Blinkers On

Thrice in a space of weeks, in separate conversations with my cousin, sister and myself, memories went back to the time I desperately looked to a church to find the face of divinity. And since I have a collection of personal superstitions and pattern recognition over time, this piece subtly screamed to be written; once is an accident, twice a coincidence and thrice a thing.

My aunt, who was a pharmacy technician at a public hospital, found God. For years, her singular mission was to convert most of her family members to Christianity and her church brand. No one budged. In time, she set her sight on just two: a nephew and niece. I was the niece, and listening to the lectures and summons involved a careful balancing act of patience, endurance and tolerance. It goes without saying, respect too. For me, it was also love; she was the only aunt who ever tried to build a relationship with me. There’s no doubt that she has helped to shape the person I am. The gossip and sentiments adults voiced out amongst themselves regarding her reached our ears. She had a complete loss of a sense of reality, and God help her lest she was headed for the psychiatric ward.

The church is founded on extreme conservative principles. No trousers for women; skirts and dresses below the knees, ankle length, were ideal. Sleeveless tops are sinful, nothing tight and hugging the bosom. High-heeled shoes belonged in hell's pit. A woman’s body should expose nothing of its shape and contours to the public. That’s a husband’s privilege. No make-up, jewellery, chemicals or anything fake on any part of God’s handiwork. Women are to be submissive to men.

Every law set out in the Bible to regulate every part of man’s life on earth was to be heeded. God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. We watched as she struggled under the weight of the laws she had to learn to abide by, midway into life already. There was a subtle ostracising from the family, except of course for her children. The underdog side of me kicked into full activation, and I chose to remain mostly as a friend.

It was hard to be around her, but she willingly made her choices, and that is always to be respected.

In part, the transformative power of belief and conviction fascinated me. To watch her surrender and sacrifice everything she’d ever known. She threw her whole being into devotion, to walk on the path of what she believed to be righteousness. It was quite something to behold; a part of me admired that. The near total submission of her mental faculty was not, however. It was the scariest part. How can one outsource that to any person or institution? If that’s what God demanded of us, then why did He bother to design the brain as He has? He could’ve just downloaded the codes and laws into the hardware. No matter the angle with which I turned the gift of free will around, I couldn’t remotely come close to the same understanding as hers. No matter the number of verses we poured over in the Bible.

Now and again, if it was not far for her to finish a workday and I was in the vicinity of the hospital, I simply walked over so she could give me a lift home. One such day, she still had a bit to do before knocking off. I waited at a bench outside the dispensary as was customary. She then asked me to walk with her to drop or pick up something as she whisked by me. Trailing behind her, we wound up walking through a ward. The smell of pain and sight of suffering hit me like a pail of ice cubes would if someone threw those over me. I shivered, the hair on the back of my neck was up. And though I raced out, my presence there felt like forever.

I would wait for her by the car I said, wanting to put as much distance from that part of the hospital and myself as was possible.

Not far from the parking lot, hoisting myself up a medium heightened wall, I sat there with my legs dangling. Pondering on the images of deathly faces and smells and why suffering goes hand in hand with being alive. An experience so incredible that it’s difficult to enunciate occurred. A warm, glowing, soft and ‘unblindingly’ luminous light like nothing I’ve seen since suddenly made me aware of a presence.

I’d never seen the world bathed in colours and tones so clear. I felt enveloped in what I can’t put into words. Love is the only word that keeps cropping up. It was intense yet soft like a shape of some clouds I’ve so often wanted to curl up on for sleep. It felt pure, familiar and so complete, it wrapped around me. I wanted to stay in the stillness of the peace that it emanated. I felt a joy, more precious than any jewel and it felt like an ever-flowing river running through me yet filling every inch of me.

It’s pointless to think of how long that entire experience lasted; there was no real sense of time as I know it. It felt like eternity and seconds warped. When I came back to the reality my life existed in, I was still waiting for my aunt.

“God just touched the back of my shoulder with His Fingertip.” Was the immediate thought to follow my transcendental sojourn." 

Between that thought and the return of my aunt at the car park, I knew what I had to do. The connection of the time and place with my aunt answered which church I was to be baptised in and be a member of. I told her of my decision in the car. In her jubilation, she incessantly praised the Lord. Arrangements were made and a date set for my baptism.

A mixture of both horror and shock is what my older sister gave me.

“You’re going to give up wearing jeans? You? How ever will you manage that?” she asked.

All the people really close to me had a hard time believing that I could choose such a fundamentalist church to belong to. My best friend wore a slightly amused smirk, trying hard not to break out into a full-blown laughing fit. My mother’s impassive face was the hardest to read. She said she supported my decision. I was an adult at twenty-three years of age.

“She won’t last beyond six months, she’s, my daughter. I know her.” I was to later learn that is what she said.

The biggest battles of my life were about to be waged, so they told me at the church. What is bigger, more important than one’s soul? The devil clutches so tightly to those that had been in his ring that getting out of it is the crowning moment for any Christian. All doubts on and about the path of righteousness came from the devil. The devil attacked most of my waking moments. I was buckling under the weight of constant internal conflict. The priest’ interpretation of the Bible verses never came close mine.

"Which voice was I to listen to? God’s of course. The priest was God’s messenger".

After baptism, one of the obligations I had was to burn every piece of clothing that outlined ‘sexy’ in my possession. It was a sin to pass them on as gifts to anyone. I did, with the exception of my favourite pair of jeans. They were so comfortable, with a cut that seemed to have been modelled on my body. I hid them, at the topmost part of a wardrobe where thick, heavy winter blankets were put away. I chucked those jeans behind them.

As the months passed by, I increasingly lost weight but never saw nor realised that. Most of my clothes were new, my aunt spend money on an appropriate wardrobe for the ‘new’ me. During church services, as the silent interpretation conflict went on, an anger begun to rise and I had to reign in the urge to blurt out exactly what I thought of him and his entire ostentatious bunch. Five months in, I stopped going to church, at first to fast and pray for the salvation of my soul.

Weeks passed by and I felt happiness for the first time in months. I did pray, fast and ponder on what God would have me do.

Why would He want me pass through life in utter misery? Why did I have to choose someone’s brain over mine? In time I knew what to do.

I retrieved my good old pair of jeans from their hiding place and getting into them felt like returning home. My waist couldn’t hold them and baffled, I went to the mirror and looked at my reflection like a mist had cleared off. I was just skin and bones. My eyes were the only features big on my face. My collarbone could’ve collected some water and even my skin had gone darker. Screaming and crying I sought out my older sister to ask her why she never said anything about my thinning away. 

"We felt helpless, what could we do? What could we say? Everything was the devils’ fault. People were asking me if you had AIDS." She said.

It took a bit of work to stop assigning blame to the devil in my life. Luckily, I only had about five months work of damage to undo. I learned first-hand what perceptions, interpretations and translations can do to one’s own mind. How real indoctrination, manipulation and propaganda are not things that can happen. They do happen in our lives; the saddest part is the blindness that is a prerequisite.

For a long time, I couldn’t get over breaking one of my own personal core tenets of life, that is, to never consciously outsource my own thinking to anyone. But then again whatever chance did I have after a tremendously profound and life altering experience of God touching the back of my shoulder with the Tip of His Finger? My life had to alter somewhat, especially at twenty-three. Then there’s the fact that I’ve come to cherish that entire episode of my life. I learnt heaps about people and their propensities, mine included, in the only way that truly counts; first-hand.

“Most important was learning that ways of how to wear blinkers are many and subtle. That I’m capable of putting blinkers on for anything, even if it’s to make myself disappear. And that there’s nothing no one can do or say to remove them for me as long as I’m not ready to. Or until God decides to touch a hair on my head.”