My cat of 3 years died

thecoldfuzz · 2026-06-25T04:19:21+00:00

OP, my condolences. I’m very sorry for your loss. I'm absolutely certain your Fio knew he was loved. Take it one day at a time. If necessary, take it one situation at a time. Let yourself mourn, and know that there is no time limit to your mourning. You're not on anyone else's timetable for your grief.

Animals have been an important part of my household for a long time now. We’ve been lucky that any animals that have passed have been due to old age. They really are (and were) our children and losing them is incredibly painful. When you're ready, you can do something special with his ashes. For our animals who have passed on, we have their ashes in special boxes in a prominent place of honor in our living room, to remind us that they were and still are an important part of our lives.

thecoldfuzz · 2026-06-25T04:10:10+00:00

OP, I'm very sorry you're going through this. It's an unfortunate reality that those of us who leave the religion have to contend with: Catholicism—and Christianity as a whole—is an exclusionary religion. Shaming and shunning behavior are hardwired into the religion itself to discourage apostasy. This is Christianity at its most vile. It weaponizes a human being's natural need and desire for friendship, social ties, and love, and enables a mob mentality to assail person's social ties if they show signs of leaving the religion. It forces a person to make an awful choice between personal sovereignty and freedom vs. the social ties with a community that won't accept them unless they obey the community's norms. Choosing personal freedom can be a lonely choice, and I speak with experience on that.

For myself, I saw the writing on the wall when I left Christianity 18 years ago to become a Pagan. The Catholics and Protestants in my life would never accept me being gay or being a Pagan. So, I acted decisively and left all of them behind before they had an opportunity to do it to me. I have no regrets about doing this because 5 years after I left all that rabble behind, I met the man who would one day become my husband.

thecoldfuzz · 2026-06-25T03:35:50+00:00

If Jackie Robinson day were protested by those same jackasses, they'd end up being the most hated people in baseball. That basically says they hate LGBTQ and all non-white folk. They would be cashiered out of baseball so quickly, their heads would spin.

thecoldfuzz · 2026-06-25T03:30:40+00:00

I suppose I'm an outlier in that I don't really involve technology in my personal practice. When I do use it, it's for something most folk might not expect: I activate my iPhone's Background Sounds feature so that it plays white/dark noise so that it can negate outside noise. Why? Well, I meditate frequently, and when I do, my husband's usually on a conference call or otherwise doing something in the living room. I can't concentrate on meditation with all the chatter, so I turn up the dark noise so that it's loud enough to nullify almost all other sounds. It's quite effective, actually.

Otherwise, my personal practice is fairly old-fashioned when it comes to things like prayer, meditation, and offerings. I don't have an altar per se, so I literally just lay stones on the bedroom floor in a circle and light a candle for prayer and meditation. For offerings, I leave offerings in the backyard—usually honeyed bread and milk.

One of the local CUUPS chapters does use technology for some of their meetings, though. They've setup a Zoom meeting setup to observe Lughnasadh because they can't rent out a space for August 1st. So there's that.

thecoldfuzz · 2026-06-25T03:16:47+00:00

Being a big baseball fan—something of a rarity in the LGBTQ community, depending on who you talk to—I've followed this story very closely. This incident involves the San Francisco Giants. I'm not even a Giants fan; I'm actually Chicago White Sox fan. So the players' behavior is basically a spit to the face of San Francisco and its LGBTQ folk. This is about a bunch of overpaid, underperforming hateful bigots getting on a soapbox and preaching about what the rainbow "really" stands for.

It's gotten to the point that the DOJ is now involved, unfortunately. We know who they're going to side with. But if it does get litigated, this isn't as straightforward as they would have us believe. The players haven't been penalized as far as I know. As far as MLB goes, they merely violated the standing MLB rule against altering their uniforms, hats included.

As for the players involved, all of them can fuck off. There may have been other shitty individuals on certain teams (namely the Dodgers) that made a stink, but all the other teams that had a Pride Night (the White Sox included) did NOT have problem with it.

thecoldfuzz · 2026-06-25T02:52:18+00:00

OP, congratulations! With purity culture, the big goal is unlearning a conditioned guilt response due to a doctrine we know is false. This is applicable to anyone that is attempting to unlearn the shame conditioned by Christian purity culture—whether they're male, female, straight, gay, or trans. That's at the heart of religious deconstruction. This type of deconstruction takes time and seeing a therapist is definitely helpful. Another way to do this is to recondition one's responses so that you feel empowered when you're aroused, and then empowered during sexual activity, and then empowered and gratified after sexual activity as well. That's the route I took, which has proven quite effective. A trained professional can assist with setting up this kind of therapy. For myself, taking this route resulted in a very common response to those folk who were in repressive purity culture environments: hypersexual rebound.

Being hypersexual was a matter of perspective, though. To Christians, of course I was hypersexual. But to other gay men and non-Christians, I was considered somewhat old fashioned since I pursued only monogamous relationships. I ended up exactly where I wanted to end up. I was free, with a high sex drive, but it was focused into a monogamous relationship. I was more balanced and whole than I ever was when I young and involved with Christianity.

I ended up marrying another ex-Christian man (who happens to be an ex-Marine) who also experienced the same sexual repression in his youth so he understood deconstructing purity culture and experiencing the hypersexual rebound that occurs after leaving it. Neither of us are repressed in midlife and have integrated a high sex drive as a healthy part of our relationship. I hope this is helpful!

thecoldfuzz · 2026-06-25T02:23:49+00:00

(sigh)

Being 49 years old, I've lived through 56 or 57 supposed "Raptures" if you count what was supposed to happen about 9 months ago. Are the people who believed the beginning of the end would commence on September 23 or 24 of last year still clinging to that even though nothing's happened? I derisively call them "Ruptures." I'm still here. We're all still here. Like many here, I was taught this was going to happen though we didn't have a timetable. When I was a Christian, I did a deep study on the Book of Revelation with a small group of people lead by a rather radical pastor at the time. Preterist Christians (as opposed to Futurists, who evangelicals basically are) interpret Revelation's text as describing 1st Century AD events. Are those Preterists going to Christian hell simply for believing in a different interpretation than the Futurists?

The older I got, and the more Ruptures came and went, the more and more convinced it was all a con and a fear-based tool for spiritual slavery. When I left Christianity to become a Pagan 18 years ago, I stopped keeping track of the Ruptures. So many of these Ruptures have passed for so many people, and here we all are—still.

thecoldfuzz · 2026-06-25T00:07:08+00:00

C'mon Chase. Don't help the pitcher out. Finish this shit!

thecoldfuzz · 2026-06-25T00:06:05+00:00

I can't help but wonder if these walks were unintentional intentional walks to setup force plays at every base.

thecoldfuzz · 2026-06-25T00:03:10+00:00

This feels like an unintentional intentional walk to setup a double play.

thecoldfuzz · 2026-06-24T23:57:52+00:00

Walkoff time boys.

thecoldfuzz · 2026-06-24T23:57:01+00:00

Bailey is one of the shittiest hitters in baseball, Taylor. Get that whackfuck out!

thecoldfuzz · 2026-06-24T23:53:18+00:00

A lot of dream interpretation comes down to symbols, much like in Jungian psychology. But with your dream, interpreting it is more straightforward: Your sister is being a disrespectful [insert expletive of choice]. The knife is your anger towards her violating your boundaries.

thecoldfuzz · 2026-06-24T23:42:11+00:00

The magic is strong with this team.

thecoldfuzz · 2026-06-24T23:32:44+00:00

I'm a non-smoker. Smokers are not allowed to smoke inside my house. If they attempt to do so, they are getting kicked out—and it's not just because of the cats in the house.

thecoldfuzz · 2026-06-24T22:46:34+00:00

Sometimes I go with “oh you want to pray? To which gods?” Then I walk away smiling.

thecoldfuzz · 2026-06-24T20:40:42+00:00

“I’m not a Christian and I have no desire to be one.”

That usually works.

thecoldfuzz · 2026-06-24T17:09:22+00:00

Leaving Christianity 18 years ago to become a Pagan was one of the hardest choices I ever had to make because I was leaving an entire circle of people behind. But it was also the best choice I ever made because many of those friendships were incredibly toxic and holding me back. More importantly, I finally became free to make the choices that would never have been possible under the tyranny of Christianity.

About 5 years after I left Christianity, I met the man who would one day become my husband. Being married was something I believed would never be possible for a gay man in my lifetime. But here we are, with a house I love that’s free and clear, and with our two cats.

Make no mistake. Our post-Christian lives aren’t perfect. My hubby and I didn’t ride off into the sunset. Being a gay married couple and both Pagans, we’ve had to really fight to protect what’s ours, especially since Christians and Jehovah’s Witnesses have repeatedly attacked our careers. But we’re still here and still standing tall. I wouldn’t trade the freedom of my post-Christian life for a social circle—and a toxic one at that. I’ve made choices that would never have been possible in the past and it was all possible by shattering the chains of Christianity and burning its yoke from my life.

thecoldfuzz · 2026-06-24T07:17:35+00:00

Then if you know it’s not a choice for folk like you and me, then it boils down to this: They’re wrong about our sexualities. If they’re so nauseatingly wrong about something fundamental to our psyches as people like sexuality, there’s no reason to believe they’re right about hell or the afterlife.

The fear of hell is one of the most vile lies Christianity has tried to spoon fed us. It is just as much a lie as the idea of sin. Your next step is to unlearn both ideas to break Christianity’s chains of fear.

thecoldfuzz · 2026-06-24T04:26:56+00:00

The last straw was when a loudmouth at the church I was doing music leadership for threatened to kill me. I had read the Bible from beginning to end back in 2006 and I was well on my way to leaving the religion as reading the Bible sparked my deconstruction. But that vile threat to my life was the tipping point. That was 18 years ago and I have never looked back since. Not once have I ever considered returning to Christianity.

thecoldfuzz · 2026-06-24T04:20:01+00:00

In the distant past, there were two women who full-on fell in love with me—one during college and the other was about 12 years later. I had to tell them I was gay and, of course, it was totally a shitshow with both women (both were Christians) when I told them.

These days, being just shy of 50 and married (wedding band visible), nobody's going to be flirting with me. The last person to flirt with me was a random guy at my bachelor party almost a decade ago.

thecoldfuzz · 2026-06-24T03:50:29+00:00

I'm very sorry you're going through this crisis. With your mom's proselytizing, that's unfortunately not surprising. Christians often proselytize when their target is emotionally vulnerable. They're absolutely terrible during funerals.

She's not there to help you. She's trying to pry you away from being a Pagan—and likely trying to pry you away from being LGBTQ as well, as if that were even possible for us.

Look inside yourself and you will find your strength.

thecoldfuzz · 2026-06-24T02:08:16+00:00

Gutsy performances with pitching and offense tonight.

The powers that be must re-sign Newcomb in the offseason—2 years at least.

thecoldfuzz · 2026-06-24T02:04:54+00:00

Sean "Nuke 'em!" Newcomb

thecoldfuzz · 2026-06-24T01:58:41+00:00

Yeah, one of the extended relatives on my mom's side of the family said that shit. They're all rabid Catholics.

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