I can’t sleep. My mind is whirling with too many things that it’s like a car idling in the driveway. I keep thinking about this conversation I had with an old friend of mine. It covered the gamut but my primary focus was the absurdity of sin and religion in general. I tried to bring up points of contradiction but the thing about faith brain is it’s like a snake eating its tail. One thing justifies the other with no real rhyme or reason.

This friend in particular really triggers my antagonistic nature in regards to faith. This friend I had, at one time, been in love with. We were really close friends and during a trip on spring break I crossed a boundary with him. He responded like any straight guy having an identity crisis. He fled into faith. When we returned to school after the holiday session he passed me a note between classss that he could no longer be my friend because of Jesus.

I broke down balling right there in class. The teacher sent me immediately to the office because I could not stop crying.

Years later we made amends. He says he never said that in the note and I’m like… girl, I broke down crying in second period history. I remember what it fucking said.

Having this conversation with him is really triggering, and not just because of that instance. It has been years of bullshit from the people are church and in the Christian schools I attended. I never saw more hatred and cruelty than I had in church. Once you remove faith from people they’re truly kind. I would say that I am much more caring than I was when I was religious.

I go in this roundabout arguments in my head debunking faith and how absurd it is. I attempted to do that in the conversation with this friend but I am not good under pressure. My husband on the other hand is who made me work through the bullshit to see it for what it was. He should be doing this kind of stuff… not me.

Like… I look at all of the shitty things that have happened to me and all I can think is either I’m being punished by god or it’s the devil. And if it’s the devil, I’ve already forsaken god, just let up. Kicking me lower isn’t going to make me hate god more than I already do. Then if it is god doing these things he’s a sociopath.

They go end over end for me. The thing that truly, truly killed it for me was watching my mother go through all she did. She was the most devout person I had ever, EVER seen. She walked the walk and talked the talk as the church likes to say. But she was met with nothing but heartache and struggles. A faith man would say that was just the devil trying to make her rescind her faith. Okay. Then why didn’t god stop it? If he’s all fucking powerful, why sit there and watch her struggle? As I love to say, cause god can’t cum unless you’re suffering.

Anyway… it’s funny, even now my thoughts are convoluted. I have a clear line of thought it’s just that I am so emotional about all of this that I get flustered and can’t think. And it’s because I was sold lies. I built my childhood on falsehoods printed in a book. Claims that make the assertion that they are “god breathed.” Well god spoke to me and said you’re a bunch of cunts.

I hope to one day find the peace from my religious past but I don’t think I ever will. I can never move past it because it is around me all the time.

The concept of a “new year” is lost on me. Not in the sense that the number has jumped to a higher one. That obviously makes sense. What doesn’t is this idea of the immense possibility. “I can be a whole new me” just by the stroke of midnight.

I used to be one of those folks. Thinking that because we had ascended another hill and looked at the next surface of climb, we could and would achieve anything. Yet over the past few years I have lost that sense of wonder. I applaude those who still have it. Hold onto it as long as you can because it slips away easier than you think.

For me it broke down when I realized that my problems and troubles would continue no matter what. “New year, new me” be damned. Without a complete and utter fucking overhaul, overnight, my life will remain the exact same. Which is fine. It doesn’t stop there for me. It will not stay the same. In fact it will get worse.

Caring for someone with a progressive terminal illness doesn’t have the hope and possibility that other’s experience. My journey only gets scarier and more traumatizing. So, the mentality of “I can transcend this!” doesn’t apply. This was the same last year, and the year before. And even the year before that. For a brief shining moment at the start of 2019 my outlook looked incredible. Truly. Then on some cosmic plane the deity watching me climb the rope of fate decided to cut it, and I have been clinging to a thread that has gone slack, whose end is plummeting toward my face to knock me back down.

Sorry for being so depressing. However bleak I sound I know that is not my lot in life. Things will change, it just won’t happen with the turn of a new day. Instead it will be in March or August or even in a few years from now. Nothing is permanent. Nothing. Not joy or sadness.

This year, I know will be the hardest of my life. My husband does not have long. Even his doctor, in November, said months. How many? We have yet to guess. But I can see. I know the end is nigh. Although I do not fear it. I don’t even think about it. (At least try not to.) I attempt to focus on the now, the moments that I do have with him. He’s still here. I can still hear his chuckle, smell his breath, see the mischievousness and love in his eyes, and I get to kiss his warm forehead and know that he is here. He is safe.

Death and dying was a lesson I needed that, for me, was prefaced by a “starter course” in community college. Quite literally. Although I did not know it at the time. After that my life forced me to face its ugly reality. To learn repeatedly that the future is not predictable, definite or ever clear. It’s a dense fog, with a little illumination at best. Live in the now. Feel the now. Enjoy this exact moment because we will not have it again.

Happy New Year.

I have always felt like two people. Two very different forces, two ways of thought, two opposing personalities… it’s truly bizarre. I don’t know if others feel or think this way, and it never occurred to me to ask, but it is the real “me.” As I grow older, I become concerned that this might be a sign of schizophrenia because that runs deep in my family. My father had it. How I justify that it’s “okay” is that this other voice, the passive me, is still “Josh.” Just, not me.

Passive me is this empathetic white knight. The one who wants to defend and protect all of those around me. He is honorable. It’s just that he’s really fucking lazy. I say that because he only lives in thought, he never actually does anything. At times he will take over and move to the forefront and become me, however it is only when it’s absolutely necessary for our success. As if he thinks “oh, Josh is gonna fuck this up… better step in.”

The active me is selfish and petulant. He is angry at life and wants to be free of everything. I’d rather do what I want to do, when I want with no consequences. The primary josh is also the one with the short fuse and hot temper.

It is these two forces that fight inside of me at all times. Yet the thing I find odd is that “passive me” is the one with the firmer voice. Usually he is the one that talks some sense into the belligerent one. Lately though… that isn’t the case.

I am constantly at odds with myself. My life is chaos and I go into these fits of rage in my head (sometimes audibly while alone in the car) where neither wins. It’s just absolute insanity.

It’s the same bullshit everyday where I am angry that I have no control of my life. If I wanted to do something is always at the whim of someone else. I need permission.

Perhaps that’s why I the angry side is looming large in these moments. It’s my inner child fighting back.

The image I have of this battle is like a pulsing, swirling ying-yang, almost as a dual colored sun.