man or god?

on the ideals created in between

Close to you, Naudline Pierre (2021-2022)

When I was young, I wanted to be like my father. My mother told me that when I was a toddler, she felt I didn’t like her because I would always cry for my dad instead of wanting to be with her. Despite my adoration for him, my dad and I had a complicated relationship. One where we barely spoke outside of my academics. He was my first teacher, and he took me through my assignments each day. He was a stern disciplinarian but he would always apologize after I got punished or smacked for not wanting to study. Until one day, he didn’t. The memory is still vivid. I was being stubborn and I didn’t want to complete my homework. I was hit, and he didn’t apologize when I cried. Not that society would argue the importance of a father apologizing for disciplining his child. But it contributed to a seemingly small mental change. And I always seemed to hold on to the seemingly useless details.

Growing up, I became afraid of the man I adored, but I still wanted to become like him. My father, a wealth of knowledge still has answers to questions in every subject. Which is why he taught me through my primary school to my postgraduate education. I wanted to keep striving towards being like him, but I wasn’t able to catch up, it seemed. In my ss2 I remember thinking that if I was always going to fall short, I wasn’t going to try anymore. I didn’t get into my dream school; yet I still chose my career in emulation of his. My life has been shaped through my devotion to or my rebellion against my first god-figure.

My first god was stern and strict, so I had a hard time understanding my God father. God is love. God is understanding. God created me for a reason. When I left home, I replaced my father with myself and punished myself for my sins. It didn’t make sense to me. Living and feeling forgiven. Forgiveness had to be earned, didn’t it? And I needed to cry and beg with no one to comfort me to be truly repentant. So after every sin, I would run from the God I didn’t understand. And stop praying. And stop feeling as if I was worth it. And hurt myself socially through isolation. And ideate because my mind needed an escape from the hell I had created.

Lovers were elevated to a god status in altars of my mind. Without realizing it, I placed them on a pedestal that even they hated. I only realized it after I was told that one didn’t want to be a god or my superior. He didn’t always know the right answer or the best choice. He wanted to live without expectations. I was drowning in expectations. Of how I wanted to be treated and understood and even loved. In return, I will love and be devoted to you and your cause. I’ve never understood it, my habit of idolatry. Wanting to be in control, so I can place myself at the knees of a god more knowing than me. Willing to meet punishment when I step over the steep lines I carefully drew.

My experiences of authority, love, punishment, and forgiveness became temples for the gods I created out of other people, and out of myself. This was underlined by a single, crucial question: When I look at the people I love, do I see them as human, or am I asking them to occupy the place of God? And if I do see them as gods, how cruel is it to idealize them in an effort to make them more divine? To take a man and insist that he becomes something more. If I have the authority to make them less human, then what am I? An authority who creates meaning out of dust. Man or god?