"Marble statues and glass dividers Someone is watching all of the outsiders"--jlc

the fear was one that was both undeniably real and stupid and it would take only the nonsense vows of a semi-drunk to face it. i don't care if greater beings exist, i just want to know what it IS that draws the fearless from their 2-dimensional, black and white lives to cry out in mercy. where's my need to cry out? why don't i yell for forgiveness and pray up at the sky like my answers will rain down on me at any minute?

and why can't i make my way to the single place where a pacifying solitude is supposed to be given? it's a stupid phobia, i know. the type you never grow out of now matter how hard you try.

behind those colorfully painted windows of saints with forgiving faces and mothers with peace in their eyes are gray, stone walls with death on every side. morbidly lifelike, who are the psychos who take the time to create such an accurate description of a gruesome death? and worse, who are the crazies that decide they need to be hung up for the world to see? i've spent more time studying the crucifixes and the man hanging, nailed to a wooden cross than listening to the sermons up front. it becomes an obsession for that hour or more, eyes fixed on the blood droplets that no one can see and trying to understand the tranquil face that should be crying out in pain and agony.

singing hallelujahs, fists in the air, knees on the floor, beat yourself up because your sins have already been paid for. listen to the man in front of the pulpit, behind the stand, his eyebrows knit together in anger. he hates you and he forgives you because he can and because it gives him something to do. you should respect him, but it wouldn't hurt if you feared him, and things can get only better if you obey him.

those are the lessons i've learned. they became my reasons for hating a world full of extremists and non-extremists. each criticizing and neither listening. both afraid of being sucked into the other's world of lies and distortion. each believing he's more open and understanding than the other, but neither caring to let the words of the other sink in deeper than the skin. words bouncing everywhere, the confusion grows. confusion so thick fills the air and pokes at your eyes and like with the stinging of peeled onions, opening them becomes more and more difficult.

a drunk forgets his fears and only half thinks. a drunk tries to find the answers to everything he doesn't understand even if it requires facing his worst fear. churches--my worst fear. the memory of climbing the dark stairway of my preschool. one end brightly lit, and the sound of my classmates laughing, screaming, playing filling my ears, but with every step up and away, i get closer to the solemn, gray room where nobody exists and eyes watch you from every wall and every window. it's impossible to enter the bathroom without stopping to stare at the man pinned up against the cross. covered by only a stone sheet, he looks almost as though he might smile to himself, remembering some secret that no one else knows. it makes me shudder if i look at him too long but most times i can't stop looking. there's this overwhelming dread that he'll move or talk or even, worst of them all, smile.

but here i sit, over 20 years later. even with the church filling up steadily, i shiver because i know i'm stuck in a situation i can't get out of. every sunday, i attend mass. why? it's what my drunken senses told me to do. i don't expect to find answers. i expect to overcome a fear, and in the process find that peace and that solitude that i hear so much about.