"I’m afraid to try praying again because I’m afraid of feeling failed again."
Aug. 29, 2014 | Gellie, Yves. “Take Me to Your Seniors.” National Geographic, Jan. 2020.
Notes to Self are longer journal entries from Seven Yrs Ago. I was 21 mid-2014.
I thought that the reason I don’t want to tell my mom that I don’t believe in God was that I didn’t want to worry her anymore than I already have in the past year and a half. I think that the real reason though that I don’t want to tell her is because for the first time in years, I have her and I feel she’s on my side. I have a mom.
And I know it would kill her to know that her only child doesn’t believe in God. And naturally, she would want to convince me back again, but see, I don’t want to be reconverted.
My faith faltered after the divorce, but it picked itself back up again shortly. For that, I am truly grateful because when I felt I had no one to turn to, I at least had someone, a book, tell me that it was not okay to commit suicide. I talked to God in my head and maybe found some comfort, but the true grace of belief was the safety net of eternal damnation if I were to kill myself.
Fear does wonders.
I kept going to church though. I prayed. Beyond the daily torment of home, things truly did get better, gradually I started talking again. I made friends. I got into an out-of-state college. I talked a lot more. I made even more friends. But that nagging need-to-feel-like-shit feeling never really went away. It always came up in one form or another: through architecture (incompetency, ‘massive ego, low self-esteem’ to quote Hricak), giving up eating and sleeping to get things done, giving up relationships/friendships, beating myself up hard for things I was doing well, beating myself up for things I wasn’t doing which 1) would be difficult with the all-or-nothing mentality I had with school 2) I didn’t want to do anyway (clubs).
But back to God, I went to mass freshman thru sophomore year. It was scattered but became more constant and it became a “holiest” obligation. Guilt if I didn’t go, a sense of self-righteous accomplishment if I did. However, I didn’t listen during mass. Couldn’t. Didn’t/don’t like the pastor, felt like he was a fraud.
Then I felt like I was a fraud.
I just didn’t see God acting in my life. I started really questioning if he did. I’m afraid to try praying again because I’m afraid of feeling failed again. Of the sterile dial tone. I think the tip of it was though when I had my breakdown a year ago and I started going to mass again. Maybe there would be answers. It didn’t take me 5 times to realize he wasn’t there. Perhaps, I give, he is but my faith wasn’t anymore. It still isn’t.
I hear the word “God” and feel nothing despite the Bible thick nonsecular definition of awesomeness. May I last be frank? I have been anyway so here goes.
Since the beginning of Spring semester, basically since the advent of 2014, I feel better. Yeah, sometimes I have low days/times and now is one of them, but I accept it as human emotion. Things really are getting better in terms of people, life direction, my thinking, self-treatment. I don’t have suicidal thoughts anymore. I was half-complaining to G how I was losing my edge because I was doggedly arguing that suicide is not worth it with his friend instead of indulging him like I may have done before.
I’ll find my edge again but it won’t be the fin of a razor blade.
And if I’ve been combating these thoughts and finding new forms of happiness and wellbeing without believing in God, maybe that’s what works for me.
Writing that, my head feels an instant of levitation.
One day, I may want to go back and investigate and embrace my faith in one all-knowing and benevolent God again. And I hope I do, I hope I allow myself to. Which is why I should allow myself to not believe.
See where that takes me and to find whose other set of footprints these are. Whose or to where.
But how much does that matter when the tide rolls in?
For commentary seven years later, go here.