I was out driving around town the other day, just cuz I needed to get out and away, and I just got to thinking about life. I have this boyfriend/whatever you want to call him who I've been a little on and off with lately. He tells me not to think so much. I thought about that. And I think I don't want to be with someone who doesn't want me to think.
Anyway, I was thinking about how the other day, I was frustrated and venting to my roomate, Mary, about how a friend of mine is trying to drag me back to church. She even went as far as to ask me when I was slightly intoxicated one weekend and keeps coming back with "You promised you'd go next week." Some of my friends treat me like I'm this vile person since I've left the institution of the church. Honestly, though I'm coming to terms that I have not made the best decisions the past few yeasr, I feel freer now that I'm out of the church than I ever have.
So I was venting to Mary, and I was trying to justify my frustration with Jenna, and I said something like, "Honestly, it's not like I'm this terrible sinner who needs to find god and cleanse myself, it's not like I'm . . . " And I was quiet for a second. So Mary graciously chimed in, "You're not what? Drinking, smoking, and having sex?" We both kinda laughed at the irony.
But it really got me thinking . . . I was so bitter, so incredibly angry when I left my church, I started thinking everything they ever told me was bullshit. And while they denounced this on the pulpit, as a student, I was beaten over the head with the idea of "do better, try harder." It was like this constant game of trying to excel to the next level, of being this perfect little Christian girl. Those friends of mine who were in my senior high youth group with me at the time shit went down, we've all "rebelled" in some way or another against this idea. I myself rejected this idea that I had to be a better person and do better things in order to be a Christian or have faith. I killed the god I knew, and started believing in a God who I think loves me anyway, who I think, looking back, was there with me everytime I made poor decisions, as much as he's been there when I've made good decisions. I think my friends and I may have hit on something, but I think we're still missing something pretty big too.
Because all the shit we do right now, the sex, the drugs, the smoking, the drinking, the boys -- it's all trying to fill a gap that was left behind in the "do better, try harder." I don't look at myself and think I'm this God-aweful person for what I've done -- though I realize I've made a lot of mistakes and very poor, possibly dangerous decisions. I don't think I'm going to hell for getting drunk, for wanting to feel a man's body pressed against my own, for destroying my body in all the ways I have . . . I think it was "wrong" (god, i hate that word) because I think all I've been doing is trying to fill a gap, and emptiness I struggle with. I used to fill that emptiness with "good deeds" or church or the bible, or this really selfcentered prayer I was taught. I'm not sure what was more wrong -- filling this hole with sex and drugs and alcohol, or filling it with these pharacitical ideas that I was a better christian than other people because I didn't do these things.
I'd write more, and continue these thoughts, but I'm halfway to being late to class. I'll come back to this. But in conclusion, I think I'm really starting on this journey now back to healing, or back to me.
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