” of the abuse “memories.” Throughout, I was wholly sincere in my desire to serve God and I believe He honored that. I accomplished much good during the past two decades, there is simply too much damage done, too much pain, too much confusion, too much… to believe that He was truly my guide through it all. There is much more the voices told me, I haven’t the will to pull it all up, but I think you get the idea. I seek God in my heart now, not my mind. Which brings me back to my place with the voices mostly quiet, in a way bereft, but mostly relieved and with a halfway decent grasp on “reality,” if there be such a thing. The Ger’asene is sitting on a rock, clothed and in his right mind, yet feeling lost, guilty, out of place and foolish. And has little idea what to do with himself.


My God, My God, what have I done?


Update, October 2007

I feel like I have overcome my transgender fixation. I took a lot of time and thouhgt through all the scenarios of a life that followed that path. They all led to dead ends. I no longer believe this is God's will for me. I have a good part time job now, hope to go back to grad school in 09. Will declare bankruptcy after the first of the year ( its pretty bad when bankruptcy is a step up). Been almost two and a half years since the divorce. I feel like i am finally healing from it. I actually had a date with a woman this month. It went well but not ready for a relationship just yet. I'm still depressed a lot and occaisionally manic, but I maintain insight and don't listen to the voices anymore. Things are pretty good.