Thinking back over a conversation I had last week about not asking people for help, or not wanting to ask people for help. As my friend put it, "I think it's less about inconveniencing people, and more fundamentally about not trusting them."
The more I think about it... the more truly it rings in my ears. I just don't trust people enough to ask for help. I don't trust that they would actually be willing to set aside time for me if I were to ask. Or even if they did, it might just be that my expectations are set too high. That what I really want is someone who not only will reach out to me, but actually drag out whatever it is that's tormenting me on the inside while somehow cheering me up in the process (notice the number of "me's" in there). Which is a lot to ask even of a friend, especially when my self-perceived moments of desperation start to happen on a semi-regular basis. It's in part why I can't see myself dating someone right now.
It's also because I can see my own selfishness in this. I have these high demands that I don't expect others can fill, and moreover, I can't see myself necessarily doing the same for my own friends either. I mean, I'll be there enough to listen and be present in the moment, but if certain problems and complaints start to recur, I don't know if I could still be as patient with them all the time. And I hardly think of others except in terms of their relationship to me as it is anyway; I don't go out of my way to be present for other people when the opportunity arises unless I'm directly asked personally. I'm not as mindful as I could be.
A lot of times I'll have this notion of being "disappointed" in my interactions with people, although it wasn't until recently that I really tried to articulate what this meant to another person. The way I put it: simply hanging out with a friend isn't enough. Especially in a group (because the presence of 3+ people changes the dynamics of our interactions), but even in my one-on-one moments, just being together at the same time isn't enough either. What I need is "quality time," except what exactly that means or entails is often poorly defined and I won't even know what I want out of this interaction until the moment passes and I just "know" that I've experienced it. In college, this most often led inadvertently to talking until 7 in the morning, but that kind of lifestyle isn't sustainable for me anymore.
It is why I often can feel a sense of dissatisfaction even after an otherwise good one-on-one hangout with a friend. These days, I often only get a couple of hours at most to hang out with people. And a good part of that time is spent on less-serious/fun things because that's just normal, right? But at the end of the day, if we still haven't even broached something deeper or more fundamentally related to what I'm currently going through in the process, I may end up leaving feeling a little bittersweet or frustrated instead.
And it's unfortunate, because for me lately, a lot of those deeper or more meaningful conversation topics are tinged with negative emotions and experiences and just overall cynicism; sometimes I feel like my mind just can't help it. And I recognize that most people don't really want or need exposure to that, especially when it happens on a regular basis. Think of how you might respond to someone who you're used to seeing crying all the time. After a while, the novelty would wear off and you'd likely just grow more numb to their emotional expression, right?
But for the person lost in the thick of their emotions, every depressive moment or experience or trigger feels novel, even when their source isn't. It wasn't until I started reading over old entries on this blog that I realized that the roots of my problems were already apparent years ago; I still complain about a lot of the same shit today that I did then. But as time passes, I forget things. I read my old writings and it often feels like reading someone else's thoughts. And I don't remember so much what it felt like to write them back then anymore. (Sometimes I was being purposely vague, and now I look at those entries and have no idea what I was thinking about.)
But back to the relational frustrations, quality time is such a stickler for me. The less of it that I get in my interactions with people, the less inclined that I am to keep trying to pursue opportunities for it to show up. After a certain point, it just feels like I'm giving up on people because I have no faith in a future with them anymore. And it's so hard for me to start over again with new people that I'm more inclined these days towards just becoming a recluse minding his own business.
I'm practically living like one right now anyway.
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I spent most of that day waiting for something to happen. For God to speak somehow even though I haven't been in a true posture of listening in years, or for someone to reach out to me even though I simultaneously turned off most other methods by which people could've reached me anyway, and either way I don't get spur-of-the-moment messages often like my more extroverted friends so I don't know what I was expecting.
I was fed up with the heat (90 in late September wtf). Fed up with the fact that my left knee starts to ache after walking a little less than a mile and has been bothering me all day today. Fed up with my inability to leave the house to study at a coffee shop like I've been intending to for the past four days. Fed up with my inability to focus or maintain some constant semblance of composure for the rest of the day until it was time for bed, and then I magically couldn't fall asleep again after three nights of having moderate success. By then I was so fed up I started sobbing again, except part of it felt almost forced which made me feel like I was just trying to put on a show to convince myself how messed up I really was.
I'm behind on all the little plans I made for myself yesterday and today, and I'm not really confident that they would've really gotten me very far anyway considering I'm still mentally stuck in mostly-theoretical-less-practical land (watching lectures and talks as opposed to actual tangible work and practice). And my state-of-mind these days has not made me confident about my ability to return to a normal working life again. And even if I were able to do that, I'm afraid I'll still be falling deeper into this abyss of growing more disconnected from people in general, of having less capacity to maintain the connections I still do have until I start giving up on those too.
To have been around for so long and still not be known. And unable to reconcile how much of it is because of my own limitations, or because of my own lack of initiative in places where I could've been present. Or if it was just because I never really fit in in the long-term in the first place, and all of my actions till now have just been to avoid acknowledging that fact.
I'm tired of trying to be in so many places at once. I can't keep up with people anymore without feeling like I have to pay some unsustainable toll that's becoming harder to pay these days. And now I feel like I'm shutting down little by little inside.
I am the one making my own nightmare a reality, and I feel helpless to stop it.
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Do I really feel that helpless right now? To be honest, not as badly as the day before. But I'm still bothered enough to wonder if I really can handle this + the job search + crisis of faith + adulting all at the same time right now.
I'm reminded of a prayer my pastor had for me 3 years ago back when I was still in the middle of Healing Path-- over a sense of my having carried a very heavy burden for a long time. The original intention being that I might be able to, as the metaphor puts it, "drop my burdens at the foot of the Cross." And in a sense, I never really fully did so back then.
Regarding the metaphor itself, I don't think it really works like that in reality. To me, it's more like your burdens just become easier to bear, because you somehow know that you're truly not alone in them anymore.
Except I don't feel that sense of reassurance right now.
I've been listening lately to an audiobook of Michael McHargue (Science Mike!)'s Finding God in the Waves*. If you haven't heard of him, he's one of the hosts of The Liturgists podcast along with Michael Gungor (of the musical act Gungor). The book itself recounts his journey from evangelical Southern Baptist Christian to atheist to Christian again (but not quite the same as before).
Summarily speaking, it doesn't sound like it would be of much interest to anyone who's already firmly decided in their beliefs, and to that extent, I would say that it isn't really written for those people anyway. It's really more for people like me, Christians and atheists who otherwise feel out of place in their "home" communities because their beliefs or lack thereof makes them feel at odds with the people around them, to the point where they don't know who or what they are anymore. That, and it's for anyone who's open-minded enough to want to know what it's like to be in the shoes of someone going through a deconversion/crisis-of-faith experience first-hand, and to understand how to communicate with those people.
I'm only halfway through the book right now, but I have to say, Mike's description of that is spot-on. How often people misunderstand and think that it's because you're angry at God for some reason, when in reality, it's hard to feel emotions towards a being that you don't believe is there in the first place. How hardwired we are into our own perception of reality and where God fits/doesn't fit into it, to the point where we find it difficult to truly comprehend how people outside of our worldview can see things otherwise. He even delves into a lot of the science behind how our brains work in the process (along with a range of subjects from physics to neuroscience to cosmology to Carl Sagan to Dawkins to contradictions in the Bible and so on), expressing a surprising degree of scientific literacy and knowledge that I, unfortunately, don't see often in most other religious folks. I really appreciate it here.
Two things that stood out to me right away: first, his advice to Christians who have friends going through this experience as well. Don't proselytize or evangelize or try to talk them back into belief; you're more likely to drive them further away in the process. The best thing you can do is love and support them: whether it be through a hug, through letting them know that you are there for them, or other little things like that. People who are in the midst of a faith crisis are often at their most vulnerable, and tragically many church communities have responded by ostracizing them or publically condemning them to hell for their doubts/unbelief (which to me is more indicative of a problem in their belief system to begin with, but that's another story).
Second, his acknowledgment that it's okay to be completely skeptical of Christianity and its origins and yet somehow in the midst of that still want to follow Jesus at the same time. He makes an analogy in the process relating to past experiments involving medical patients who had their corpus callosum severed/removed (the part of the brain that allows left and right hemispheres to communicate). In one such experiment, a person actually identified as both atheist from one part of the brain and Christian from the other-- which begged the question, what is really responsible for our identity? How much of what we perceive as our "selves" or our "souls" is really just our brain and the ways it's neurologically connected or wired, as a result of all of our genetics and experiences combined? In the midst of that discussion, Mike explains his own state of being as if the Christian part of his brain were leading the atheist part forward, but at the same time, both are still fully at work in engaging with the moments and experiences he encounters. Trying to find value in the Christian experience doesn't mean that you can't also look at it with a critical eye.
I have to say, I am a little a jealous, though. A lot of Mike's story hinges around a particular moment alone on the beach in front of the waves, after just having had an altercation (with Rob Bell of all people), where he suddenly "experienced" God again, in a sense that can't fully be explained or conveyed. Moments like those are once in a lifetime. I still wonder if I'll ever experience something like that in my own context, or if that's what it would take for me to move forward from the place I'm at now.
Anyway, as far as the book is concerned, I have yet to come to a complete verdict given that I still have another half of it to go. But I'll just conclude here by saying that in light of coming across it, plus all of the above, this year thus far has been an interesting one.
I had a sense coming into 2016 that a lot of things were going to change. And well, the essential substance of my problems haven't really changed all that much or as fast as I'd have liked. I've just been forced to confront them much more openly (in all senses of the word) than I have in the past. And it's still difficult and depressing and sometimes I just want to collapse into a heap somewhere until I disappear or something, but at the same time, it doesn't feel entirely impossible to bear. Not anymore.
Maybe that's what being an adult is really all about.
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*subtitle omitted because I'm not a fan of subtitles.
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