One Year Anniversary

According to old emails, the anniversary of my question moment was about three days ago. Wow. So it seems like a good time to share a little more of my story. I'll start with that day for the heck of it.

I remember texting a friend that night, one of the people I thought would be most open and relaxed about it all, and asking if I could be a Christian atheist. I also remember being blown away by how strongly she reacted. I realized that somehow, I had finally asked one question too many, had crossed a line that thou shalt not cross, and I was enthralled by the newness of it all. There was so much excitement and relief that came from uncharted territory. It was all so freeing.

But as the weeks went on, and my parents began and continued to struggle, and school rushed at me with the religious fervor only found in a religious community, the fun quickly disappeared. I became bitterly nihilistic, lost most motivation, driven mad by menial tasks (there's so many of them) and occasionally suicidal. I remember sitting in my car late at night many times, sobbing and screaming at a God I didn't think existed for abandoning me to meaninglessness. Ecclesiastes says it better than I can. I began to truly appreciate why Nietzsche went insane. I talked with a counselor, a dean, several professors, my roommates, my boyfriend, and a few friends, and inevitably, with terrifying and increasing efficiency, my mind arrived at this single dead end of blank meaninglessness. Why fight, why work to have any impact on the world, when clearly the most efficient end was a permanent end? The thought of returning to Christianity was tantalizing, almost more than I could resist. To just…forget…to have the safety net, the peace, the hope, the assurance, the meaning. It was a miserable irony to recall the classic argument that surely Christianity must be true, because laying down one's life was the hardest thing possible. Miserable, because what I faced was infinitely worse.

Back at the End

There's no easy way to rebuild your worldview. This year has been rough. Very rough. I find myself just as exhausted tonight as I was at the beginning, and I feel like I've made little to no progress—at finals week, it's striking me how precious little I've given to or received from the classes which once drove me to willing, happy slavery. What happened? Where did I lose my perfect, energetic, inspired self in trying to find myself?

How do I fill the void which was at one time so richly, amply supplied? The words to In the Middle of Me by Todd Agnew once cheered me and now taunt me. So this is the price of truth, of craving with everything in me to just stop…lying…though the world was so many times sweeter when I could rest on that drug.

It seems like an apt time to perhaps share a little of the beginning of my story. Well, glad you asked…