3 years ago I would have called myself, as I am now, pathetic.

1 year ago I would have called myself, as I am now, a seeker - whatever that means/meant.

I feel like I am in some kind of weird in between state such as when you turn off a light switch but you don't quite press the whole thing down and then the light comes back on a second later. The question is, what does "on" mean in this analogy? I suppose it is a little naive of me to expect to know where the hell I'm going to end up spiritually and it sure would take the fun out of life if our lives could follow a specific trajectory that was known ahead of time but I've spent excessive amounts of energy trying to make sure that everything is "just so" and I tend to get a little upset - neurotically so - when things do not go exactly as I have planned or expected.

That was quite a long sentence. I have a "thing" for long sentences.

I'm really excited the weekend is almost here. It isn't unproblematic, though. Remember how yesterday I was bitching about how lonely I am (What? Someone on diaryland complaining about being lonely? Inconceivable!)? Well, I'm an ass hat hypocrite. This weekend I am being inundated with social events and all I can think about is how great it would be to spend time by myself working on my writing, ripping more CDs for my iPod and doing homework for my class. I'm a fool and a nebbish.

Half of me wants to write about those jerks in the finance department because it might be funny and I dig "the funny". They aren't really jerks they just have a very different way of working than I do and it irritates the fuck out of me. The other half of me wants to write about my ongoing spiritual crisis but I think that is partly because I dig being melodramatic.

One memory has been going through my head for a few days. Near the beginning of the Summer this guy who we'll call M and I spent a number of Sunday afternoons talking about the bible. He was real eager to be my friend and I was eager to have him as a friend, yet the more he tried to earn my trust and friendship the more I resented him till it got to the point where I sent him an email saying I was too busy to hang out until the end of the Summer. He never wrote back and each day that went by during which he didn't email made me feel more and more relieved.

I considered the possibility that the reason I couldn't be friends with him was that he was too earnest and serious, and I started to examine the people I really enjoyed spending time with and came to the conclusion that I like to hang out with people who seem to be laughing a lot. M was not a big joker and he didn't laugh easily. He is a very serious guy or at least he was so around me. Maybe around other people he is a comedian but I brought out his dour, serious side.

Right now I feel a neurotic desire to make a joke, to be funny. I don't know why this is, why I think I need to impress people. The whole reason I started this diary was as a way to stop trying to impress people and instead just be me. Too many of my friends knew about my other blog so I could never be totally honest, and I needed a space where I could be totally honest. But why did I decide to do it publicly and why do I worry what people will think about it? Am I some kind of drama queen?

It is clear to me that writing down one's thoughts is very therapeutic, but at the same time I wonder why I do it so publicly. Not that I have a lot of loyal readers, but the point is that anyone with a web browser might be reading these thoughts right now. So, why am I doing this?

Well, I think I need to communicate with someone even if it is in a very mediated and anonymous way. I feel like the fact that I can't ever connect with people has something to do with all these walls I've erected around myself which I thought Jesus would magically brake down but I woke up one day after being a Christian for two+ years and those walls were still there and I felt pretty betrayed much how my parents felt when I first became a Christian.

There are a lot of half-truths in Christian popular culture and I bought the lies. I'm not passing judgment on the religion, just on some people who call themselves Christians who take liberties with the truth. Most of them aren't even lying; they are just oversimplifying things so that naive yokels like me will think that there is some simple way to regain that freedom whose memory we all carry around in the back of our heads which we sometimes catch glimpses of in dreams or when we fall in love or when the future seems like a giant ocean rather than the bleak prison it turns out to be for most of us.

There I go with the long sentences again. Oy.

But I still think that this freedom, this memory of freedom buried in my soul, is real and that there is a way back there. Part of me still thinks that the way back there is through Jesus but another part of me thinks that this freedom is just a dream and the only way to fulfill the desire to go back there is to make one's life as dreamlike as possible: surrounding oneself with artifacts and situations which put a nice layer of illusory happiness over our lives, dressing up our prison with a fine arts print and some nice comfy furniture.

But that can't possibly be true.

Can it? Can it be that this need inside of me is just a fluke of evolution, best ignored if not destroyed. This simply cannot be true. Would I have a feeling of hunger if there was not food to fill it?

That is what it comes down to, I suppose. Is my hunger a hunger for something that actually exists? Or should I stuff it full of illusions and distractions? Positive thinking, affirmations, Oprah, Madonna, Judith Krantz, Hugh Grant, Julia Roberts, television, democracy, new age mumbo jumbo, alcohol, drugs, casual sex, junk food, newspapers, gadgets, the internet...

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