Day12: Sometimes the Shit's Just Not Happening

Today's truth is that sometimes, no matter how ambitious I just cannot complete a task once started. I have begun and stopped three different blogs for today and still none seem to fit the bill. I am exhausted from barely sleeping the last couple of days and at this point am almost willing to just say the hell with my commitment to myself in writing this thing. I thought that until I realized that my acceptance in letting it go is one of the reasons I started it in the first place. If I cannot even be honest with myself, how am I going to be real with anyone else. So today, a compromise: I admit to my failings in coming through with an original blog for today, but still post something real. Below is a memo I wrote and posted at an old job after the corporate refrigerator raider ate my sandwich one afternoon. It's a little bit of me and a nod to the fact that while I may not always come through when I should, I'm still willing to try to find a solution. So on that note, please enjoy the below and remember not to eat someone else's food from the work fridge lest you be called out by a Senior Editorial Assistant with too much time on her hands.

To the Person who Ate My Sandwich

I appreciate that you must have been very, very hungry last Friday at lunch. Perhaps your own lunch just wasn’t enough. Maybe you were short of cash, and couldn’t afford the salty Watermark Café prices. Believe me, I do sympathize with your plight. Many a day have I been hungry, but unwilling to sell a kidney to afford a sandwich at the Watermark.

Still, I can’t help but feeling that it was a violation when you took my half sandwich leftover from lunch at La Isla on Washington Street and ate it yourself. A cup of yogurt or soda, I can understand. Perhaps you eat the same type of yogurt and simply lost track of when, or if, you already ate yours. A half sandwich wrapped up for someone else and left only a few hours overnight Thursday in the community fridge, however, is a little harder to understand.

In the future, perhaps you can simply come by my cubicle and steal the food directly out of my hand. That way, there will be no dirty little secrets between us. You see, you and I are the same. I like my sandwich and you like my sandwich. There is no reason we cannot be up front about this. In fact we should be friends. Perhaps I can start bringing two lunches to work so that you will also have my food for lunch.

Another thing, sealed food is okay to eat health-wise. It’s still inappropriate to pillage the community fridge for other people’s snacks, but at least it’s sealed. It’s wrong, but not gross. A half sandwich however is trickier. Perhaps I like to lick the perimeter of my sandwiches before I eat them. Maybe I inadvertently sneezed on my sandwich while I was eating the other half. Possibly even, I dropped that delicious half sandwich on the floor and picked it back up. These are all fairly disgusting possibilities, but again, it was MY half sandwich so it was my choice to do with it want I wanted.

I hope you enjoyed my half sandwich and to prove there are no hard feelings, I have a half eaten granola bar in my trash if you’d like to come dig it out and eat it. I’ll even hold the trash can steady while you rummage through.

Thanks again for sharing my lunch. It was real special.

Day 11: Who dat?

Do we ever really know who we are, or for that matter, who anyone is? We spend our lives trying to get along, subtly altering our behavior according to those with whom we are currently spending time. The group of more social friends requires a more outgoing mood, the educated group has us putting on our world events cap, the artsy contingent prompts a discussion of a new book or painting, and the cherished old friend evokes a casual comfort. Just as each of your four children may have differing personalities, so too, does your outward demeanor, except that there is no end to the number of virtual “you’s” that can be created. We may think or claim to be the same person with everyone, but at the very least, work conditions require a professionalism likely unrelated to the swearing or drinking most of us indulge in during the social hours of our lives. After a lifetime of routinely tweaking our social persona, how can we even be certain which self is our true one?

For years I was the bitch. It was not something I intended to put out into the world, however, a combination of insecurity and arrogance created the perfect storm, eliciting a slightly less than Mary Poppins public face. While my close friends understood that I was capable of bitchiness but not actually the bitch, after a few years of that being the expectation I found myself playing into it more and more. Eventually I could no longer discern if the bitchiness created the lore or the assumption inspired the bitch. Worse yet, I stopped knowing how to behave in any other way when around certain people. To this day I still struggle with bouts of this, spontaneously prompting acquaintances to call me “Sunshine” in an ironic nod to my darkened demeanor.

While it was not my intention to come off this way, it’s become a personality I can slip on as comfortably worn and broken in as my favorite t-shirt. The same can be said for that part of me that occasionally waxes elitist, discussing the pedestrian nature of certain restaurants or the clumsy syntax of the regional newspaper. Just as I can watch football for eight hours straight, drinking beer and yelling at the TV, so too can I sip martinis in stilettos and designer fashion. These are all partially me, fractions of my whole self that can be taken out and paraded about for the occasion at hand. It’s not to say that we are all false, willingly projecting a certain persona that is not a true aspect of us, it’s more that we have crafted and cultivated a diverse range of personality traits which can be called forth to meet the criteria of a specific setting.

If we are all continually morphing in and out of varying personas, then perhaps that is why a person you met and very much liked in one social setting becomes a bore or politically offensive when meeting again in a different environment. When you think about it, it seems almost impossible that we could ever meet and like the same person in completely different settings. The odds are against us. There are days when I’m not even sure I like myself, add to that the challenge of getting to know someone new who on any given day may be sporting a personality quite different from that of the person you first met. Are we afraid to be ourselves or do we not know who that is? It has been decades since I was able to behave in a way not dictated by societal constraints, peer expectations, or personal constraints. It’s not as if this is done purposefully. I know plenty of people who will swear that they just are who they are, but look closely and you’ll see that it is not true. A typical 35 year-old woman is a wife, mother, daughter, friend, and woman. This does mean that she is lying or assuming false identities, but the Mother her children know is hardly the same woman her husband makes love to. This is a natural part of living in the world. Just as you can’t be all things to all people, you also cannot be one thing to all people. So what happens when your path is less defined? When your career or personal life do not actively work to flesh out who you are going to present to the world?

Can we ever really know anyone? We try not to think about our parents as sexual people but the very fact of your parentage is proof that they are, or at least were, engaged in a sexual relationship. When my Mother died I found bits and pieces of information that I patched together, creating the portrait of a woman not altogether unfamiliar, but certainly different than I ever gave her credit for. Why did I not know this woman and how did my gentle Mother become a woman capable of thoughts and emotions I never would have attributed to her?

My husband is having to relearn who I am as a person after living through some fairly dramatic circumstances. Our geographical, professional, and intrapersonal environments have changed and now that he is halfway around the world fighting a war he is seeing me less as a partner and more as a woman. Why am I all dressed up and getting ready to leave the house this evening? Where could I be going? Who are these new friends I tell him about? During the years when our lives were intimately tied together there weren’t any big surprises. Our plans were more often than not a group a project, but not my very existence on a day-to-day basis is foreign to him. This made me think, if he met me today, would he still love me? How have the last five years changed me and am I any more real to him now than I was back then. The easy answer is that of course you are the same, your spouse knows you better than anyone, but does he or she know it all? Does he know, for example, that you drink when he’s not around, or that you wish you hadn’t had that last child, or that sometimes you just want him to seduce you rather than ask if you want “to fool around.”

Our circumstances are probably more dramatic than most and my frequent moves and outspoken nature means that friendships are often put to the test, but in the end the conclusions are the same: which you is you? No matter how responsible you are now, there exists in all of us at least a little of the rebellious 15 year-old and the mid-twenties risk taker. Back then we all had so much time so we played the game and assumed that the rest would work itself out, but even now, years later, several children later, a marriage later, a career later aren’t you still trying to develop who you are? The girl I knew at 25 might be only a hint of the woman you married at 30. Is she a different person or has she adapted to coexist with the circumstances and environment she now faces?

I look at so many of the people I used to know from school that are now my Facebook friends and I see not the parents, spouses and employees they have become, but the teenager they once were. Sure they have changed and grown with the times, but they aren’t comprehensively different people at their core, they’ve just chosen to emphasize and explore aspects of their personality that were not as dominant years ago. As we all go about our daily lives it is easy to lose track of the varying people we’ve become. Maybe I am just more aware of the diversity and once acknowledged it is nearly impossible to function without questioning not just your choices, but the very essence of who you are. What if, instead of becoming a corporate executive you were a stay at home Mom, or wrote that bestseller, or travelled the globe with Amnesty International and stayed single. Would you still be you or someone else and more importantly, would you even know the difference?

Day 10: Baby's Got Blue Eyes

I’m what you’d call melancholy. Most days my mood vacillates between fairly good-humored and a bit blue. This is not a new state of mind, resultant from moving three places in 16 months and leaving behind a decent job, high-rise apartment, friends, and a city I love more than any other. I’ve always been blue. Being happy doesn’t really suit me and never has. You could say I’m a tortured soul, prone to poetic outbursts, soulful music, self-righteous loneliness, and solitary drinks at the bar. I have been happy two brief times in my life, once when I was 15 and in love for the first time and again after I met my husband. The first corrupted me and stole my innocence while the second gave me a second chance, and made me a healthier and nicer person. But all in all, happiness seems fleeting and tough to maintain, whereas there is no shortage of sad songs, red wine, whiskey, and stories of literary and artistic giants suffering from their own malaise. For me, if happiness is a choice I’m not choosing it.

Happiness requires an energy I simply do not possess. You have to be nice not just sometimes and to the people you like, but ALL the time and to EVERYONE. It’s exhausting. Your moods become somehow tied to those around you and they seem to feel responsible for them. Gone are the days of simply being grumpy or not feeling like walking about with a dopey grin on your face. Your peers will take this as some sort of personal affront and encourage you to “smile” or ask if you have a “case of the Mondays.” Maybe I don’t want to cheer up. My mood is not something for you to diagnose or fix. Sometimes I just NEED to be melancholy.

Gone too, are the days of bitchiness. I’m a kinder gentler woman than I used to be. Still, there are plenty of days when I wake up feeling more like rain than clear blue skies. This does not mean that I am not capable of going out with the girls and having a great time. I love to laugh; I love to dance; I love to love. My comfort zone, however, is to feel alone and for me there is strength in that. As children, both my brother and I were able to entertain ourselves on days when playmates or weather did not cooperate. Today, I read, write, bake, take drives, workout and find any number of other things to entertain myself. After moving to NYC nine years ago without knowing anyone, I got used to going out alone, but even before then I was able to have dinner or see movies without a friend in tow. When you’re alone, the only person you need to please is yourself. Failing that, at least you get to revel in your strength for being someone who can survive on your own. It’s an odd sort of comfort.

If not being happy is a choice, then it is one that I make at the expense of those around me. I love my friends, my family, and my husband. I want to make them happy on that normal level that most people seem to exist on, but beneath that is a part of me that craves freedom more than anything else -- freedom from the demands of other people’s expectations and happiness. I am married to the most amazing of men. He is kind, generous, easy-going, brilliant, and for some inexplicable reason he is 100% head over in heels in love with me. I want to make him happy more than anything else in life . . . well, more than anything except to be true to myself. No matter how hard I try to be what others need me to be, there is a part of me that rebels. How do you love someone completely without losing yourself? We become wives, mothers, employees, friends, volunteers, etc., but is it possible to do all that and still be true to the essence of us?

I wish I could be one of those people who are just happy and fulfilled with a domestic life, but I see this huge world of varying cultures, experiences, loves, and adventures and I want to be a part of more than just where I now am. I make a lot of mistakes in my life and most of them cause people close to me to suffer. As much as I wish that were not true, I don’t think it is possible to truly forge your own path without a at least a little collateral damage. Someone is always going to be left out or left behind because you can’t be all things to all people. I watched my Mother live a life based on making everyone around her happy and somewhere along the way she forgot to take care of herself. A few months before she died at 57, I sat in a car with her and said that she needed to put herself first. I told her through tears that her selflessness was killing her and if she didn’t do what she needed to for her own health and well-being she would not be around to take care of us anyway.

I will not be a martyr, but neither will I be a person so clearly defined by the immediate things around me that I fail to see the big picture. Just as the world is beautiful, it is filled with ugliness and atrocities that I cannot look beyond. A part of me would love to have a big house with smart, inquisitive children, dinner parties and a normal job, but the bigger part is tormented by the idea of living a life of normalcy. I want to be a wife and Mother, but I’m not even good at being a person yet so how can I be those other things before I learn to be me? Until I can figure that out I walk a fine line between what everyone else wants of me, what I want, and what I need. Maybe one day I will no longer need to take drives for hours to get out of my own head or rather to center it, but until then I’ll take the bad with the good and feel just a little bit superior because I can see both. You come into this world alone and you leave it the same way and the people you interact with in between should enlighten your worldview, not cover it up. 

Day Nine: Thanks to you, I'm me

I have trouble letting things go. Once wronged, I will hold a grudge or at least continue to obsess over the events leading up to the misunderstanding. Was I at fault, were you? Even worse, an unresolved situation will continue to haunt me as I run through scenario after scenario in my head, even going so far as to play out both sides of a possible future conversation. I am the girl all men hate because I NEED closure. I can talk a subject to death in my head before I even say the first syllable out loud. To me, it is not so much the events of life that matter most, but the interactions and the intentions behind them. I will spend hours pondering what you meant by something that to you was just an offhand remark, because I believe there are no offhand remarks. There are no words spoken simply out of anger or created more by inebriation than heartfelt emotion. If you said it, I’m betting there is at least a part of you that meant it.

I am friends, or at least friendly, with every man with whom I’ve had a relationship. Teachers or other adults who mentored me as a child are forever frozen in my mind as beloved role models. Routinely, I think about friends or people I knew in elementary school. To me these are not just people that I knew, they are parts of me. Every conversation, every interaction, every silly afternoon on the playground adds up to create the person I am today. This afternoon for instance, Amy Shirey friended me on Facebook. Amy and I lived in the same subdivision and went to school together from first grade on up. We were friends when we were younger, but drifted apart the older we got. Still, I remember little things with Amy. Like, how for a while we called each other “toothpaste” as a kind of inside joke referencing Aim toothpaste and the fact that family and friends frequently called us Aim for short.  I remember her little black and white dog, her Mom, the “if you sprinkle when you tinkle . . .” plaque in their bathroom. Amy wasn’t just another girl I knew, she was a person that I invested time and emotions into and then we just . . . stopped.

When I get sad, I often begin with whatever it is that is making me blue at that moment, but it is never a far leap to once again feel the betrayal of my first love, the failure of my first long-term relationship, the loss of a cherished friend. For me, I feel the part each character of my life story played in who I am today. Austin, Dave, Mrs. Mitchell, Dixie, Cathy, Shannon, Professor Kaufman, and even an early childhood friend like Amy.  Each of them holds a piece of me, whether they realize it or not, just as they are part of me. I feel the hurt I caused Sean, the joy and fun of Mike, carefree summer days with Monika. Can you ever really lose these people when the time spent with them helped shape the person you now are? People love to say that you can be whatever you want to be and that your behavior is a choice, but can you really, and is it that simple?

God knows I have done everything possible to drive the husband away. I’m not what you’d call easy to live with, although I will say that I am much gentler and less angsty than my younger self ever was. Even so, I have made tons of bad decisions and my frequent commentary about how I don’t believe in marriage or how I don’t like the military can’t exactly be heartwarming for him. Still, he takes it all in stride. Anger, hurt, disappointment, this man has sucked it up and come back for more. And so I ask myself why? Why does someone as intelligent, talented, respected and accomplished continue to deal with the messes I create? Because he can’t let go, because I am a part of him, because there is a whole aspect to his being that never existed before he met me and now he cannot or does not want to separate himself.

We are all just a sum total of the people, places and interactions of our life. I often find myself wondering if others remember me the way I remember them. People I haven’t thought of in years will suddenly pop into my head and I will immediately correlate it with some event or consequence for which our relationship was the catalyst. Some of this was answered for me when I became FB friends with my old flame Mike. He remembered things that even I had long forgotten. In some ways it is comforting, albeit in an ego soothing way, to know that others think or at least remember you. The impact we all have on one another is so much more significant than we give credence to, and the more heartfelt a relationship, the more influence it will have.

Friendships forged when we are children are huge for me. Schoolmates are sometimes in your life for up to 12 years. While it is rare that the kids you played with on recess are the same friends you shop for prom dresses with, they are still part of your fundamental years. Then again, maybe I’m just a little weirder than you. I don’t need to have day-to-day or even yearly contact with people to still feel very connected to them. Matt Kelley will always be close to my heart because the time I knew him was integral to the woman I became.  The same can be said for a dozen other people and the supporting cast of my life story is huge. I remember you. I even remember when I wronged you. I’m just that kind of woman.

I am a big believer in not having regrets. This philosophy is the way I try to live my life. I may screw up, but it’s me and it’s real. It would be easier to excuse away slights to others by claiming that I didn’t mean it or that I regret it, but in the end every action, every interaction, becomes a part of who I am no matter how painful the lesson might be. I love with abandon and deeply. It’s not always neat and tidy or appropriate to who I am or where I’m going in life, but I cannot deny that each decision, each action, each mistake, is a part of me and I try not to regret anything. One day when the husband tires of my shit and kicks me out, that too will become a part of my story. For now, I just hope that each decision I make is not the breaking point. I talk too much, reveal too much, drink too much, judge too much, hell, I even love too much.

I live life in excess and each and every relationship along the way helps to write my story. I may never be able to settle long enough to find true happiness, but the glimpses I’ve caught are worth it. The husband is good and true and way out of my league, but he loves me and I’m going to do everything I can to keep him from coming out of whatever stupidity coma he’s been in the last five years. The funny thing is that despite knowing that he is too good for me, I can still recall the fights, the hurt, the episodes of miscommunication, and the moments when putting his head through a wall still seem like a pretty good idea just as easily as I remember and feel all the good times, happy memories, vacations, and laughter. It’s all a part of me now. I just hope that of all the people I carry around as part of my story they also carry some part of me. So Amy, Monika, Cathy, Dixie, Mrs. Mitchell, Shari, Chad, Brent, Tina, Usha, Sean, Austin, Colleen, Nikki, Dave, Matt, Echo, Jenni, Gordon, Tim, Sherri, Prof. Kaufman, Shannon, Pauly, Mike, Evan, Steve, Janelle, Sarah, and Jeff thanks, you helped to make me who I am. I might have been a bit of a mess back then, but I’m getting better every day and as long as the husband is still with me I guess I can use that as a gauge that I haven’t totally screwed it up.

Day Eight: Secret Love

I have a secret. This one is a deep dark truth I keep hidden for fear that I will be harshly judged and possibly shunned according to the girl code that states I must either actually hate all parts of my physical self or pretend to. Low self-esteem among women is rampant and seemingly expected. If you tell a woman you love her shoes, for example, she will likely say, “Oh thanks, yeah, they were on sale and so cute, but I wasn’t sure. You think they’re okay really”? This being the common answer except among the closest of friends because to say, “I know. They are so fantastic and I feel like Giselle every time I wear them,” would sound arrogant and be taken as a catty diss to the person complimenting you. It can be exhausting learning all the girl rules and I admit I’m not so great at it, being the type to say whatever pops into my head. Knowing all that I try to keep my secret hidden, but today I am brave and will just blurt it out: “I LOVE my hair”!

You might not think this is such a big deal, but in a society where it is commonplace to spend hundreds of dollars on the right cut, color, highlights and even a blow out and style for a special evening, my relatively cheap and low maintenance hair routine could start trouble. I get my hair cut maybe every 3-4 months. I color at home and even do some of my own highlights. I don’t use pricey salon products and prefer to alternate Head and Shoulders for scalp health with Pantene products for cleansing and conditioning. I have a voluminizing tonic and a pomade that I use when styling sometimes, but mostly just go with a light hairspray to tame the flyaways. The real crime against femininity, however, is my refusal to religiously blow dry or curl/straighten my hair, preferring to let it air dry then working with however it turns out.

I know this sounds like a silly blog and a shallow truth, but women know the hours of anguish, teasing, prodding, curling, etc. that go into just one day of decent hair and quite honestly when I wake up in the morning my hair usually looks pretty great. I’m not the type of woman to have newscaster hair, I mean it’s definitely on the more natural side. I’m sort of beachy chic most days, but I can pull off polished in minutes. My hair will do whatever I want. Stick straight, wavy, curly, pulled back, left down, blowing in the wind, you name it, my mane will do it and usually without much effort. The crux of this is that I never really learned the tricks to styling that most women know, because I never spend any time doing it. I finally got a straightener last year, well after everyone else and it took me weeks to figure out how to use it.

Women just seem so much more savvy than I about a lot of these things.I think it’s part tomboy, part more guy friends than girl friends, and a whole lot of my hair is just so frickin’ awesome! The best part is how soft and silky it is. I love to touch my hair. In fact, I run my hands through it all the time, which is also a style killer for those times I do actually spend more than 5 minutes to work it into a discernible coif. I try not to do too much to it or talk about it mainly because it is such a crime against womanhood to admit you love something about yourself. It is much more acceptable to complain about your fat thighs, cellulite, pot belly, man toes or whatever else you’ve decided is wrong with you. People think self-esteem is a state of mind, but that’s crap. Self-esteem is partially tied to whatever society deems is an appropriate response to that which  you are genetically gifted. Men have no qualms about walking around without shirts, showing off enormous man boobs and/or hairy belly. While you might think it is because those guys just don’t care, the truth is that we have come to expect and as a result, accept it. Hence, society thinks it’s a-okay!

What we do not think is okay is an arrogant or egotistical woman. True, we may criticize men for these traits, but an ego on a guy is kind of hot. We like that and while we may chide him about it or put it down to our girl friends, in private we want the hot arrogant guy who thinks he’s hot, because it must mean he’s hot. But just meet a woman who knowingly admits she’s got a rockin’ body, amazing eyes, or fabulous hair and you will also meet a parade of people who think she’s a shallow bitch. So I keep my hair love under wraps so to speak. Which reminds me, I even like the way it looks when I wear a hat.  

Bottom line, after being a typical insecure, low-self esteem riddled woman for 30 or so years I don’t really know how to like myself. What is the appropriate protocol for being a woman and loving something about yourself? Even more, does it even matter? We always find something else to downplay or criticize about ourselves. So you’ve got a great body, are a fantastic Mother, exciting wife, intelligent, pretty . . . but you feel bad about yourself because you like to have a glass of wine or a cocktail everyday. Suddenly your positives are trumped by a negative you can’t see past. When you look into a mirror you don’t see who and what you are, you see what others might think of you. Keeping that in mind, I know I may not be able to see past my flaws, so I’m just going to concentrate on the one positive I can see, I’m going to love my hair! 

Day Seven: Bringing Down the House . . . of the Lord

I was five years old when Catholicism killed religion for me. Well, it most likely was a slow progression culminating from various factors, but in my fifth year I watched what the Catholic church did to my Mother following a divorce. Divorce is technically not allowed when you are an almighty Catholic, but you cannot keep someone from divorcing you if it's what they really want. The breakup of a marriage in itself would seem like punishment enough, but oh no, the church has its own way to make you feel even lousier. Witnessing the church’s retribution when one of its flock failed to fully live by its code began the slow demise of my faith in organized forms of worship.

Divorce is a sin, so the little “perks” of being a faithful Catholic are taken away in penance. Prohibited from receiving communion, Mom would simply kneel or sit while the congregation filed past her for their tasty bit of Styrofoam Jesus. Once I made First Communion I begged for the pleasure of skipping this weekly ritual. Not only is the concept cannibalistic, but that foul tasting disc of Styrofoam-like bread always stuck to the roof of my mouth and made me gag. I guess I should have known that the path of a true believer would not be mine after my body took to physically trying to expel the sacrament.

More than the actual fact of her sitting out one of the foremost rituals of Catholic mass, it was the emotional toll it took on her that angered me and set me down the path of resentment. For all intents and purposes, she was an innocent woman. Wronged now by both her husband and the church she so believed in. Where do you turn when the object of your faith and comfort desserts you? Shame is a funny thing, we feel it when we are guilty of some sort of ethical or moral breach, but when others are given the power to invoke shame in you, then isn’t their burden to be right or righteous even greater? Why punish your true followers for the acts committed by those who never believed in the first place?

I have always been protective of people I love and even at five my Mom was no exception. Being the sort of woman to never say a bad word about anyone, she rarely spoke up for herself and because she was the dutiful type, she believed that if a greater power told her she is wrong then it must be true. This left me to learn from her example in one of two ways, either accept what the leadership says is fact or fight and go with your gut. The church should protect the suffering, to offer peace of mind to those struggling with the harsh realities of life, not to use its influence to persecute those already faltering. Even in a bar fight, you know you don’t kick a man when he’s down.

What struck me as a desertion by the church my Mother loved and devoted her life to following, taught me at a very early age not to put my faith into man-made organizations. People can be counted on individually, but in a group dynamic the louder voices will be heard, drowning out the masses, thus ensuring a single-minded and selfish authority. The husband frequently points out that I rail against convention and authority more as a matter of routine than a true belief. There is some truth to that. I grew up watching a strong, honest woman put her faith into a corporate body that cared so little for her personally that when she was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 40 her priest told her to rejoice, for she might soon be joining the Lord. When you have two young children to raise on your own and you’re quite young yourself, these are not words of comfort.

Religion is not much different than a street gang or any other group of people with an organizational system in place. These people come together to assuage the feelings of being alone in the world and to know that there are others like them out there. Besides the guns and geographical location what makes a gang so different from a fraternity? Gangbangers and frat boys want someone to watch their back, whether it’s during a fight or a party. And what makes either of them different from Catholics or Methodists, or Jews or Muslims? It’s comforting to be part of a group and know you are not alone in the world. That is the function of any family, be it built on blood or belief system. My question, is if there is room to express your individuality within this family of believers. What if you are a gay Catholic? An anti-gun gang member? A recovering alcoholic fraternity brother? More importantly, is there even room to be “other” in a system that relies upon you being like everyone else?

For years after leaving Catholicism I made an effort to study other religions and to visit other churches to try to decide for myself if one was better than the other. The only thing I learned was that the most important aspect to each religion, was its own belief that it was somehow better than all the others. You can worship your God without doing it in a church. You don’t need someone to tell you how to believe or for that matter how not to believe. For me, it just didn’t work. Beliefs are personal and even if you never set foot into a church or open a Bible it doesn’t mean you cannot be a good person. Many religions, however, are founded on the principle that you must worship in a church, you must bear witness, you must . . .blah, blah, blah. If God is really that great, should it matter if you worship as a Catholic or a Muslim? Can you not be a good person or live a meaningful life without a church?

After all my years of searching, I am now an atheist and I’m pretty happy about it. There are lots of things in life to believe in, for me, religion and a God born from religion is not one of them. I believe in life, love, friendship, nature, universal energy, interconnectedness, charity, and forgiveness. To me those seem like pretty important virtues and if I can live my life and look back knowing I did the best I can and that I am a good person at heart, then I will have found more comfort than an hour a week in a pew could have ever have brought to me. My Mother was a good Christian all her life, but I’m not sure she ever truly lived.