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
