lisa's cross necklace is so interesting to me. was her mother religious and it was a gift from her? was marty religious? was it a gift from someone else, not because they were religious but because they just wanted to give her something nice? was lisa religious independently of the rest of her family? did she just like the necklace?
it's entirely possible there's no religious meaning behind the cross and it's just a piece of jewelry but the implications of it if we assume it is explicitly a religious symbol are. well. devastating
imagine a girl, she's young, somewhere between 10 and 15, broken and battered and traumatized beyond all belief. and she finds god. she believes in god because she needs to believe that someone is watching her, and that if she is good enough, and she tries hard enough, she will be saved. she prays every night that god or one of his angels will take her away from this place, or make marty change his ways, or anything that will make the abuse stop.
but god and his angels never come. she prays and prays and tries to follow the bible's teachings and begs god to save her. nobody saves her. no matter how hard she tries. and she wonders if there's anyone up there at all, because who would see what happens to her and just let it happen? what kind of god would allow that abuse to continue?not one worth believing in. maybe there is no god.
maybe that's when she resorts to drastic actions, when she gets bernie to mutilate her, when she begs him to save her since god wouldn't. she lashes out because she's a scared abused child whose older brother ran away and left her behind and it haunted him for the rest of his life. and she hangs herself and believes she'll just be dead, but part of her still wonders if there's a heaven and a hell, and which one she would end up in, if they were real.
this all came out of me bc i was listening to inbred by ethel cain and the lyric "i'm not scared of god / i'm scared he was gone all along" is soooooooo lisa it hurts. what if you believed in god so deeply and believed so strongly that he would save you, only for years of pain to drag on and on. maybe he won't save you. maybe he was never there to begin with.
