I'm 28. I've never considered myself a full-blown atheist, more of an open-minded agnostic. I never had a problem with the thoughts of a god/jesus/higher power of any sort, usually my PROBLEM came with the believers. I always enjoyed debating religion because the premise of most of it always seemed to be a big joke to me, but I always figured "people wrote these books, and people are dumb, so I'm sure most of this is wrong. Doesn't mean deity X doesn't exist."
Enter my friend Shaun. Shaun was always a devout Catholic, but somewhere in his late teens/early 20's he "lost his way" and his religion, while still something he believed in, became a very minor part of his life. He, like most of the rest of us (myself usually excluded), binge drank, lots of sex, smoked weed and did other drugs and basically acted the fools around the clock. It was good times. Lots and lots of memories from those days. Not much to be proud of, per se, but memories and life-long friendships were built during that time.
So, at the crew started breaking off into relationships/military/far away schools/parenthood/etc, Shaun found his own woman to settle down with and he fell in love. However, over the course of the next 8 months, through various questionable moments, things didn't seem so right with this girl, and was soon found out that this girl was nothing that she said she was. Name: Fake. Job: Fake. Family: Fake. Everything about her was a lie. Turns out she was a patient at Holy Spirit Hospitals mental wing who, somehow, had privileged to leave the grounds.
Needless to say, this messed him up in a bad way. The last nearly year of his life stolen by a psycho con artist. Not really sure what to do with himself, he kind of spiraled back into the lifestyle previous to meeting this girl.
Then, one day, out of seemingly no where, a friend tells me that Shaun had up and moved to Jerusalem. He didn't tell anybody. Didn't make a big deal about it, just up and left. He came back several months later with a newly invigorated devotion to his religion. It was his way of dealing with the bad horror movie plot that he had just lived through. The most important thing: It made him HAPPY.
No one in our crew is particularly religious. Some of us attend semi regularly, but its not really a big part in any of our lives, but to Shaun, it was everything. He was so devout that he promised that one day, soon, he would join the local diocese. He attended church every few days, went when there was no service just to pray, and straightened and cleaned himself up amazingly. While some of us were like "religion, ick" no one had any problems with Shaun and his newly rekindled faith because, unlike most, he wasn't "preachy".
He never scolded us for bad behavior because it wasn't "something god would do" or anything like that. He never told us that we should join his church. Never forced anything upon us at all. For the majority of us, this was a first. The first person who didn't condemn us to hell for every little thing we did, who didn't warn us of our constant sinning, who didn't talk down to us at all. It was nice. It was welcome. It was enough to make some of us think "maybe it isn't all that bad". He would always welcome discussions about religion, and they remained discussions. Never turning into debates or fights or anything. He understood our cynicism and admitted to never had all the answers.
Even Shauns JOB was righteous. He worked at a rehab clinic in Harrisburg helping people get over their addictions. After he left that place, he cared for the physically and mentally disabled. Everything about Shaun screamed "this person is a good human being".
Then, one day a little over a year ago, he moved in with me because the lease on his place was up and he wanted a roommate, and at the time I owned a house to myself. Things were good. Regular discussions, lots of Magic the Gathering, lots of laughs. While up at his job in Halifax, he met a girl. He became VERY smitten with this girl at a VERY fast pace. Uncomfortably so. She owned a farm, had lots of land and animals, and Shaun loved that.
Over the next 4 months, he slept at the house less and less, and slowly started moving his stuff out to her place until he eventually was moved in. He loved this girl. She made him happier than any other girl he had been with up to this point. She seemingly loved him too.... until the day he asked her to marry him.
Story short, she said no, and it ruined him. He wasn't sure how to handle the situation, so he moved out, moved back to New Cumberland with his brother and... basically fell into a rut. It's during this time, we started to notice... changes. He began to act very strange, and saying even stranger things. He became dishevel. Normally really worried about his outward appearance and how his hair looked and if his clothes matched, he just stopped caring. Hair was a mess. Car was a mess. Room was a mess. Didn't care if he was clean shaven or not.
Then things got weirder...
He started posting pictures of the virgin Mary on his Facebook page. Sometimes 3-4 a day. He would post pictures of Jesus and any other kind of religious rhetoric you could imagine. He would post upwards to 20-30 times a day. Mixed in with these religious images were photos he took. They were terrible, low quality, blurry, dark and almost indistinguishable as to what they were. Upon closer inspection by me, I realized that they were pictures out of porno magazines. In between pictures of the virgin Mary and Jesus were dark, blurry pictures of tits and girls spreading themselves open or even full on intercourse. You had to REALLY look at the pictures to notice what they were, and I'm sure 99% of people who looked at his Facebook page didn't even realize what they were.
Then things got weirder yet....
He would ask to hang out, show up, then go into a frantic rage while still out in the parking lot because he couldn't find something he was looking for, and would leave, not to be heard from for days. He let his cell phone go so no one could get a hold of him and he usually only ever answered Facebook messages with 1 word answers or extremely long undecipherable babble. He then started talking about how he has been having sexual experiences with the virgin Mary on a near nightly basis and that he was in love with her. He even changed his Facebook relationship status to "in a relationship".
Before it even got to this point, I was worried. I had noticed the changes in him starting almost right away. Most of the other crew members hadn't taken much notice because he had become a recluse and he was hardly ever seen by anyone. The previously mentioned "freak out because he couldn't find something" was the last time I saw him or spoke to him. Weeks went by after that night, and I talked to many people who had begun to notice the erratic behavior change in him and who were worried as well. This wasn't "a freakout". This wasn't a tantrum or a phase... this was something more. Something in him had snapped.
Our friend Dylan, who had been friends with Shaun since elementary school and who introduced all of us to him said that a couple of weeks ago, Shaun came to his place to stay for a week or so, and the whole time Shaun was there, Dylan, his life-long friend, couldn't talk to him. He couldn't relate to Shaun on anything anymore... he was to far gone.
Come 4th of July....
I was down in Maryland with my girlfriend at her parents house with some friends of theirs doing what anyone else was doing on the 4th. Cookin out, eating, drinking, (listening to) fireworks. I had a great time, but after the night ended, had to drive the 100 miles back to Harrisburg for work the next day. Went to work, had a seemingly normal couple days, went home, watched some anime and went to bed. When I woke up Saturday morning, I had a voicemail from our friend Dave. "Call me as soon as you get this". My house, being the black hole of cell phone reception that it is, I got on Facebook to see if he was on so I could ask whats up... but it didn't take long to realize what was up..... Shaun was dead.
Thursday July 5th, my friend Shaun killed himself. (this is about the part I stop being so together and calm and start losing my shit...)
I am colder to death than most. My mother killed herself on Christmas day, 2001. 2 years later my Grandfather who lived next door and owned the property that I lived on, wasted away to nothing. 2 years after that, I watched my Grandmother rot away from cancer. Over the last few years there have been car accidents, freak accidents, more suicide, overdoses and other things all leading to people in my life dying. I am not sad that Shaun is dead; I am angry.
I am angry at me, for realizing there was a problem and not doing anything about it.
I am angry at our friends for the same reason.
But, above all, I am angry at god.
Religion was the thing that brought Shaun back from a dark place and made him happy and gave him a purpose. It also became the catalyst for his spiral downward into insanity. When non religious people go insane, it's recognizable right away. When religious people go insane, it's much harder to tell because they use that religion as their jumping point to insanity. It takes longer to notice, and by the time it HAS been noticed, its probably to late.
Shaun and his devotion... it should have kept him alive. It should have reminded Shaun that no matter how shitty things are, there is a God who loves you and will help you through your problems. And if that failed, well, suicide is a sin in the eyes of god, so, theres that whole eternal damnation thing to worry about. But, it wasn't enough....
If god did exist, and he were the old testament vengeful god, he would have permitted Shaun to live in agony for the sins he committed in the past.
If he were the peace, love, and understanding hippy god that most people bow to these days, he would have ended Shauns suffering in a peaceful way, and perhaps would not have drug it on so long.
But no, neither of those things happened. He put a shotgun in his mouth, and pulled the trigger.
I've had my doubts in my life whether or not god existed most of my life, but it is clear to me now, that he does not.
So here I am... 4am. Shauns funeral is in 5 hours and I can't sleep. I needed to get this out of me, and I couldn't think of anywhere else other than here to let it out. If you have read this entire story, thank you for sticking with it. IF not, well... you're not going to see this so whatever. I'm going to try to get some sleep and get myself through tomorrow, but I don't see the sleep part happening....
