Useless ... and bleah!

Happy Easter, everyone!

So, Fr. P. on Black Thursday (I'm Catholic, just go with my terms, okay?) heard my confession: you know, where I admitted I hadn't been going to confession in two months and I had been receiving Holy Communion all that time to show everybody that everything was fine with me, ...

... when really it wasn't.

I mean, sure, I kept to my Lenten observance, giving up what I could handle to give up: drinking, ...

... But wasn't I supposed to be closer to God, doing this Lenten stuff?

I wasn't.

I was simply annoyed that I couldn't drink, so I cussed more and masturbated, ... well, more of the same, 'cause I don't think it's humanly possible to masturbate more than me ('more than me'? or 'more than I do'? I think 'more than I do' is ... 'more' correct ... geddit? 'more correct'? *sigh* you don't get it)

At this point Fr. P. interrupted me and asked me how many times I masturbated? 'Was it once a day?'

I had to stop myself from screaming with laughter at that.

And after I had (politely) corrected him, he told me that my will had been corrupted by this bad habit (that feels so good) and that I needed to get on a regular confession schedule, so that when I fell, my confessor could restore me to grace and I could again worthily receive the sacraments.

See? Nothing judgmental there, just mercy and forgiveness and a plan to get things right.

Why can't I be like that?

Anyway, Easter Sunday rolls around, and my pretty nieces in their pretty pink and peach dresses (killer!) sang in the choir, and Fr. P. steps up to the lecturn and welcomes everybody and says this Mass is ...

... 'useless.'

He said all you teenage girls coming to Mass to prove to your parents that, yep, you still go to Mass, Mom and Dad, so leave me alone, okay?

(He didn't look directly at me when he said this ... but there were three killer teens in their form-fitted jeans and oh-so-snug turtlenecks with super-model pouty lips that I wanted to savage because of their crossed-arm 'tude they carried with them into the church ...)

(... there's something here about motes and beams[1] that I may be missing here ...)

And Father went on and on about how 'useless' Jesus' sacrifice was and how 'useless' the Mass was, and how 'useless' love is and ...

It was around this point I wanted to punch Father in the face if he were going to say the word 'useless' again without coming round to the point on Easter Sunday with a standing-room-only-filled-to-capacity church.

Anger issues much, `phfina?

No, why do you ask? *blink-blink*

And his point, that he eventually got to after saying 'useless' three more times (no, I didn't punch him in the face three times ... I didn't even punch him in the face once ... barely ... I was so proud of my self-control as I sat fuming in my pew) (with my pretty white dress on ... you should've seen me. 'Killer!' But then, if you saw me, you'd grab me away to the bathroom in the back of the church that smells like camomile lotion and done naughty non-Easter things to me, and I would've missed the homily, see?)

:p

Where was I? Oh, yeah: 'useless.'

And Fr. P.'s point was this: Jesus' sacrifice was useless, and the Mass was useless, and human love is useless, because ...

Because Jesus, in sacrificing himself, wasn't using us. We, in celebrating the Mass, don't use Him. Perfected human love, selfless love, the love where the grandfather gets grandmother's meds and a glass of water for her, without asking nor being asked, just because he loves her and knows (I was almost crying there), is not using.

'Useful', something being 'used,' is to be consumed. You love hamburgers, Fr. P. said, and a cow has to die. But God loves us, we love God and each other, and we don't consume each other, not in perfect love.

How different perfect love is from ... well, anything of this Earth, at any time: in Jesus' time, and now, where the sexual revolution hasn't liberated women, it's only liberated sexual predators, so now they can use woman as a receptacle to rub against and to piss in, justifying their self-gratification because now there's no fruit of their consummation: there's no longer any need for it.

Wanna debate that? Look at the poverty line. Look at where, and who the poverty line has hit hardest, with the 'no-fault' divorce that allows men to walk away from their word, their commitment to their families, leaving the wife, and children, in poverty, so now you take oral contraception, the pill, so you don't get pregnant, so a guy can fuck you then leave you that same night, leaving the emotional turmoil, the wreck, that used to be you, behind, and that's okay now, because you're supposed to 'man' up and not have all those womanly attachments, like love for another person who consummated his 'love' for you, but, no, not really, because you're just a cum-dump now, and that's okay.

Yeah, that's what human love has been corrupted to nowadays.

But Fr. P. concluded, when you discover Jesus, you discover the death and resurrection, and when you discover that, you discover everything good in this life.

It's Easter Monday. Lent is over. Back to being the old `phfina. Scared little me working on a window ledge, because they don't have a desk for me and three other of my coworkers.

'Useless.' It's a theme I've thought about a lot, as a writer, how authoresses write their characters to use each other: Edward rapes Bella and then forces her to have an abortion, but Bella's a cunt for crying about it. Edward and Bella have sex and Edward leaves Bella, and Bella has to pick up the pieces of her life with her daughter that looks just like Rosalie and Edward comes back when Bella's thirty, but everything's okay, because Bella didn't kill herself so Edward can ... well, pick up where he left off, with a daughter with a lot of anger issues about an absent father. But, like I said, it's all good.

Or, Bella is in college and meets the real Vampire Edward, who like killing women because they're weaker and scream so beautifully as he kills them, but he falls for Bella, because she's Mary Sue, see? And, since the sex is top-notch, and Bella is a sensitive, caring soul (like I said, Mary Sue), and they quote Sartre to each other, then it's one of those 10,000+ reviewed stories, see, because it's not about the sex, nor the murders, it's about getting it and getting with it because this is Sartre so it's cool and trendy and in.

Look who's talking, `phfina.

I write some sex scenes that are top-notch, and quote Ayn Rand, and dwell on the meanifullessness of it all, how we are all just consumers, users, ... but ...

But, so I'm just like everybody else, just another user ...

The Mass? Useless?

Maybe, maybe not. I don't know.

I do know one thing. I do know one thing.

Useless? Me.

Sitting here, on my window ledge, correcting my spreadsheet, again, because somebody else got in there and overwrote a formula with a number they hand-entered and now everything's fucked up, but who cares? Nobody, ... nobody but nobody me.

If I killed myself, today, right now, the only thing that would matter is that some people would have to clean up the mess I made on the floor, because my boss? He came by at exactly 9:30 am to make sure everything was 'okay' (trans: that I had my ass in my chair on the window ledge) and that's all he knows about me and my job. That's how much I matter.

Now I have to go to a 10:00 am meeting, to prove that they are cutting a paycheck to somebody who's occupying space at least 8 hours a day, consuming oxygen.

Maybe I'll drink some liquid oxygen, for all that it matters, for all that they care.

And Jesus died and rose again for this, God's one mistake.

"And on that day it would've been better that he be not born."

I don't even rate that verse, that's what a waste I am. Instead of carrying forward the family name, I was born with a little slit. An unwanted pregnancy, an unwanted child, now just a cog in the wheel on a window ledge.

I might as well jump.

... setting: much later in the day, at home, in bed, under covers, shivering and sweating.

Well, you pray to God for a reason to live, and He gives you one. My niece got the stomach flu on Easter, and now I have it, too. Had some orange juice and got really queasy! *sigh* So now I have to get better before I slump into the black pit of despair, 'cause that's how I roll. Can't have my mom asking the coroner after I've slit my wrists ('down, not across'), did I have clean panties, and if not, why not.

Can't have that.

---

[1] "Wherefore thou correctest thy brother, that he hast a mote in his eye, when thou seest not the beam in thine own, ... blah-blah-blah, and stuff" (Queen `phfina's neuf translation of King James' vieiux one)