The Beginning

A  couple of days ago I did one of those memes that go around Facebook from time to time.

“Justin gave me the age 25. These are the three things that aren't really secrets, but not many people know about them.

I was dating a crack-head con-man who went to jail for stealing our neighbour's car, stealing our roommate's credit card, defrauding several department stores and double-doctoring.I wanted desperately to believe that god would save my life.I was on welfare.

Comment and I'll give you a year to share three secrets about.”

A couple of friends were very surprised about the second entry. Given what they know about me now their surprise is natural. But me at 25 and me over 30 (when I met both these friends) were two different people. I think further explanation is in order.

When I was 25 I wanted desperately to believe that god would save my life. That was 1999. A year later, things were different.

I don’t remember exactly what day it was, but it happened mid to late 2000. My “boyfriend” had just been sentenced to 28 months in prison for a string of charges related to his interest in taking other people’s property and using them to purchase illegal drugs.

At the time I was convinced that I had been damaged beyond redemption from several years of alcohol and drug abuse. I was a non-meeting-attending member of a 12-step “fellowship” where I was being told that if I could just “get the program” and “develop a relationship with the god of my understanding” I would be happy and my relationships would be good.

Even in typing that I feel like an idiot.

So what I was doing was a lot self-help using writing and getting peer support from a few self-identified substance abusers and trying to keep up a solo neo-pagan religious practice while in a relationship with a status obsessed, drug abusing, Jewish convert who thought I was worshipping the devil and telling too much of our business to my friends.

The crazier our relationship got the more I kept praying that god would just end the insanity. I would pray and light candles and cast spells and lay down on the floor in the fetal position and just cry, waiting for god to fix this fucking *thing* and make it right.

The only thing that I knew for sure was you have to believe that EVERYTHING is god’s will or NOTHING is god’s will... you don’t get to pick and choose. People who chose and picked the will of god were not being intellectually honest about what god could do in their lives. (The irony of that statement is not lost on me, by the way.) If life was still crazy it must be because I didn’t believe enough or god wanted me to learn something or maybe god thought that this was the best I could ever do.

I didn’t believe that god would save my life. I wanted to believe that god would save my life. I wanted that more than anything and I would do whatever the believers in my life told me to do to get god to do that. So I continued praying. I continued writing. I continued lighting candles and casting spells, consulting cards and casting rune stones. Every night I ended up in the fetal position on the floor in tears. Clearly I was doing something wrong.

But on that day shortly after I insured that my crazy boyfriend was settled into the minimum-security correctional institution where he was to serve one-third of his sentence before being considered for day parole. I had shipped him some of his stuff and visited him enough times to convince him that he should not “escape” from prison and just do his time, I made one decision.

I decided to stop seeking god.

I wrote the crackhead boyfriend a “Dear John” letter.
I convinced the person I was living with to tell him I had moved out and lied to him about where I was living.
I moved to another town.
I cut all my hair off, I bought a suit and a pair of heels and I went and landed an interesting job.

Months later I realized that my life got better the minute after I stopped praying for god to fix my life and made a decision to actually do something. From that day forward I started questioning the idea of god.

I would not utter the word Atheist for another two years but this was the beginning.

Science

I read this story a while ago, “Major Threat to Religion? Clergy People Coming Out as Atheists”

I remember when I was trying desperately to find god. I remember when I was told, no - CONVINCED - that getting that faith was the only thing that was going to save my life. As a result I spent hours, days, months and years trying with all my might to find and live in that faith. If I didn’t have it, they said, I should just act like I did have it and eventually it would come.

I filled out several trees worth of paper examining my faith, the faith of others and trying to figure out how to have the peace, serenity and love that so many others around me seemed to have found.

I never lived up to it, I never found it, and every bit of energy I expended trying to be a ‘spiritual, not religious’ person would always end me up in the same place... knowing that I was not serene, that I was mentally ill and had no idea what my options were.

"My work to answer these questions began with the thought that as I discovered the truth, it would create a stronger faith and give me comforting answers to those in my church who were dealing with the same issues. Instead, the truth I found led me away from faith."

I don’t know that the Roman Catholic Church and their 11 years of related religious education, the 12-Step movement and a couple of different ‘sects’ of pagans wanted to turn me into an atheist, but my quest to save my own life led me from their institutions and to myself, to chosen-family and to logic, reason and facts.

I was already an atheist when I was diagnosed with MS and in some ways it made it more difficult to comfort myself and others in my life. In other ways it made it easier.

I do the best I can with what science knows about my disease. I know that my personal outlook on my future does nothing but keep the people who love me from leaving, but I also know that exercising everyday, watching what I eat, and maybe taking a couple thousand IUs of Vitamin D will help the symptoms I live with. Next year I will probably go back on Copaxone daily, just because I know it will buy me some more time before my next relapse. That’s what the science says it will do.

"If her DNA was off by one percentage point she'd be a dolphin."

I haven't watched the show much for the past couple of seasons, but I did spend some time tonight watching the series finale of House, MD.

Mostly I will miss having someone who says what I often think on television. House's cynical logic was a breath of fresh air to me.

"I choose to believe that the white light people sometimes see... they're all just chemical reactions that take place when the brain shuts down.... There's no conclusive science. My choice has no practical relevance to my life, I choose the outcome I find more comforting.... I find it more comforting to believe that this isn't simply a test."

Not a whole lot of atheists on US television, and as objectionable as this character's actions could be, Dr. Gregory House was often a voice of reason for those of us who want to confront life, mortality, illness and even grief without god.

So House is "dead". Long live House.