Job Chapter 14
We're All Fucked
“Who can deliver tahor (purity) from tamai (impurity)? No one.” (14:4)
We are all going to die. The trees lose their leaves and come back in the Spring. We don't have that luxury. Yet G-d still messes with us. G-d grinds everything down. The mountains fall. The waters wear down the stones. Even if your children find honor, you'll be dead. G-d kills hope.
Then there's that fourth verse.
Why would G-d judge us? Tahor and Tamai are terms for ritual impurity. Translations that confuse them with clean and unclean are inaccurate. Even pure and impure sound drug related. Sadly, Job is not talking about cocaine.
Who can bring tahor out of tamai. The most prominent tamai example is childbirth. It's messy and bloody. Vaginal tearing and c-section scars happen. Mom shits on the floor. Before modern medicine, death was a very real possibility. Babies are cute. Newborns are crying poop machines.
Metaphorically, it's even more powerful.
“They fuck you up, your mom and dad. They may not mean to but they do.”
- Phillip Larkin
We all come from impurity. Not Original Sin. We come into a world full of murder and violence, racism and misogyny. Before we learn how to read, we learn classism, homophobia, transphobia, antisemitism. We learn hate. We learn hierarchies. That's true even with emotionally stable parents. There are so many nightmare parents. Did Trump rape his daughter? Probably. Regardless, he talked about wanting to do it. Did Eric and Don jr ever have a chance? How many assholes claimed that they were child abuse victims and they turned out fine? They didn't turn out fine.
With so much tamai, is there even hope for tahor?
“Little kids shoot marbles
where the branches break the sun
into graceful shafts of light…
I just want to be pure.”
Jim Carroll
In 2019, I started transcribing my grandfather's letters. I wanted to publish them. Grandma wrote to grandfather in the mental hospital, but most letters were from my grandfather. Eventually I had to stop because these letters were triggering some horrible reactions.
My grandfather was a fragile needy man. Maybe he was schizophrenic. He definitely had brain damage from head trama. Constantly, he begged my grandma for assurance. No doubt he loved her, but more than love, he needed her to take care of him. Only, he needed too much. No one could have given him everything he needed.
I recognized my own words and my own sentiments. I've written similar letters. I've had moments when I met a woman at a vulnerable moment and I thought that I was in love. I was instantly, hopelessly, stupidly, miserably infatuated. Some women saw the red flags. Others put up with my bullshit, sometimes for years. They didn't want me. I wouldn't have thought myself in love had there been a chance of them returning those feelings. I was too wrapped up in my abandonment issues to recognize that I was causing misery. Like my grandfather, I needed these women to love me and take care of me.
My grandfather died in a boating accident when my mom was 15.
His mental illness affected her. His death cemented that effect. She idealized that unhealthy obsessive need and passed that belief onto me. She was also bipolar.
You know those people who think that if they have children, their children will love them no matter what? That's Mom.
I grew up with a single bipolar mother who had no sense of boundaries. Before I could take care of myself, I had to take care of Mom. One day she was crying and threatening suicide. Another day she was telling way too personal stories about ex-boyfriends. No wonder I fell in love with women who didn't want me and grew bored in seemingly healthy relationships. I ghosted. I even tried to make things work with an emotionally abusive religious fanatic.
If you visit a potential mate and see a highlighted copy of Anger: The Inner Teacher on the coffee table, stand up and walk out. Don't explain. Don't respond. Avoid all contact. Fake your death if you can.
How can we find healthy love and happiness, when we romanticize pain? Even after we process all those shitty coping mechanisms and childhood trauma, we are still full of shit. My story isn't unique. Hurt people hurt people. Hurt people hurt themselves.
Does G-d judge us? Does G-d put us into this tamai world full of pain and sorrow only to expect tahor? Maybe. Maybe not. G-d made us all needy and grasping and full of shame. We have so much guilt that we gravitate towards the shameless. Ted Bundy had groupies. Trump won an election. His stupid fans think he won twice.
No one can pull purity out of impurity, Maybe we shouldn't expect purity. At very least, we should pause before joining the next social media pile-on. That's not to say that we should accept everyone. There are some truly vile scumbags who are just fucking evil. Putin is still a scumbag. Caitlin Johnstone is a Nazi piece of shit. They can both die screaming tomorrow and it'd still take years to clean up their messes.
Yet, Job is right. We are all going to die. We are all tamai. Life is miserable and way too fucking short.
At very least we should try to give each other a break. And stop hating ourselves.
Next Week: Fucking Hell. Eliphaz the Tenamite's Turn to Talk
I just sold my story “Discourses on the Seven Headed Monkey” to Spectrum: An Autistic Horror Anthology
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