Faith is complicated.
It’s a power so strong that it has the ability to eradicate entire civilizations while at the same time building up the ones to replace it. Faith is also something people have varying levels of investment in ranging between the most pious person you can picture in your head and someone who simply couldn’t care any less one way or the other. Like anyone I’ve had run-ins with “people of faith” at many points in my life, not all of them good (further reading: Lurking in the Shadows). Faith was not something that played a major role in my life when I was growing up, not because my parents were atheist or anything but more so that they did not see a pressing need to inject religion into our lives. My mother’s father had this adage about how “you don’t need to go to church to be a godly person” and my father’s mother died young from a terminal illness despite her staunch adherence to never doing anything unhealthy. So, my mother was taught “it’s no big deal” and my father learned “why even bother”.
When I was younger I smugly mocked religious people. I didn’t do it because I was one of those “euphoric Reddit atheists” or whatever. Instead, because the importance of God was never instilled in me, I likened the devout to be on the same level as a five year old who didn’t yet know that Santa wasn’t real. I felt like I had insider knowledge that other people didn’t regarding where the bike under the Christmas tree really came from. Despite all of this though, as I write this today I am a born-again Christian.
How’d I get to this point? The answer is simple, really: killer whales.
I suppose without context maybe that answer isn’t as “black and white” as I said it was. Let’s rewind. In a previous journal I opened up about how people prone to addictive tendencies can replace one vice with another, specifically that people who fuck their lives up smoking crystal meth and downing a case of cheap beer almost every night can over-correct in the opposite direction by becoming hyper devout. In the end, these are not godly people and have instead just replaced one addiction (recreational substances) with another (religion). Anything that gives a hit of dopamine can become a vice. But the inverse to my example also applies. The stories in The Bible tell us that Satan himself will tempt anyone he thinks he can pull away from God which can lead someone astray and into a life of sin and hedonism. People who’ve been raised in a devout household “in name only” without understanding the actual lessons in The Bible are the most likely to fall prey to temptation because with no foundation to their faith they have no grasp on its importance.
“I’m not like those rubes” is perhaps the rallying cry of every single person out there who is, in fact, exactly like those rubes. So, work with me here when I tell you that I’m not like those rubes; I was never hard in the paint in any slant, and despite not having a faith-centered upbringing I did still learn the secular versions of a lot of Christian teachings as the Golden Rule and much of the Ten Commandments also just so happen to be things that are widely accepted to be things you just follow so you’re not seen as a disdainful asshole. I didn’t need God to tell me to be a “good person”, I just did that on my own because I was raised that way, but I did need Him to tell me why being a good person is an important cornerstone of living a life of faith. Even when I was at my “worst” and surrounding myself with questionable people and letting them influence me – to tempt me – to do bad things there was always that inner voice, no matter how quiet it was at times, that would tell me that what I was doing might not be a good idea. Listening to that voice is perhaps the one thing that let me do the about face that got me out of the situation I was slowly cornering myself into.
When I departed from the furry community in 2018 I floundered for several years on my own with all the baggage I’d accumulated in the decade prior. This in turn led to a stint in a mental health hospital in 2020 (further reading: I Don’t Remember) after which I was put on a regimen of psychiatric drugs. I followed through with that treatment for a while but ultimately weaned myself off of them on my own and ended my monthly appointments with my doctor because none of this bullshit was working. I didn’t bring it up in the journal where I shared my experience in the hospital, but my breaking point was in late 2020 when I found myself so frustrated with the fact that my clonazepam wasn’t working that I just started taking them one night, and I did not stop. I didn’t keep count, I just kept swallowing them one or two at a time and chased each and every one of them with sangria wine. Ultimately, an entire bottle of it. Yes, that is a dangerous thing to do. Yes, I knew this when I did it. And, yes, in an indirect way I am conveying to you that I knowingly tried to take my own life that night. I’m not going to romanticize it because it’s not something that should be. I’m not proud of what I tried to do.
But, I woke up the next morning nonetheless. If you’ve never been to where I was that night I envy you. There’s a specific type of innocence that is lost when you reach the point where ending your own life is something you can justify to yourself.
As matters in my personal life continued to deteriorate I wasn’t sure what to do or who to turn to next. I kind of felt like I’d done all there was to do in the way of reaching out. At some point I walked across my home to use the bathroom passing by all the things hanging on the walls that had been there for years that I’d seen thousands of times. I stood there for a moment, looking at all this stuff that had some sort of meaning to me and one specific thing caught my attention: a map of the Sea World park in San Antonio, Texas.
Sea World (in San Antonio at least) is as old as I am. Actually, I’m older by a few days, but the point still stands. This park map was printed in the April 15, 1988 edition of Viva, a local newspaper from San Antonio, the day the park first opened its doors. I found this map in near perfect condition on a whim when I was interested in buying an antique advent calendar from a charity shop when I lived in, surprise, San Antonio; I asked the cashier if I could open the box the calendar was in just to make sure it was not missing any pieces and I assume the item hadn’t been touched in decades because one of the sheets of newspaper that had been used to wrap it up was this full page Sea World map. I recognized the map immediately as the cashier haphazardly unfolded the papers and I instantly told her to stop and be extremely careful because all of a sudden I didn’t care about the advent calendar. I remember standing there at the register completely blown away that something like this had not only survived this long but was in immaculate shape. I made my purchase, not because I wanted the calendar but because I now wanted to have this 30+ year old piece of paper.
I have a complicated relationship with Sea World. In the time I spent in San Antonio I never visited the park a single time because with the wisdom that comes with age I’d come to realize that cetaceans should not be kept in captivity. This is genuinely the only environmental cause I am passionate about and the one I will make entire life decisions based around. In the grand scheme of things I suppose they aren’t particularly groundbreaking decisions, but they’re important to me.
Before my feelings toward Sea World soured though, I loved that place. I grew up outside of San Antonio and when I was a kid my parents would take me to Sea World almost every summer because it was a relatively short drive and I guess it didn’t break the bank to go there. The first time I went to Sea World I had never seen a dolphin or an orca before. I’m pretty sure I did not even have the concept of one in my head, so the first time I was there and saw Shamu was genuinely life changing. Sadly, I have no way to know who it was I actually saw because “Shamu” was just the character used to market the park and if you look up a roster of which whales were in San Antonio at the park’s opening… most of them died after only a handful of years, some as soon as 1. Of course, I didn’t know this at the time but I know it today and it’s deeply upsetting.
Shamu (I will just use the name as a generic term for now) registered as all kinds of things to me. She (again, inheriting the default from Shamu) was by all accounts a monster, but also cute in a strange way, and just absolutely massive. We stayed for the show and watched Shamu jump and do flips and let the trainers ride around on her and all that and afterward I remember visiting the dolphin cove where back then you could get right up to the dolphins and feed them fish straight out of your hand. If they stuck around long enough you could also pet them (for lack of a better term, I don’t know if you can “pet” a dolphin it sounds weird to say that). The whole experience was surreal because these animals were almost like aliens to me because when all you’ve seen your whole life are dogs, cats, and horses something as different as a killer whale is a shock to the system. But, I found them endearing and because of that my mom has an entire photo album full of pictures of me at Sea World.
Going there became a routine thing as I grew up. Surviving another year of school earned me the reward of being able to look at these animals again for the weekend in a time before the internet when I couldn’t just go on Google and type in “killer whale”. Renting Free Willy or watching Flipper on Nick at Nite was about the extent of what was available to me after reading whatever the local library had. I might be spinning this to sound like an obsession of sorts but it really wasn’t that; I didn’t have posters wall to wall in my bedroom of whales and whatnot, nor did I even have a stuffed animal or anything. It was just something that captivated me for fleeting moments here and there, even into my adult years when something as seemingly inconsequential as finding a decades old park map in a thrift store brought all these memories back to me. I can’t support what Sea World stands for knowing what I know about them today, but when I was ignorant of the nightmare the park did mean something to me. I loved going to Sea World because I loved the orcas. And, I stopped going there when I realized what they were going through.
Because I loved the orcas.
I don’t exactly know what in my head clicked as I stared at that map on my wall for what had to be the millionth time I’d seen it, but I just started thinking about killer whales and what this park meant to me when I was a kid. At that time my stance on God was in limbo; I didn’t necessarily not believe in God, but at the same time I don’t think I saw myself as believing in Him either. There’s countless arguments, caveats, and gotchas that anyone can itemize out either in support of or against whatever their beliefs are. I don’t claim that evolution doesn’t exist and that God made every single creature Himself and that’s that, but it’s wild to think that something as majestic as a killer whale can just “happen” on its own. I think, in that moment, I had this belief that perhaps there are little reminders of God all over the place and if you pay close enough attention you’ll start to see them. Maybe orcas are here because of some indeterminate middle ground somewhere between evolution and “intelligent design”. I don’t know. I didn’t know then, and today I still don’t. I just know that in that moment I realized in hindsight that all the times when I was a kid watching Shamu with complete enamoration I was actually enjoying the beauty of God’s creation.
The connection I felt for them, that sympathy for their plight and my insistence on not patronizing Sea World because of it even though I loved to see them, all of that is some abstraction of how I applied the Golden Rule, one of the seemingly universal truths that despite being the literal words of Jesus Christ Himself I still learned nonetheless in my mostly secular upbringing.
Perhaps I could only make it so far on my own personally atoning for my fuck-ups and mistakes and all the things I wish I made smarter choices regarding. My grandfather used to say that you didn’t need to physically go to church to be a godly person and for all the things that man wound up being right about maybe this was one of the rare examples of a flub. Following that logic, if I didn’t need to participate in the church to be a godly person, what would happen if I did? I’m not trying to insinuate that religion is a dick measuring contest (even if at times it really unfortunately feels like it) more so that I’m just trying to suggest that being godly alone can only get someone so far. When you don’t really have a family and you’ve recently separated yourself from social circles that weren’t good for you, and thus don’t have much of a support net, the church can fill that role.
I’m not going to suggest that I know all the minutia that makes one denomination of faith different from another. I know that Christianity is like Coca-Cola, there’s a million different flavors and the original one is in there somewhere but I couldn’t tell you what one it was. The church I decided to start attending was the one that in my younger years was pastored by the father of someone I had gone to high school with. He wasn’t a particularly close friend of mine, just someone I shared some classes with, but it was at least a point of familiarity. It was something that I figured might be an ice breaker because I know that churches are one of those places where people talk to each other and when someone’s been attending services for 30 years and you’re someone they’ve never seen before they’re probably going to introduce themselves to you and expect you to reciprocate.
And that’s exactly what happened. A couple of older folks that I spoke to the first couple of times I was there on Sunday morning didn’t know who I was but they certainly knew my parents. “Oh, Kohn? You’re so-and-so’s son right?” Except they used their actual names, of course. I said I was and that I also went to school with the son of the church’s previous pastor, who had since passed away.
That’s really it. There’s no grand story to tell here, I just sorta “fit in” after that point. I got to know some of the other people in the congregation, I helped the older folks who struggled to understand how internet stuff worked fix parts of the church’s website, and I brought chili to the summer pot lucks. I participated in reciting and following along with some of the gospel during the Christmas services and around the time my birthday approached I decided I’d spend it at the church and become a proper member of the congregation. It didn’t fix all of my problems overnight, and there are a good many things I do still have issues with, but it introduced me to a supportive environment with people who knew my family and who wanted to see me become a better person. There was no expectation other than to try to be the most upstanding person you can be, and to honor God in all the things you do. I was saved.
A half decade has passed since then. In that time I’ve taken a liking to painting pictures of orcas and collecting little knick-knacks of them. Everyone has their little own little reminder of God’s grace and I realized mine is this absolutely beautiful animal. Last year I had the opportunity to acquire a rather large stuffed animal orca. As silly as it was to convince the seller to have it unstuffed and shipped to me that way so it wouldn’t cost an exorbitant amount, a process that was absolutely ridiculous and I dreaded every step of it because the seller was less than cooperative, I’m glad I went through with it. The orca plush is large enough that when I hug her she’s as big as I am and when I hold her close I feel this sense of inner peace that I know comes from the path I walk with God.
My life is far from perfect. There are a good many things I regret and wish could be different. But when I hold my personal Shamu I’m reminded that each day can be a little bit better than the last. Its a touch I haven’t felt in almost 40 years. A lifetime had passed, but in that moment it may as well have only been a single day. I understand now that I woke up the morning after I tried to take my own life because it was not yet my time. God has a plan for me.
Faith is complicated, I suppose. But for me it’s pretty black and white.
Until next time.
