Here we go. I will try:
- I am a sinner, a worm. All I can do is ask for repeated forgiveness. That’s the beauty of faith, I guess, but somehow God forgiving me doesn’t do as much good as being able to forgive myself. That will take a lifetime, and I have to be prepared, because no one gets out of life without sin, including me.
- Evangelical Christianity will bring about its own death due to hypocrisy, but the social justice warriors dedicated to the message of the historical Christ are doing their best to stop the death of the church altogether. I have chosen the right side of history because even if the church dies, I still have the message of the historical Christ inside me. There are many messages that the church has handed down that deserve to die, such as Evangelical treatment of queer people. The reason the Evangelical church deserves their fate is the unfailing attitude that the net was full after they got in.
- I am certain that you will forgive me for ending a sentence with a preposition.
- I am not good at reaching out, but I am certain that I am getting better because I have to do so. It is not my choice to be more extroverted, but I do want to be included in a social safety net. No man is an island, probably the truest sentence I know. Perhaps my need will lead me back into a church, but I’m not quite ready for that yet- I’m certain. If I do re-join a church, it will be because the music got me there. I miss being a singer, and could use the money if I was hired to be a section leader.
- I am certain that I am a spoonie, and I am dealing with those repercussions. Having bipolar, AuDHD, and cerebral palsy are all problems that I’ve masked and ignored since I was old enough to be aware that I wasn’t like other kids. Now that I’m aging, they are all a straight up problem to be solved. My care team is recommending that I file for disability because I already have a solid case due to my last two hospitalizations, and I am not sure how I feel about that…. the “hallucinations” I experienced were curated by an unknown quantity, and the only reason I cannot prove it is that I was too dumb to remember to take screenshots. It’s a rabbit hole I could go down for hours, trying to prove that I did not make up the reasons I was hospitalized. Alternatively, if I just say that I hallucinated everything, it’s better for my disability case. But I wish I could put my illness on the organization that caused it, because my illness was nothing if not organized. Of that, I am certain. I am also aware that I sound “crazy” to anyone that would read this paragraph in abstentia, that only the people who were there would know what I meant. This paragraph is for them. I really wish my relationship with Heytch had been real, whether we were off in our own little world or I’d been accepted into her family as one of the crew. Because of the power of suggestion, I had created a deep inner landscape, a garden with deep roots and a master gardener to tend me, kissing the top of my head as she scoots out the door for her next adventure.
- I am certain that I am not a gardener, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to try and create deep roots in other areas of my life. I am one who waits for nourishing rain, of which we are getting a lot of this year. In fact, the skies are dark surrounding my apartment, and it is up to me whether to stay inside or to dance between the drops.
- I am certain that I am making progress in Spanish, and may take home the gold trophy this week for the most XP on Duolingo. Because I do not work, I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to perfect learning a second language instead. From Duolingo, I will graduate to reading books and watching the news. I do not know if I will become fluent, but that is not the goal. The goal is to be able to have comfortable conversations with people, which I can do at the Home Depot next to my apartment. As ICE gets more and more active, I need to have my finger on the pulse of the community it is trying to destroy.
- I am certain that even if I never have a “real job,” I will continue to write. Sometimes that will be here, sometimes that will be on Medium, and sometimes that will be with published books. I look forward to creating an anthology for Kindle Unlimited, and I will let everyone know when it is finished. You’ll find some of your favorite entries, and some of mine.
- I am certain that I have a lot of apologies to make in all of my sinning, and look forward to the chance to make them. But again, you can only resurrect a relationship if both parties are interested. To my Finnish baby, I am so sorry. I popped off and got too angry, too fast. I don’t deserve your forgiveness or your friendship, but I hope that one day you’ll remember that I wasn’t always angry. That there is a lot of love we are both throwing away in the moment, and we’ll have to wonder whether it was worth it to move on rather than trying to compromise our way to healthier patterns. Perhaps that will come with peace and forward motion to other things, and perhaps it will bring us back together. I am uncertain which way is healthier, but I do know that it’s not only my feelings that matter. Your feelings matter, and I was too hasty. Of that, I am certain.
- I am certain that I will die someday, and I’m thinking about legacy on this web site already. That’s because I do not think about what is going on in the moment, but about what someone will discover when they read 50 or 100 years from now. Even though the dues for the URL may not be paid, the Internet Archive holds all our secrets. I am trying to paint a portrait of real life- how one human lived. It is something that is missing from the thousands of years before us and I think it’s very important. I don’t need to know how kings and queens lived their lives, but the struggles of the everyman. I do not think that my words are exalted in any way, it only matters that they exist.
Stories That Are All True 