In my father’s house there is an empty chair
But I’m not the one who put it there.
It’s there at family dinner, loyally,
Like he thinks that I couldn’t be.
The chair, the space, it’s all the same to me,
Exists also around the Christmas tree.
I don’t know who they expect to come sit there,
Some imagined me as substantial as the empty air.
Some me who is polite,
With a testimony burning bright,
Who only talks about how wrong the church’s enemies are.
But I guess they never saw the wounds nor the scars
Which drove me against my logical bent
To trod roughly where before they went.
I came, I saw, and I was undone.
To be short of breath, it was no fun.
Turns out after all these years, trying so much
To be like the rest of the bunch
A pronouncement of autism upon me was laid
From the special psychologist I paid
To tell me what the fuck was wrong,
And the pronouncement roiled through me as a gong.
I’d looked for the balm in Gilead to heal ”it.”
“It” made me apart from all the other shit.
What was “it”?
Sin?
For along time I so thought,
And for my worthiness, my soul, I fought,
Convincing myself that unbelief was because of sin,
I more perfectly tried the Ship Zion to get in.
It didn’t feel right, my logical mind protested
But that part was associated with he whom molested
My peace with his incessant doubts, that Evil One,
Satan, but away I couldn’t run.
He caught me, as a missionary, as I was doing the work,
Grabbed me by my shoulder and spun me around with a jerk,
And I saw Satan was me, and I wasn’t evil, and I wasn’t wrong,
Yet I waited ten more years for the ringing gong.
In terms I’ve learned since becoming aware,
I was “masking” so hard I was always the chair.
The real me spoke up,
seven years ago,
When I wanted to say how I made it through
My 26-year old row,
Of anxiety, depression, loss, and lies
To triumph, clarity, courage, and cries
Cries of hallelujah, but I meant them —
Instead of the old days when I’d invent them.
But “I’m atheist” was about as far as I’d gotten,
When I was cast out their emotional lives as if I was rotten.
And for seven years we stared each other down,
As we went about our habits, for the passive aggressive crown,
Until I made a move too bold for their tastes
And they blocked me to stare at social media wastes.
“Fine,” said I in my heart and to no one who cared
“I’ll just move on then,” and everyone stared.
Some texted, some called, to pick me with the bone,
But it’s over, I’m done, you win, just leave me alone.
I’ll be there for Christmas the same way I always am,
As an empty chair beside the roasted ham.
I’m not allowed to say ought,
Cuz it’s always for naught,
But if my face is what they wish to see
Prop up my portrait by the TV.
If the warmth of my body is what they wish there to be,
We live in a desert, just turn off the AC.
But they don’t want me there in any meaningful sense,
Just as their flesh and blood as their just recompense,
Cuz they were good parents, they tell themselves oft,
They kept me alive and kept me aloft.
True, and so they did, but I was dying in a different way—
It’s the story “33 years undiagnosed” ought by itself to say.
But they don’t wanna hear that,
they don’t care at this late stage,
They’re so twisted by religion,
They love it in their cage.
I can’t be there anymore, though, and
I won’t even visit, until they understand
That what they’re doing to me
is demanding from me
By all their heart strings, through,
To mask up again and shut the fuck up too.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/10/2021 04:43PM by Cold-Dodger.

Thank you.

(In terms I’ve learned since becoming aware,
I was “masking” so hard I was always the chair.)

Yes. Thank you.

Whatr a scorching excoriation of the Mormon Facade taking precedence over all else, over all that should be dear.

Very penetrating images, those. A very artful and profound expression of the deepest "what is".