Good Friday

On December 31st of 2019, I firmly resolved that this year would be my year of spiritual seeking. I planned to do an intensive year of spiritual exploration. I planned to visit the vortexes Arizona, do a sweat lodge, encounter every expression of faith/world religion/spirituality I could possibly muster in a year's time. Get my palms read, and my numerology discovered. Get tarot readings, and fortune tellings and play with a ouija board. Every bit of spiritual exploration I lost over the course of my long stint in one stagnant religion would be finally mine this year. 

So I quit church, right in front of a global pandemic, then had wave after wave after wave of existential crisis. 

You could say I got what I asked for. 

I left the church in January. I was coping as well as one could be expected to cope leaving a life-long faith tradition behind while healing from the final wounding that that structure and that lifestyle had visited upon me on my way out of the door. 

And then the pandemic hit. The one we all thought would last a few weeks. The one that canceled school, travel, and altered life as we know it. 

Then my creek became infested with snakes, so my kids couldn’t play in the water. 

Then they decided to blow up the access bridge to my house so the trip to my office took 50 minutes instead of 15. 

Then my kitchen remodel stalled and I was without water for 2 days.

All of my creature comforts were gone. Every coping mechanism I had thrown out the window and all I had left was me. 

It was terrifying. 

And this is not to say that I hated myself. I did not hate myself. I loved myself so much that I left the church and all my friends behind. I even had a firm grip on my mental health, good habits, established boundaries, but there was something about the timing of it all that took me down to the depths of my soul and left me there to work out what I found. 

I wrote this in my journal on Good Friday last year, and it was the first page I opened to today, on Good Friday. And so perhaps it’s meant to be shared. For everyone who is struggling with this day, and this life. 

I remember writing through wracking sobs as I came to terms with death of meaning, which really felt like the death me, since so much of who I was was tied to my meaning.

April 10th, 2020

“Maybe everything I’m doing is a fantasy to try and add value and meaning to my life when really, it has no value or meaning. I realize that this could be an inner child type narrative that I’m operating from right now: That my life means nothing. 

But even if it is, I’m not sure how to speak to it. 

Perhaps it's not that I’m just as meaningful or important as the rest of the people I compare myself to, but that they are as unimportant and meaningless as I am. That to convince yourself otherwise is an ego trip. Nothing is important and though our actions may influence the earth, for how long? And on a universal scope… what then? And stacked up against the eternity of time and space?? What could possibly have meaning?? 

There is nothing. No contribution to this world. No way of living this life that matters. 

‘The work’ is of singular importance: Individual gain. Does it make this meaningless existence more bearable? So far yes, but so does sex and alcohol. 

And so I find myself teetering between enlightenment and nihilism. 

Maybe I should cheat. Binge drink. Start smoking Juuls. Sleep with every semi-interesting person I meet. 

Or the alternative: Listen to the voice, and let it lead because what the fuck else is there to do. 

So voice. Since I love my husband and my children, you better talk fucking loud, because I don’t have anything else to do down here. And the next time I’m given the choice to reenter the matrix I might just say no because I’m tired of chasing. It feels like all I’ve done for 30 years, and god knows I’m not done. 

I can’t stop myself. Stop me. Remind me over and over again that every single thing is literally meaningless. We are but a mist. A vapor and as useful. I will never get that individual meaning or fix. I will never chase it down because it never existed. I am chasing a paper towel being strung along a line convinced it’s a rabbit, like an idiot sighthound hoping to catch its next meal. Perpetually into eternity. Please help me stop. 

……..

The voice: This only jarring to your ego. Your soul has known this all along. It’s a really important part of consciousness and your spirituality. In fact, it is a gift that you could view life as so meaningless that you wouldn’t even mind giving it away.”

This is not the end of my story surrounding meaningless, and I eventually will share more. But today on Good Friday, the day I’ve remembered the of Jesus death every year for 33 years, I will pay homage to my own death.