He believed that feeling – his feelings - were of God, that they were the only truth. He believed that emotions were the voice of God. This is how he knew he was damned. He was adrift in a sea of fear, anxious that the faces around him hid a judgment of him – certain that they were good and that he was not. He feared that others might see this truth. That they might see that he was unworthy, that God had cast him out, that he was lost at sea. That some truth of who he was might leak out from the cracks. Why else would this fear and hopelessness follow him so closely if it were not God’s truth? God penned this letter to him, written in his soul. He knew that the only thing that would free him, the only thing that would remove God’s judgment, the only thing that would save him, would be if he could somehow be good enough, if he could somehow be kind enough, if he could somehow banish those thoughts from his mind that were wrong - but he could not. He didn’t have the strength to hold at bay thoughts of desire, jealousy and longing. He couldn’t bring himself to turn away from the world, to be the man that God demanded. So he knew, like few other people could know, what his eternal fate was. He was damned, eternally damned and there was no hope for it and only the old pagan gods ever offered any relief – to drink, only drinking - allowed for forgetting long enough for a sliver of happiness to creep in.
