Not Gerry, but my favorite photograph of a Howler Monkey I’ve taken during my years in Costa Rica. Taken right outside my studio window.
One of the expats who lives near us that I’ve gotten the biggest kick out of through the years is a guy named Gerry. Brilliant guy, I would venture to say he might be genius iq level. Studied at Berkley, his father was a professor and writer on all things economic for some years. He’s one of several here that makes me feel rather dumb when I engage in longer conversations.
We met him towards the beginning of our nearly eight year journey here, at church. The same original church we started here with. He left quickly, we left later a few weekends after Gwen Shamblin died over the issues surrounding my disability accommodations not being met in a crazy serious way.
Through the years we’ve picked up Gerry walking along the road and given him rides. He lived in the next neighborhood over, so we see him a lot. Usually walking down the main drag in our tiny village holding a variety of ragtag dog leashes and walking his horde of stray dogs. God bless him! Anyone that helps with the burgeoning stray animal populations here gets an automatic pass in my book.
Not to say that Gerry isn’t eccentric, because he surely is! You’d run into him at our local grocery store and say “Hi Gerry!” and he’d claim to not be Gerry, but be his twin or triplet brother Gary or Larry. He also is pretty enmeshed in a pile of conspiracy theories that we’ve been treated to during our rides with him. His oddest ones occurred during Covid.
A real character, but just the kind of interesting weirdos that I secretly adore. I like weird. Average has never interested me as an artist. He and our Canadian friend lived across the street from each other and just could not get along! I’d hear interesting tales over their latest squabble and laugh.
A few months ago I started to notice that when we ran into Gerry in the grocery store he would eyeball us, recognition dawning on him that he knew us, and then rush past us. One time he almost knocked me down in his haste to get away from us.
I wondered what we’d done to offend Gerry. Did I pick at him one time too many over his claims that I’d be dead one year after getting the Covid vaccination? I used to shout out at him “Hey Gerry! Three years post vaccination and I’m still alive!” and cackle madly. He used to laugh at me doing that.
The other day I found myself in line right behind Gerry at that same grocery store we both live near. It was a crazy long line, the only one open, and I decided since we weren’t going anywhere to find out what the problem was, so I asked him, “Gerry, are you really not going to speak to me? Whatever I did to offend you I am so sorry, my friend.”
I’m glad I did. What followed was Gerry telling me what folks at the same church that refused to accommodate my disability did to him. What they were still doing to him. I would say it sounded like a systematic harassment of him by a bunch of clueless Gringo dumb billionaires. He has pretty significant PTSD from the spiritual abuse from all of this!
Every single time I think I’m done with talking about the issues of spiritual abuse and religion I get sucked back in like this. We ended up having a very long talk, sitting in the car park just discussing all of this. I tried to impart tools for healing and dealing with the ongoing harassment as much as I could during our talk. I hope it helped. Gerry is the last guy I would have suspected was suffering from this evil thing. I guess it can happen to anyone.
I think I’m going to next do a series here on recovery from spiritual abuse. I don’t have all the answers, but I do have some perspective on things that you might be able to use in your toolbox towards healing and wholeness.
Leave a Reply