Bartering is the “exchange” of goods and services “for other goods or services without using money,” according to Google. The “fool’s barter” is listed in the two lines below.

I know that sound’s kind of obvious, but honestly, these lyrics can be so fucking cryptic and ambiguous at times, I don’t even know what it means. Plus, I intentionally wrote it so that the content kind of jumps place to place, so I’d forgive a listener not relating the next two lines back to this one.

When you’re serious about your religion, you see other members as kind of a family, or at least an in-group. So when you leave that religion, you leave your companionship behind, and you’re alone again.

I don’t really think Christians are dim, I just think they’re wrong. I also think “dim” helps illustrate my belief that they’ve been fooled into embracing a faulty belief system, and into thinking their repentance from “sins”, their religious sacrifices, somehow have value to either society at large or God and his holy sky palace.

I remember there was a controversy back in my teens – maybe between 13 and 15 – about churches closing down with no new ones opening, hence the first part of my line. Maybe I don’t have my facts right on that, but it certainly seems like less and less people are identifying with any religion, let alone any Christian one.

I was terrified of going to Hell. I may have done a lot of stupid shit in my youth if I didn’t think I would go to Hell afterwards. It was also my brother’s biggest talking point for convincing me not to do those things. It’s quite possibly the biggest reason I didn’t commit suicide in my childhood.

In contrast, I fantasized about dying and going to heaven constantly. There I could see my dad again, my uncle, and do whatever the Hell I wanted while actually feeling like I was there, rather than just imagining.

I didn’t have friends, and loved ones were never around, so I was kind of just the ruler of my own little world. I kind of retreated into a fantasy life for affection and stimulation, hence why I was “king.” There, if I willed it, it happened.

Playing off “place 2” in my last annotation, I think, rather than the disappointment of deciding God didn’t exist, I’m referring to the disapointment in God for the world he created and manages. But I’m not sure. At any rate, the guy’s a tool.

The “frail ideals” mostly refereed to those passed down by the church. I also think my own “frail ideals” from childhood had a helping hand in crafting this line, even just a subconscious one.

I think this line came from two places. Here’s place 1:

Between 9 and 11, I made some really stupid comments and had some shitty, annoying behavior that got me ostracized and harassed in school, to the point where I just gave up and stopped talking to anyone. The self-hatred I developed from it also caused me to abandon my friend group, who, in retrospect, did seem to actually like and care about me. But at the time I saw their companionship as being solely a result of pity and convenience.

I think my father’s death, as well as moving at the age of 8 from a town where I was exceptionally popular, to a city where I was far less accepted, (not to mention a city that wasn’t nearly as closely nit, and had a much higher ratio of kids treating each-other like shit) pushed me into the direction of just being an entirely unlikable and obnoxious kid.

Between 12 and 13 I was a lot better, but was mentally fractured by not just what I had to put up with in the past, but also not being able to catch up socially to my peers. For the most part I think I was a pretty normal kid, but being in a situation where one, I’m not getting any emotional and mental stimulation at school, and two, I’m not even getting emotional and mental stimulation at home from anyone except my brother, (mom was out all the time and my sister was out doing her thing) I would occasionally, maybe once a year, do something incredibly stupid just to get attention. That’s not why I thought I was doing it, but now that I’ve matured and understand myself a lot better, that was definitely why.

Now here’s why that’s important to the line: I think I began thinking of myself as a martyr who took all kinds of abuse and neglect for other people for the sake of good. When I stopped talking to other kids, I was doing it for them. I can say that confidentally, although nowadays I don’t think that was the only reason. Even at 14, which was actually a really good year for me mentally, all the way up to… maybe a couple years ago, this martyr complex had been a problem for me.

Place 2: Much more fitting with the theme, considering the possibility there was no God felt like fucking torture. I think I was 13 when I started calling myself an agnostic and 17 when I converted to full-fledged atheist, but my faith in God was so fucking strong in my younger years that, even as an agnostic, I constantly thought of what death would be like if God really exists. That didn’t stop until I started calling myself atheist.

“Spear stuck in the chest” is an illusion to the Spear of Destiny, which was stabbed through Jesus’s chest during his crucifixion. In my case, the crucifixion represents my own torture and undoing which I felt Christianity, especially catholocism, played a large role in. Essentially I’m saying my Christian beliefs fucked with my head.

The loss of my father to cancer, along with several other events that happened in the preceding months, not only lead me to breakdown mentally, but also caused the bond between my entire family to break. It took years for us to rebuild our own lives, and the intense bonds we shared with each other. I don’t remember what fear has to do with all this though.