When I was younger, I became depressed. At the time, the internet was non-existent and I didn’t know who or what to turn to. I knew that God was supposed to be by my side through all things, so I reached out to him. I prayed and thought that ‘hey, maybe if I’m a good person, God will take this pain away from me’.

It didn’t happen. Eventually, I gave up on waiting for my sadness to dissipate and started triaging it. I found ways around it and to kept it secret. Eventually, my faith just kind of leaked away. I figured if God existed They didn’t care that much about me.

It never turned into bitterness, I mostly just talked about God like an ex that I had a good co-parenting relationship with. I just went about my business and They went about theirs.

I thought of God in sometimes contradictory terms, influenced by the things I read and watched. I thought about the story of Job and wondered how God could do that to one of his believers. I thought about Inman in Cold Mountain wondering what kind of mind had to exist to create something like pain and that God must be tired of being called down on both sides of a conflict. The song A Battle Hymn For Children by the Faint “If it’s true that God roots for the U.S.A/Is every bomb we drop in God’s name?”

I felt a loss though. Something was inside of me and it wasn’t there anymore. In the words of Leoben from Battlestar Galactica, “What is the most basic article of faith? This is not all that we are.”

That was gone. It was there and it wasn’t.

I was okay with that though. I thought about doing the right thing and helping people. That became my guiding star. And that’s when I found out about the concept of humanism.

That one made perfect sense to me. For those that don’t know, humanists, at least in my understanding, believe that every person has fundamental human rights and deserves to be free and happy. You should do good for everyone without the expectation of going to heaven.

When I read that, it felt right. It felt good. It had always felt off to do something because I was promised the eternal reward of heaven. If that’s what drives you on, so be it. But’s not for me. I want to exist. I want to no longer exist. Simple as that. Hopefully, I’ll do some good in the meantime.

However, I have been looking for community. I’ve missed the feeling of belonging to something. I’ve done that in the past, as part of a community service fraternity and a feminist group. To that end, I’ve been thinking about going to the church of the Universal Unitarians.

When I get a chance, I’m going to go to a service. I’ll let you know how it goes. R.E.M play me out.