Decision, Decisions, Oh shit…

I have always had an extremely rough time making decisions. Ever since I was little even buying something presented to my mind  an irrevocable move in a particular direction.

I remember once as a child wanting… so badly… a particular Lego set. We got to the store and I was all ready to buy it when my parents saw that it contained a Lego ghost character. Well, ghosts were off limits and my dad immediately decided I could not buy it because of the occultic / satanic reference. So I decided I wanted to switch to a different set… and ended up getting something different. But the panic I felt at having to change my mind left me feeling almost ill. Did I really want the new set I was buying?

My parents had enacted a rule that we could not get something we wanted unless we waited three days to make sure we still wanted it. While on the one hand this was wise, I feel that these types of things my parents instilled in me created a self-doubting habit that exists with me to this day.

The point was clear: you are never fully sure about anything. Doubt your desires, doubt what you want, doubt whether it is good enough and not only that give yourself time to focus on those self-doubts.

Communion was a nightmare for me… primarily because of the time when the pastor would stand in front of us all and ask us to inspect our hearts to make sure there was any unconfessed sins and that we needed to take care of those before we were worthy of communion lest we be guilty of the “body and blood of the Lord”. I remember repeatedly having panic attacks at this point in the service because self-reflection and self-doubt had become such a huge part of my thought-process that I could never relax… I always knew there might be some hidden sin and that I had not reflected enough yet to be worthy of communion. Taking communion and not dying was always a relief. Sometimes I would run out of the service just to get away from the pressure and hopefully miss having to self-reflect.

Since a very young age self-doubt and self-reflection were instilled in me. Questioning my own motives and desires were just a way of life.

I want it to stop. This constant obsessing and “making sure” of everything has made me miserable more times than I can count. For all the effort to avoid making an unhappy decision it has simply made making any decision unhappy. And to make matters worse every decision I do make fills me with even more self-doubt because I end up doubting my motives or doubting whether it is what I “really wanted”.

And that is the crux of the whole thing… what was instilled with the goal of making me happy made me completely miserable.  I feel all wound up tight like a spring, uncertain of nearly everything my own heart desires… weighing the options endlessly until it either makes me miserable or makes everyone around me miserable.

It’s almost as if making a solid decision and being really happy with it was wrong. Somebody had to be a little miserable or else somebody was sinning.

- Josh

Let it Be

There is an image that is forever ingrained into my mind: my little sister hopelessly clinging with all her might to a tiny animal that wants desperately to get away. The poor animal is too terrified to love my sister and my sister loves the animal too much to let it go.

Of all the virtues there must be one to describe the phrase “let it be”. “Leave well enough alone” is close but does not quite capture the concept. Sometimes loving something too much will drive it away.

“If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. And if they don’t, they never were.” – Kahlil Gibran

It is rarely exciting to let something just exist. It is our tendency to mix our unbiased opinion of what someone else needs and our desire to obtain them as our own. In the end we end up trying to trap the other person in a prison we have made so they cannot get away, ensuring ourselves they need that cage to be safe and we need them there to avoid being alone.

But there seems to be a direct correlation between how much someone will despise you and how much you want to own them. There also seems to be a direct correlation between how insecure you are and how much you will want to own someone else. As a result an insecure person will want to control the lives of those around them in an effort to maintain emotional stability. Any sign the other person is starting to pull away and they flip out, trying to trap the person back in the cage.

Sting summed it up pretty damn well:

You can’t control an independent heart
Can’t tear the one you love apart
Forever conditioned to believe that we can’t live
We can’t live here and be happy with less
So many riches, so many souls
Everything we see we want to possess

If you need somebody, call my name
If you want someone, you can do the same
If you want to keep something precious
You got to lock it up and throw away the key
If you want to hold onto your possession
Don’t even think about me

If you love somebody, set them free

- Josh

All who wander are not lost.

It’s a good quote, really. The idea being, quite simply, that a person who appears lost may have indeed found something.

In a sense, that is the depth of feeling a lot of people who leave fundamentalist religion probably feel. A sense of discovery coupled with a loss of direction. The discovery that the lines at the edge of the path are not so crystal clear: at once freeing while equally and terrifyingly unclear. Like, I am sure, how a person must feel when being set free from the military or how slaves must have felt shortly following the emancipation proclamation.

I realize that I am rather emotionally lost. All my life has been spent in emotional dependence on others. And all those connections were cut loose and yet I still feel this need for something similar.

But why… and now what? I feel I have things intellectually together, sexually together, and even my relationships are starting to make some serious sense. Family relationships are being restored through the power of ignoring religion altogether – which surprisingly works better than addressing it. I have a girlfriend that I really think I am starting to fall in love with, minus the occassional doubt stemming from my raging sexual repression of so many years and our differences of religious perspective.

But the other day she opened up about her dream to move to New York and I suddenly felt lost and threatened and alone. A very tangible fear of abandonment welled up within me, igniting my consistent response to try and cut off the emotional connection altogether for fear of being hurt. Silly? Sure. Irrational? Perhaps. But still a very real fear.

Why do I get this way? I sometimes wonder if the strength of my emotions for my relationship with God did not just leave me fucked up emotionally in most relationships. The questioning, the doubts, the consistent guilt and condemnation, the constant silence and confusion of that relationship… I suppose it would fuck anyone up. It was a pretty awfully one-sided relationship with its occasional good moments.

And yet there was the consistent hope of perfect relationships. There was the nuclear family fundamentalists fought for, the pure sexual relationships, the closeness without any lies… and I do want that and miss it.

People fight for what they want: they fight for their dreams. But I feel that the fighting for the fundamentalist dream is still ingrained in my head, even if I express that dream toward a non-religious ideology. But in the end love is the recognition of the dreams of others and working toward a compromise. Reality should have told me a long time ago that the ideas in my head will never be fully realized in the mind of another. I cannot make others think as I do or want as I want or desire as I desire. We are all too unique for that.

So perhaps the wandering is not so bad. We all wander, seeking soul mates with whom we may share moments of intimate bliss. And the reality is that those moments are sweet and not calculated or prepared. Their treasure comes from their surprise. You cannot invent perfect relationships without controlling others and at that moment they lose their perfection.

Desire is sweet and fulfillment is satisfaction but in the end all is compromise and shades of color appreciated for what they are… not what we force them to be.

- Josh

Being Alone

My last post was about starting to feel love again. Regaining an ability to feel and sense seems like a common theme for those coming out of cult-like environments.

I recently watched a documentary on stress via Netflix. One of the points in the film was that in monkeys who are under extreme stress they can directly measure decreased brain activity that produces pleasure. As such, the more stressed a person is the less they actually feel.

So for those involved in cults with high stress and pressure to perform and to also suppress their own genuine feelings and thoughts on the matter, over time this could produce a lack of a sense of feeling and ability to enjoy things in life. Maybe there is a connection here to the observation that fundamentalists are so afraid of anything that produces great pleasure?

This evening I was sitting here and – for the first time in a long, long time that I can remember – I felt truly lonely and wanted to just interact with someone. It felt bad and good at the same time. Let me explain why.

What was unique is that it occurred to me that in the past couple of weeks I had not been feeling lonely. That is what floored me. Because then it occurred to me that a feeling I had gotten used to for so long (loneliness) had actually been gone for a decent amount of time! So when I felt a little bit lonely again my first reaction was shock. Whereas in the past my reaction to feeling lonely – which was all the time – was just to ignore it. For the most part, I had stronger emotions to deal with (anger, doubt, bitterness, frustration, trying to suppress thoughts, etc.) rather than trying to genuinely and intimately connect with others around me.

Because this lasted for so long, I reached a point where I never recognized my loneliness. Honestly, I just got used to it. All through middle-school and high-school the deepest things I cared about or thought I could not share with others or connect with them on. After a while, I just got used to thinking I was close to people when in reality the ideas of intimacy that I built up in my head were rather strictly controlled.

Thing was, our church did not really set itself up to produce intimate friendships. In fact, the way things work now at our church back home is almost like a police state. If someone is caught in sin, their entire reputations can be destroyed and everyone is taught to confront them or expose it. As such, a general sense of paranoia and suppression prevails.

How can you develop genuine intimate and open relationships in an environment like this? You just can’t.

For one, you all know the elders at the church put a tertiary elder under church discipline and then ousted him. To make matters more frustrating, my brother (a deacon at 23, good lord freaking Jesus) insisted that another friend (mentally challenged 20ish year old) never contact that elder ever again. So not only do we have people who are willing to completely obliterate a friendship and cut off contact with a friend of 12+ years they go so far as to keep others from contacting him.

Basically, nobody is close friends. Loyalty does not exist unless it is loyalty to the church. As such, close friendships are always secondary to the letter of the law. I don’t think any of them really know what love is. Quite frankly, having grown up in that, I think I have a pretty damn skewed view of love myself. I have, to my chagrin, hurt many of my secular friendships because I have employed the same tactics I learned from the church. Thankfully, my secular friends have been very patient (go Katy!)

But as I muse, I realize I’ve had a really, really hard time feeling the love others express toward me until recently.

And it has just been nice to feel like I am connecting with other people who will still care about me even if I am not perfect or disagree with them on something. Not only that, but they won’t require me to change my beliefs or whatnot in order to be friends again. Friendships genuinely come and go naturally, rather than being controlled. There is no cutting off friendships because a person is not up to Jesus’ standards and there is no being forced to be friends with someone because they are my “brother in Christ” even though they annoy the living shit out of me.

That is an incredible feeling. Knowing others won’t just shun me, turn me in, or judge me because I’m different. And it is equally freeing knowing that I can treat others the same. I don’t have to constantly monitor my friendships for signs the person could be tempting me to sin or signs they are backsliding or for reasons I should confront them about sin or for “openings” in the conversation to try and lead an unsaved friend to Christ.

Basically, I feel like I’m still being deprogrammed.

And somehow, being able to recognize that has helped me recently to begin to just connect with people who are different – even some Christians. And because of that, I’m beginning to feel a strong sense of love toward others and of intimacy. And because I have those moments where I do not feel alone anymore, I am beginning to recognize when I feel alone and to respond properly by seeking out human interaction.

Isn’t it sad that such a simple, natural, human need can be so suppressed by ones beliefs?

Because before, whenever I had felt lonely, I could not speak up about my concerns for fear of retribution or judgment. And silence does not cure loneliness, it only exacerbates it.

- Josh

Feeling Love Again

For those who still read my blog, you may have noticed a settling – a change – of my attitude recently. I’ve noticed it in myself. I think I’m getting to the stage of grief called acceptance where I am finally able to start seeing past all the emotional baggage and to catch a glimpse of full relief. I’m seeing things in a different light. I’m not pushing myself so hard any more to be perfect.

And I’m not the only one to notice. A friend I met with this weekend who knew me last year said she still knew I was pretty fucked up but I was showing signs of improvement. Emotionally I feel more stable. I’m starting to feel genuine love for myself again.

I’ve been spending a lot of time getting to know the girl next door. She’s a bundle of crazy but underneath it all she is so sweet. We slept together last night – no sex – and about 4am in the morning we had a talk. She talks all the time about her family and how they all get together and her parents call her almost every day and her sister checks in all the time to see how she is doing even though she lives a country away. It made me sad and I told her. She just listened, and somehow I knew she cared.

And the thing is, I’m starting to feel normal again. I felt loved. And that makes me sad that I haven’t felt loved by my parents or close family in a long time (with the exception of Jonathan perhaps). The love they have is purely conditional or with an agenda. But this girl, in a few moments, showed unconditional love. She has no agenda. She doesn’t care if I’m an atheist or have a crazy family. She just listened and doesn’t ask for anything.

There are a few people who have shown me this type of love this last year. Steve and Deb Friesen being at the top. I think I give Steve and Deb the highest props because I know they disagree strongly with me on my views, yet they have the courage to care anyway. Katy has done so. Wa-jiw. Kelly. Brandt. Mark. Among others.

But last night it got me to thinking about love and I realized that for years and years I have known what love is. Love to my father is submission and obedience. It reminds me of the verse “if you love me, you will do what I command you.” This is the modus operandi of my immediate family. Heirarchy, commands, and obedience. That isn’t love, damnit, and it never has been.

If you have to submit or agree in order to receive love, then that love is not unconditional. That is manipulation and emotional abuse. The “silent treatment” – another technique practiced at the lovely Beth-Eden Baptist church (now Cornerstone in Wichita) is just awful. Who does this? That is not love and never has been. Cutting off contact with people and making others do the same to somehow get them to feel under judgment and guilt so that they’ll come back? This is probably one of the stupidest things I’ve ever seen. And it doesn’t work.

Love sees past the differences and listens. Love believes all things. My father called me a liar and did not believe me. That isn’t love. Love hopes all things. I think, in my heart, I still haven’t given up hope on my family – even though I have been minutiae away from disowning them. I think that means I still love them.

This last year I’ve pushed so many people away, and I think it was because I expected hatred. I expected judgment for the smallest mistakes. I expected that whenever I opened up about what I was feeling I was going to get lambasted for even having my own genuine feelings at all. So I would, literally, do something and then imagine that it might be offensive and just assume the person was going to cut me off – like I’ve seen done. So then I, to avoid getting chewed out, would push them away or distance myself emotionally.

Growing up my parents would tell me over and over and over that you “can’t trust your feelings.” What a god-awful horrible way to live. I do trust my feelings. They have rarely steered me wrong.

But anyway, enough rambling.

Love. I’m feeling it again. Genuine, unconditional love. The love that says “you be the person you are now”. And that’s it. No “but you must change in the future”. No “I don’t believe you when you tell me you are insert belief here.” No conditions that I submit or obey or change who I am to conform. Just acceptance. And not just acceptance of others, but acceptance of myself, of my every genuine feeling and emotion. I’m no longer trying to suppress what I’m feeling but just accepting it.

All of this is perfectly captured by a half-waking dream I had recently. In the dream, I was under water struggling to reach the surface – and the waves were crashing and I was coming up from a dark abyss. And for a few moments I could see above the waves and there was the sun and the shore. It gave me hope because that dream perfectly captured my feelings right now. I do feel like I’m coming above the waves and will someday soon feel emotionally free enough to be on that shore.

- Josh

Motivational Guilt

I can’t say I’ve ever written specifically about this topic.

Recently I’d been dealing with a lot of depression and frustration and could not figure out what it was from. For the most part my life was fine but it was obvious to me that something was wrong mentally. My mind would continually go back to a period in my early teens shortly before I entered my super-depressed long-term near-mental collapse. I was around the age of 10-13.

It was at this time I discovered guilt. Not just simple guilt, but immense, deep, long-lasting irrevocable guilt over the tiniest of mistakes or offenses.

As I was lying in bed today, my mind began racing. I was trying to relax and take the afternoon off and my mind kept hopping back and forth between one thing to the next over and over saying “you should be doing this.” For those who know me right now, I am certainly not lazy. I’ve been working my ass off with school and work and selling my car and keeping up with bills and finances and a recent move etc.

Finally, as I lay there perplexed at my minds inability to relax, I asked myself “Why should I go do that?” And the response was immediate: “because you’ll feel guilty if you don’t.”

In an instant the lightbulb popped on, I felt a rush. This. This was the answer.

When I was young, I was the most inspired, energetic little brat you’d ever met. I was doing art, electronics, guitar, playing with friends, inventing board games, riding my bike, learning tricks, skateboarding, rollerblading, basketball and more. Anything I could try, I would do.

Then something started to change. My inspiration began to drop off and, as I finally discovered today, what took its place was guilt.

Now that I think about it, my main motivating factor in my entire life for the last 10 years has been guilt if I do not do something. Why should I make it to work on time? So my dad doesn’t fire me. Why should I go ride my bike? Because I’ll feel guilty for getting out of shape if I don’t. Why should I get up super early? Because I’m a lazy person if I don’t. Why should I go to church? Because everyone will think I’m not spiritual enough if I do not. Why should I apologize for that tiny offense? Because in God’s eyes it is not a tiny offense. Why should I give extra money? Because I’ll feel guilty if I only give the minimum tithe.

Good fucking Lord, sweet baby Jesus in dirty diapers. Is this really the motivation of my life? No wonder I’ve been so depressed and anxious all the time!

With this sort of attitude, it explains why every waking moment it is like someone has me in a vice. In my attempts to avoid any guilt and remain squeaky clean on everything (which is impossible) I had turned myself into a walking pressure cooker.

To make matters more frustrating, God is supposedly perfect and he knows your every thought. So not only am I supposed to watch my every action, I am supposed to analyze my every thought as well to make sure it is pure.

The problem is that trying to control your own thoughts is an exercise in futility because you can’t make yourself stop thinking about an elephant.

So for the last ten years I have been beating myself up mentally over every perceived failure or crossing of any line. I am merciless to myself. I give myself no leway, and I now know why.

I do this because I thought that a perfect god was watching my every move and judging me by his perfect standards. Any failure I had in my life or even in my thoughts was sin in his eyes and was only evidence I had unrepented sin in my life. As such, I would spend endless amounts of energy confessing every potential sin I could see in myself or every dirty thought.

And the thing is, I don’t have to be this way any more. I can change, because I now know the habit started with flawed thinking. There isn’t a god doing this, so I’m free!

- Josh

I’m back!

My short hiatus from blogging is over. As mentioned in the last post, I was thinking of shutting down this blog. I’ve changed my mind.

A couple of days ago I received an anonymous letter from someone I had probably only met once back in Wichita, Kansas. He had heard through a friend of a friend of a friend (or something like that) that I had become an atheist. This fellow himself had been struggling with questions about faith and now considers himself an agnostic. He spent some time reading my writings and then wrote me. It made my day.

His reasoning for not being public about his change in views is

“Unfortunately, I have good reasons to continue the lie I live, and not the least of them being the torment and scorn that await me should my immediate community of friends and family find me out.”

At that moment I realized that as much as I wish this portion of my life as represented in these writings did not exist – I am still not alone. And there are probably plenty of people who will be – or have been – going through the same things. More so, they may be from the same area of the country I was in – and from the same circle of friends potentially.

Not to mention as much as I tried to tell myself I had “recovered”, I still have a lot to work through.

- Josh

Contemplating Stopping Blogging

Over the last couple months my life has been radically changing – for the better – and I’m beginning to feel this blogs format perhaps does not fit my new ‘style’, for lack of a better word.

It’s been almost exactly two years since I left the church and although I’ll always be working through crap, honestly I think I’m moving past both the rigid analyzing of faith that was exacerbated by my attempts to defend it and the introspective emotional masturbation that was the crux of my “relationship with the Lord” all those years. Both of these attitudes are apparent in this blog as I look back through it.

I feel quite whole as a person right now. Gone is the rage at my father – though it will occasionally flare up in small spurts. Gone is the crippling curiosity and morbid fascination with sex. Gone is the OCD as my mind dealt with trying to reconcile so much cognitive dissonance. Gone is the very real fear that I might be gay. Gone is the horrid lack of identity I felt when I announced I no longer believed. I no longer feel I have to be perfect, nor do I feel that by leaving Christianity I will somehow spiral downhill into a regular visitor of the gutter and porcelain fixtures.

Basically, nothing is perfect and I’m not really looking for perfect in anything anymore. The relief is almost palpable. I don’t feel this massive pressure anymore to “catch up” with the real world as if I was broken or incomplete if I had never experienced X. It’s nice to be gone with all that crap about God being holy and us needing to be holy too. So much anxiety is just gone.

Of course, while all this is nice and peachy, maybe I just feel better because I finally gave up caffeine.

- Josh

Rigid upbringings are not healthy

I’ll make this quick – I’m a fast writer – since I am supposed to be working from home today. I’ve been having a hard time sleeping recently and my mind is just flooded with so many emotions and questions I don’t really know how else to get it out except on paper – where it seems to flow rather naturally.

It has become even more apparent to me just how legalistic and rigid my upbringing was – and how that has affected me. Growing up my parents did not trust my aunt and uncle to let us watch any movies that even their kids who were our age could see. The irony of this was that my aunt and uncle were extremely fundamentalist Christians themselves. So we, in a form of humiliation, had to call our parents every single time they were going to put something on the TV to get approval.

Most of our life revolved around feeling guilty about the smallest things. My mom would regularly reprimand neighborhood children for the slightest dirty joke. We became the neighborhood police and would hound other children for even saying anything that remotely resembled a swearword (“gosh”, “darn”, “dang”, “jeez”, etc.) We learned how to judge from an early age.

And to make things even more difficult, this judgmental nature extended toward each other as well – and further into our attitudes toward ourselves. Do this, don’t do that, do this but only do it that way, etc. Like little engineers of behavior we wanted to make sure everything was shipshape in our lives – and in the lives of others. I remember on many occassions my parents would look at the suffering of another Christian and if they could see anything remotely “wrong” in their life (you know, big sins like “being in debt” or not attending church regularly, or not tithing enough) my parents would make the obvious conclusion that they were under the Lord’s punishment. It really was a stifling way to view the world. This wasn’t always the case but I do remember numerous incidents where they made sure we as children knew their view on the spiritual state of their friends.

But now that I’ve recognized this and after a discussion last night with a friend I’ve come to conclude that I’m no longer angry, I’m just trying to pick up the pieces. How has this affected me and how can I recover to have a healthy view of the world and those around me?

In my typical fashion when I notice a problem and barge ahead trying to fix it. I put all my mental energy and time into the issue and hope to get it resolved as quick as possible. But it is becoming apparent that this is not a very healthy way to deal with long-term, emotionally related subjects like this.

First of all, I recognize that my upbringing has completely fucked up my ability to know what I feel. Feelings were cast aside by my parents as weaknesses of the flesh. Our feelings mean very little, we must just obey. I cannot remember all the times when my deepest feelings were ignored by my parents as they tried to force me into their little box. At one point I sat in bed, deeply confused but with a strong and resolute feeling that I knew I should not go to church that Sunday because the church we were going to was messing me up somehow mentally. My dad beat me to get me to go. I ended up staying home with him but looking back that revealed my parents attitude toward our behavior: any strong feelings by our children that do not align with our values should be dealt with quickly, resolutely and with force if necessary. Being the oldest, I think I got the brunt of this message.

So needless to say, suppression became the name of the game. All my doubts, all my fears, all my greatest loves, and ultimately all my greatest and strongest feelings should be packed in a bag in the closet. Everything should be done according to the letter of the law. And I knew this was messed up – and remember explicitly bringing it up to my dad on multiple occasions – but I did not know any other way.

And now I don’t know what to think. Every time I try to open that old bag and inspect what is inside, I am left with nothing but a massive mess to clean up. I nearly explodes in my face. Out comes anger, resentment, sleepless nights, frustration, confusion, rage, depression, angst, love in various forms, and even sometimes peace – and often all at once and toward multiple people.

If my emotional life was a library, every bookcase feels overturned and each book is scattered about.

A part of me knows that I shouldn’t be involved in serious emotional relationships because of this mess and another part of me feels so desperate to find what I’ve needed all these years – a healthy emotional relationship with, fuck, anyone – that I’m left constantly contemplating how to carry on good relationships with people now and also deal with this mess from my past. Because no matter what happens, that bag in my closet comes up at some point.

Anyway, I bring all this up for multiple reasons. One, I’m figuring some things out but it just takes me more time because I think I almost subconsciously don’t trust what other people tell me anymore and therefore have to figure things out on my own. I really don’t know why I do this. Maybe it is because when I have shared my deepest feelings and concerns all my life those feelings have been relegated to that bag in favor of a legalistic, doctrinal view of “this is the way it is”. I generally have no problem sharing, but I am always skeptical of someone’s advice… and probably even more so of people close to me. I’m just theorizing, I don’t know. Two, because I’m finally realizing the reason a lot of my relationships get so deep so quickly and then fall apart in similar fashion is because I’m desperate for some sort of love I don’t feel like I got from my parents. And three, because, well, I want to. I want to get it out.

Truth is, I’m emotionally exhausted most of the time. I think I’ve been carrying around so much for so long, and each attempt to solve these relationship issues – primarily with my parents – has only produced more to put in the bag. Let me give you an example. I once was verbally and emotionally humiliated and threatened by our pastor back at our church in Wichita for asking some questions and not just accepting his rather silly answers. He threatened public punishment in front of the church and compared me to a girl he once knew who was insubordinate and, if I remember right, ended up being kicked out of the church. This was a new pastor at our church! And I got all for asking a few questions in the privacy of his office.

Obviously, I wanted to resolve this. I wanted to know if I was wrong or if he was – my gut told me he was. And I was hurting – something awful. I didn’t really know what happened or how to deal with it.

When I told my dad this story, he listened gently, and then did nothing. He said he would talk to the pastor and elders about it and then I never heard a word from him other than a vague remembrance of “well, we know the Pastor probably needs to work on his attitude” [e.g. Josh, don't say or do anything just push all those emotions back in the bag again] This has been my dad’s MO for as long as I can remember. He takes my deepest concerns and listens gently and carefully and then ignores it when he doesn’t know what to do. If I bring it up later he basically admits he failed and then does nothing and offers virtually no explanation. He never tells me “I don’t know”, he never says “let’s go talk to someone else about this”, he just takes it all like he really cares and then leaves me hanging or tells me I’m wrong and brings down his fist of rigidity. A lot like I always felt God treated me.

So why open up and share with people? Is their going to be the same way? And perhaps this is why I take so much time and care with people who open up to me… to try and actually resolve their problems and think about them… because that is all I’ve wanted anyone to ever do for me. All I ever wanted was for my dad to care enough to take some time to genuinely deal with my deeper questions rather than either ignoring them or forcing me to ignore my feelings by following some strict, rigid structure. But I don’t think my dad knew of any other way. In his way of thinking, perhaps all he ever knew was ignore or be strict. Perhaps there was no grey in his upbringing.

But anyway, I’ve decided to start digging through that old bag and see what I find – but from now on the goal is not just to feel those old feelings but to try and understand them and to try and understand my family a little better. Perhaps by carefully putting together those pieces of relationships I can begin to know and forgive those around me and have a healthier view of relationships myself.

- Josh

I lost one of my best friends today

It’s a crazy world in which we live.

I just lost one of my best friends. I was sure I was in love with her but the distance made things… complicated. Compound that ten times by my own daily battles with religious influences in my life and the fact that she identifies as Christian (albeit rather liberal) and it was not the best set up for a relationship… but it was beautiful while it lasted. I think the thing that hurts the most is that most of the time I fought a battle between what I felt and what I was thinking and I felt like I was really starting to get past that. The analytical, perfectionist portion of my mind tends to destroy things I feel. I don’t want this, but after so many years of crippling terror of hell and demons and recurring panic attacks during communion or alter calls I had to find something to balance out my neurotic tendencies.

I’ve lost friends before – but this was different. Perhaps I believed it was something other than what it was and had this innate hope that we could make it work, but whenever it came down to leap or stay I hesitated. She says I was lying and really was only curious about other girls. There is some truth to this but I do not understand why love has to be so selfish sometimes. I suppose we were both fighting to get the other side to understand why we felt the way we did and – as is always the case – we both thought we had good reasons.

To compound things, every time I wanted to move forward – to get closer emotionally – we would clash on the religious issue. It became this big unspoken area. Everything I said was somewhat dismissed because her experiences were different, conjuring in my mind all the pain that has come from my discussions with Christians why I left Christianity. Could we have made it work out? Perhaps, but I do not think I would have been emotionally satisfied in the long run – for either of us. Some of her greatest pain comes from things related to her faith (nightmares about demons, abusive spiritual relationships, seeing demonic activity). At first these were areas I connected with her on and I think I – somewhat foolishly – thought I could help her since I had been through so much and rarely deal with that stuff any more because I’ve learned so many tricks for overcoming them but, at least in my opinion, I have come out the other side better for wear. I can only wish her the same.

But whether my heart was in the right spot or not, I learned a lot and I hope she did too. Ironically I went outside tonight and – good God – prayed to god, if he exists, to help her work through things. And that made me feel better and then I got to thinking.

I remember a substantial amount of atheist talk about how religion suppresses sexuality out of fear. This was a big topic for me when “coming out”. And then it occurred to me – regardless of whether naturalism holds true or not – atheism in its own way suppresses a sense of spirituality out of fear too. Regardless of what is true, it is true that human beings are both sexual and spiritually inclined beings.

By spirituality I mean our sense of the illogical – of our imagination – that brings comfort or peace. Even if a fear is illogical, it may require an illogical belief to counter it – but at least that belief brings some comfort. At each point in our lives we take comfort in certain things – often illogical – to give us an ability to cope with whatever is going on at any given time. Children, for example, indulge in their imagination with wild fantasies to pass the time and to unconsciously give themselves comfort. They wish upon stars, imagine growing up to be police officers, and invent completely new worlds in their minds. Adults often do this to. They often focus on the good parts of a worthless mans life for the few moments of a funeral. Sometimes these fantasies can be quite morbid and strained but the result of the fantasies (a sense of comfort, of justice, or recognition) are realities none-the-less to the person who holds them.

And then I wonder if the cold, hard logic of a scientific understanding – and to some extent the reality of life – robs many adults of this basic pleasure. I think that this is probably one of the things that drives religious people nuts about those who are not: they sense that the non-religious are “missing” something. They try to express in words what that thing is and normally do so in the light of their particular religion, but truth be told one cannot put their finger on it – hence the strain in their voices as they try to express that they would lose “something” to cease to be religious.

To be honest, I am not sure where I am going with this. Truth be told I want nothing to do with beliefs that bring back that sensation of an evil presence in my room on a regular basis, or the voices in my head, or the fear of slipping up and incurring the wrath of invisible beings – all things she was dealing with and to which I could provide no accepted help because of our differences of understanding. Heck, after our discussion the other night I went to bed and once again felt the creeping evil presence begin to enter my room and had to sit up in bed and look around and inspect what was going on to convince myself that, yes – once again – it was all in my head. The sensation and emotion of fear then drained from me rather quickly. Heaven knows I tried to help her get a little of my perspective.

But then again, deep inside that part of me that has always been so [randomly and often awkwardly] good at empathizing just gets it. Every creature finds its solace in something and I can’t make someone else see what I see, especially if doing so involves them doing something dangerous or fearful. I can’t make my dad or family just “see” how much their faith has hurt them (or me) because in their mind to leave their faith would be the most painful thing of all. I mean they probably look at me and wonder why I would do something so reckless as leave Christianity publicly to my own hurt but they cannot know what was going on inside me. Like water seeking the lowest point, creatures almost always seek the path of least perceived pain or risk.

So “Watson”, I don’t know if you will read this but I get it even more now and I still care. I’ll never think less of you and I doubt I’ll ever be able to forget you as long as I live.

- Josh