“Satellite Photography.” 2/16/13. Acrylic paint on cardboard.
I didn’t go to church as a kid, but I remember a friend once telling me about something he had heard at church that Sunday. “They said that a satellite took a picture from really far away of what they think might actually be heaven.”
I’m terrified of judgment when it comes to my spirituality or my ideas about God. I’ve had so much animosity built up around religion for so long that I get really nervous and defensive about it. (See: “Evil” / “Maybe I Don’t Believe in God”).
But I pray. Or – rather – I try to pray. Sometimes. I’m not praying to someone that can be photographed from outer space though. For me, prayer is an exercise that’s its own reward. When I pray, it’s never for myself. I only pray for other people because – in doing so – I think about them. (“Portraits of God, Nothing, and Fear”).
Most days, I isolate and tell myself that my activities through my website (and online generally) are enough sociality. Living in my little bubble of self, it’s really easy to get wrapped up in my own nonsense, problems, or [whatever]. Prayer is one way of forcing myself to remember other people in a way that affects me more than a “like” on a Facebook post. It feels good to break out of myself now and then. And it’ll usually motivate me to reach out and connect with a friend in a way that feels a little more meaningful than I might otherwise.
“Values are For Shoppers, I’m For Giving Up.” 12/3/12. Marker. 7½x9½”.
Core beliefs are the things we believe about ourselves that guide and influence all of our behavior. This week’s spirituality group assignment at Tranquil Shores was to list ten core beliefs. I did it on the same page on which I was also scribbling (and using to write notes to the girl sitting next to me).
I am ugly.
I am a problem.
My perceptions are wrong.
I am smart.
I am only tolerated.
I am almost good enough.
I’m not like other people.
Nothing lasts.
I lose.
Nothing matters.
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Number three might not actually be a core belief as much as it was a new belief that had been developing in response to everyone telling me how wrong I was (when it came to my core beliefs).Number four is the one positive item on the list. Number six was misinterpreted by someone in the group as positive but “I’m almost good enough” is an acknowledgment that I might not be thoroughly awful (when it comes to [insert anything here]) but I’m not good enough to actually succeed. Which is maybe even more frustrating because it puts me in the position to think that I might succeed “one of these times.” It keeps me going and sets me up for more disappointment. [What I failed to recognize up to this point in my life was that I had succeeded many times at many things: I have a fucking law degree from Georgetown! I released records by some of my favorite bands! I’ve done all kinds of cool shit in my lifetime].
Number ten is my favorite because it’s the one item that I held on to – but spun in such a way that (rather than eat away at my fucking soul) it frees me.
That sounds lame and I’m okay with that.
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After we wrapped up core beliefs, we were told to make a list of core values. Values are inherently positive though. And having just reviewed my ten core beliefs, I was emotionally drained and feeling sick to my stomach. In that state, I wasn’t about to acknowledge anything even remotely positive. Not to mention that – while I knew what my core beliefs were without even having to think about it – “my values?” … That was a little trickier.
“The Promises” is a passage in the Alcoholics Anonymous text. Don’t quote me on this, but it’s something like: “If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are halfway through, we will know a new freedom and a new happiness, fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us, the dog will stop peeing on the futon and pulling snotty tissue out of the garbage can.”
In early recovery, I hated The Promises. It just read like bullshit to me. I drew this cartoon while sitting in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. It’s just some snarky bullshit—I’m crazy, I feel like I’ve got a boot to my head crushing my skull into the ground, but – oh yeah, sure – I believe in The Promises!
I had been off heroin for about four months, trying in earnest to do everything I could to get better, but there was resistance in me that I couldn’t shake; it was keeping me from really moving forward. This cartoon is from the week when that would finally change though.
I didn’t like Spirituality Group because I didn’t have any spirituality. But it was Thursday afternoon at Tranquil Shores so that’s what was happening. I was especially miserable on this particular day and it got worse as group went on. Toward the end, we were given an assignment: Write a letter of forgiveness (to yourself) and share it with the group. I wouldn’t share but I kind of wrote the letter.
Dear Sam, You are a total fucking shithead. You gave up on everything a long time ago. Though you sometimes have brief moments of optimism, they’re few, far between, and extremely short-lived. Everything you say is calculated and contrived. You may be the most dishonest asshole to ever walk the earth. I’d like to forgive you on the grounds that you’re doing the best you can – that you can’t help but be a miserable little prick – but even that’s not true. If you wanted to be a better person, you would be. And you’re not even nice to look at! How have you not been choked out yet? People can’t stand the fucking sight of you. Even your voice is outrageously obnoxious. Every day that you continue to live is either a slight against God or proof that he doesn’t exist – or at least doesn’t care about anything anymore. Or maybe you’re the new plague for the twenty-first century! Sent down to punish this wretched world gone awry. Only YOU are deluded enough to (even jokingly) attribute that kind of significance to your stupid presence. All I know is that people, and the planet, would be better off without you around. Please kill yourself now. Unfortunately, time has shown that you’re too weak to even bust that move. Seeing as you’re too pathetic to even express in words (given the limitations of human languages) I’ll forgive you. It’s a pity thing. It must be hard to be so worthless and rotten. Besides, I’m not one to hold grudges. I just hope that you’re somehow miraculously transformed or that – somewhere out there – there is some kind of hell for you to burn in one day. Love, Sam
As a kid, I’d always said that I didn’t believe in God. Sometime in my early twenties, my position went even further. I wasn’t willing to identify with atheism because I didn’t want to stake any claim — and because I didn’t want to identify with atheists (who often seemed as righteous and fanatical as the worst evangelicals). And agnosticism was just dopey (or agnostics were anyway). They were to spirituality what undecided voters are to politics. I wasn’t undecided – I didn’t give a shit. I was a non-voter, a total non-participant. If anyone asked if I believed in God, I’d tell them it wasn’t a relevant question – that it meant nothing to me.
In trying to not be a heroin addict anymore it had become necessary to let some of that antipathy slip away. I had taken to talking about God as if I believed.
But this was Spirituality Group and I hated it. I looked at the letter I had just written and I hated that too. It was like I was trying to be clever with my self-loathing. It made me hate myself even more. I flipped over the letter and started scratching an upside-down cross onto the page, around which I wrote I FUCKING HATE GOD for making me this fucking stupid.
This was on November 1, 2012 – before I learned to use art for emotional regulation. If this is art though, then this is the first time I did it (even if by accident). After scratching down the last of my authentic expression [the words I HATE EVERYTHING] I wasn’t done but I didn’t know what to do. “What else do people consider evil?” I thought.
From that point on, each thing I wrote was sillier than the next. I wasn’t miserable anymore, I was actually having fun.
My favorite part / the coup de grace came when I snuck the leastevil thing that I could think of onto the page.
I’m in the middle of a silent temper tantrum, by which I mean I’m not talking and have dedicated myself to staying miserable until I exhaust myself. I used to do this almost every day, but they’ve been pretty few and far between since the day that I consider my “emotional sobriety date.” So – of course – I’m angry and now I’m even angrier with myself for this than I am about the stupid incident that sparked this episode.
Here’s the other of my two 9×12″ learning to draw with charcoal sketches from January.
“Pulp.” 1/17/13. Charcoal. 9×12″.
In February 2012, I was kicked out of my second rehab in as many months. I found myself running around Delray Beach with the girl I had been kicked out with. I’m not going to try and diagnose her state back then but – if I did something that bothered her – she could flip a switch and go from being totally in love with me to telling me what an ugly, worthless, pathetic, despicable piece of shit I was. On one occasion in our first week out on our own, we were staying in some little shitbox motel. (If you’re familiar with Delray, I’m sure you know it). I don’t remember exactly what went wrong, but it had something to do with heroin or getting more heroin. And – in case I didn’t already hate myself enough (I did) – she was really piling on as much hatred and vitriol as she could manage, to ensure that there wasn’t so much as a shred of self-esteem left in me.
I went into the bathroom. I was crying. I looked at myself in the mirror and couldn’t fucking stand the sight. It made me angry that I was the person looking back at me. So I started punching myself in the face. I don’t remember how many times. Enough that, for a good while after, I looked like someone had kicked the shit out of me pretty well.
Which I’ve always been good at. I’ve always been good at beating myself up. But that was the one time when it was most literal.
I’ve had thoughts like these today. I have had these impulses today.
In writing this statement, I struggled with a tendency to dwell on details that aren’t significant because to skim over them or take anything for granted would run the risk of someone getting the wrong idea. And with something like this, that’s not really a risk I want to take. My intention is not, after all, to upset anyone.
Still, I don’t want to waste anyone’s time “defending myself” either. There’s enough of me up on this website for any interested parties to get a pretty good idea of what kind of a person I am.
I wrote this statement months ago, but spent the last two hours trying to find the right balances concerning caution, brevity, honesty, and intention.
“Toilet Humor.” 11/10/12. Watercolor paint, colored pencil, white kids paint, and black crayon. 9×12″.
Pedophilia is a mental illness characterized by sexual attraction to prepubescent (undeveloped) boys or girls. People can’t control whom they’re attracted to. It’s a mental disorder. I don’t suffer from pedophilia, but I have been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. I understand what it’s like to have a brain that causes a person to think in ways that they’d rather not. However, just as it’s not okay for me to let my thoughts or feelings control my actions to any extent that would cause harm to another person, it’s not okay for anyone else to do so either – regardless of their specific mental disorder. Being attracted to someone doesn’t give you the right to have sex with them. And since a child isn’t capable of intelligently consenting to sex, it’s not ever okay to have sex with a child.
Shit gets a little bit less clear-cut when we’re talking about adolescents though. An adolescent is a person that has reached physical maturity, and that’s the point when, by nature, others (regardless of age) will begin to find them sexually attractive. Sixteen is the age, in Florida, at which people are (legislatively) deemed to have hit puberty and are thus legally capable of consenting to sex.
Personally, I’m not particularly interested in talking to a sixteen year old, let alone having sex with one. Physical maturity doesn’t equate to emotional maturity and any kind of intimate interaction with someone who’s still emotionally a “child” is nothing I want to experience.
The phrase “sex with children” is interesting to me. Because the word “children” is ambiguous, because teenagers are marketed as sex objects, because statutory rape laws are inconsistent between the states (and are sometimes totally fucked), and because there’s nothing in the world that can spark feelings as intense and hateful as pedophilia.
And because when I was eighteen, I started dating a girl two months before she turned sixteen. So – according to Florida law – I could have been convicted of statutory rape and – had that happened – even now, nine years later, everyone in my neighborhood would have gotten a notice in the mail to inform them that I, a sex offender, was now living in the area.
Adolescents are adults physically, but children emotionally. If two of them have sex with one another, it’s absurd that one should be convicted of a crime. Especially when that conviction (and mandated registration) carries the same stigma as being branded as a pedophile or a rapist.
I’m not eighteen anymore though so that part of this is no longer personally relevant. And while it’s possible that I could still potentially see or meet a sixteen year old that I found attractive, as soon as I found out her age, that would totally overpower any physical attraction that I felt and kill every shred of my interest in her. Still, despite the fact that I live in a culture in which girls that age are marketed to adults, as adults – with sex – to sell [whatever]… it’s still uncomfortable for me to acknowledge. That (and that it’s such a delicate issue, generally), I feel, makes it worth examining.
The decision to paint something with a swastika came as the result of a really silly conversation (earlier on the day that I painted this) that got me thinking about context and symbols (or statements) that evoke powerful emotional responses.
A piece of art communicates a lot of different messages (whether intended or not) and the nature of art is such that the intentional messages aren’t always immediately clear. For that reason, while I understand that art can upset a person for any number of reasons, it seems pretty unreasonable that anyone should ever become angry (or, specifically, angry with the artist) on the sole basis of their interpretation of a piece. So I wanted to play with that, using the most powerful symbol of hate that I know: the swastika.
Since I was already plotting to paint something as prima facie controversial as “Sex With Children,” I figured it made sense to do this all in one blast. By putting that phrase and this (totally unrelated) symbol together, I thought I could accomplish everything that I wanted by bringing these things to the surface in a way that is so absurdly offensive that no one could possibly walk away from it thinking that it was created with malice of any kind. To believe otherwise would be to think the piece is a declaration that I support (and enjoy!) the fucking of children BUT HATE JEWS. I’d like to think that it’s totally implausible that there exists in the world anyone who’d feel the need to paint something with that communiqué as his or her end.
I would be really upset to find out that anyone was personally offended by this. On the other hand, anyone who has a problem with it because “it’s [potentially] offensive [to someone else]” (and hasn’t themselves been the victim of pedophilia or anti-Semitism) can fuck off.
On the other hand, anyone that has a problem with this because “it’s stupid” – well, that I totally understand. I’m not sure that I’d even disagree with you. Everything I’ve written is true but also, admittedly, I probably painted this just to fuck with people a little bit. I might enjoy making people just a little uncomfortable.
“Parents (I’m Not Sorry).” 12/11/12. Pen and pencil. 2×3″
I drew this while sitting in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, one night after “Clarity” and “Chrissy Fit” and one night before “No Accident.” I guess you could say it’s about stress and coping mechanisms. Cigarettes, yoga, whatever. I chose the kangaroo with the overgrown kid ’cause the things that stress us out most tend to be (1) problems we’ve created ourselves and (2) things that – long after we have any reason to – we continue to carry around with us.
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I’m still sick and I’ve been feeling especially under the weather today. I’m good emotionally though, so I’m very grateful for that.
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The original is still available, but the image pictured here is the 4×4″ print that I have for sale in my webstore.
!["Evil" [original piece]](https://sammythrashlife.com/wp-content/uploads/ifuckinghategod-300x233.jpg)
