religious trauma and other freeze-frames of my past

there's a picture of a river on wikipedia that i can't get out of my mind, because i swear that i've been there before. before we moved west. the church me and my family used to go to is near there, so i think i must've been there for an outdoor event. maybe an easter potluck or something.

i've been thinking of the past a lot more recently. i don't have many memories of my childhood up until second grade. i have guesses-- definitive guesses --but couldn't tell you "why" for sure.

my mom brought me and my brother hiking once. i remember being on top of a hill (it was up east so it was mostly sage and dry brush) near one of those rock-stacks. i don't remember whether she had made it herself or whether it was already there. but my mom stood in front of it, pulled out a pocket knife, cut herself on her hand, and dropped some blood onto the stone-stack. and at the time i was a young kid, no older than 11, being raised by a more-than-casually christian mother. so it didn't strike me as anything other than a devotion to god capital-G.

now, though, having experienced my mothers violent mental breakdowns and manic episodes, the thought makes me shudder. even though those events wouldn't happen until i was in high school. all the way across the state. and even as terrible of a person that she is now (or maybe always was) i don't think she would've done anything to me or my brother. but hindsight is always 20/20.

there's a very famous bible story called the Binding of Isaac, the one that the video game is named after, where god capital-G tests a fathers faith by convincing him to sacrifice his son. and, although there are nuances when reading actual theological studies and history, the story is used by modern-day evangelicals as an example of complete devotion to god capital-G. and you are never supposed to react to this story with anything other than "wow, abraham loved god so much he almost sacrificed his only son! i aspire to be that devoted!" but the less and less religious i became, the more and more terrifying this story is. and i think a lot to my moms worst most scary moments and can't help but think that i or my brothers could've easily become Isaac in the right conditions. but without a god to step in.