#sparkofmadness

I was sixteen when I had my first panic attack.

It was at a sleepover at my best friends' house. It was late and everyone was asleep. I was lying in the same guest bed I'd slept in countless times before. I was shivering uncontrollably. My hands and feet were freezing and wouldn't warm up. I was shaking so hard I was sure Molly, sleeping next to me, would wake up. I curled up, tucking my feet underneath me and shoving my hands under my arms, hoping to warm up.

But a wave of nausea sent me lurching to the bathroom down the hall. I was certain I'd be sick. I collapsed in front of the toilet, braced for unpleasantness. But nothing happened. I just sat there, shaking and weak and nauseated and terrified.

I was about to die. Something deep inside was irretrievably broken, a malfunction that couldn't be fixed. I was certain of it. I knew for sure that my body had betrayed me, that some small mechanism in brain or heart had started clicking just out of sync with everything else and that these were my last moments. Dread washed through me, a slow molten lead that carried sparks of helpless adrenaline. My heart pounded, my head swam, and I couldn't. stop. shaking.

It didn't even occur to me to wake anyone up, to call an ambulance, to ask my friends' parents what was happening. Whatever was happening, nothing would stop it. Nothing could protect me. No action I could take, no help from grown ups. Whatever this was, it was happening and it was permanent. Something was irreversibly fractured in the world, in me.

I don't know how long I sat there, huddled on the cold tile, waiting to die.

Eventually the chemicals in my brain started to level out, enough for me to regain some sense of agency. I crept into Becky's bedroom and grabbed a copy of the most comforting book I could think of - Harry Potter & the Sorcerer's Stone - and went back into the hall to get a blanket from the closet. I was certain I was not going to get back to sleep any time soon, so I retreated back to the bathroom. I crawled into the bathtub, cocooned myself in the blanket, and read until the sun came up. The shivering subsided, slowly.

The next day, I tried to explain what had happened, and Molly looked at me, all of thirteen years old, and told me I'd had a panic attack.

I was lucky. For so many reasons. I had a name for what had just happened. I had a diagnosis. I had a starting point for understanding what was happening.

And I have friends who understand mental illness, who suffer from anxiety and compulsive disorders, who have lived with and survived depression and bipolar disorder. I've been surrounded by people who don't stigmatize mental illness. I've felt free to seek out counseling and treatment, because I know my anxiety is not shameful or weird.

My friends gave me a space to talk, and learn, and understand.

My anxiety still interrupts my life. I have heart palpitations and stress headaches that trigger hypochondria anxiety attacks. I have panic attacks (fewer now that I live in sunny Colorado, away from the months of gloom that dominate the Midwest) that cut social outings short. I recently went caving with friends. I love the outdoors, and am fascinated by all kinds of nature. I'm not claustrophobic, but halfway through the cave system, I had to stop. I was overwhelmed with anxiety, and no amount of rational thinking let me shake it off.

I tend to be rational and objective. My anxiety disorder has made me confront the disconnect between logic and emotion, because although I know my fears are unfounded and unlikely, I still find myself unable to power through them. It felt like a failure for a long time.

But I'm surrounded by people who love me. I run in a part of society that doesn't look down on therapy or medication, that sees those things as proactive and admirable, instead of admissions of failure. I learned to hold the cognitive dissonance, to accept that all my rationality is still held in a body controlled by chemicals that sometimes get out of balance. It's okay that my logic sometimes loses against my brain juices.

But not everyone is lucky like me.

In the wake of Robin Williams' death after a long battle with depression, people are talking about mental illness.

He said once that you're only given one little spark of madness, and that you have to use it, and if you let it go out, you've got nothing. He was talking about the part of each of us that sees the world unlike anyone else, that can create things that are new and wonderful.

Becky came up with the idea to use the celebration of uniqueness and creativity to help people talk about mental illness, with the hashtag #sparkofmadness.

Depression is deadliest when it's suffered alone. You feel alienated, and you feel like you're alienating others. It strips you of hope, of objectivity, of the ability to feel the love your friends are giving you. It lies to you.

I had a bout of severe depression at the end of my junior year of college. It was triggered by, stereotypically enough, being dumped, right before my birthday.

I have always been pretty happy, pretty optimistic. I never questioned or really even considered my own self-worth. I knew I was a good person, knew I was loved, knew I was worthwhile.

But for about five months, I stopped believing it. I started thinking of myself as someone it was easy to walk away from. I started thinking that all the love and support my friends showed me was unearned and shameful. It felt like I was lying to them, that they thought I was this admirable thing when I had nothing to offer. I didn't see myself as worthy of love or time or effort, from myself or from anyone else.

I took incompletes in half my courses that semester, which my professors were kind enough to grant. I had spent the previous two decades of my life defining myself as a good student, as someone eager to learn, and even that persona was taken away. Or, I let it slip away.

I found myself crying, and hating myself for crying because it was weak and self-serving, and I didn't really deserve the self-indulgence of tears.

The color went out of things. I fell into a soul-sapping boredom and ennui. No highs, no lows, just a constant bleakness. I took hotter and hotter showers, wishing the heater would be calibrated higher, trying to burn some sensation into my skin. I took up idly harmful hobbies, like drinking slightly too much, or smoking the occasional cigarette. I was still enough of a hypochondriac to prevent me from ever doing anything really damaging, fortunately. But I felt a deep satisfaction in the disregard for my health, a quiet, savage pleasure in self-negation. It was like, well, no one else is willing to admit that I'm not worth much, so I will. I would drag my nails across my arms, leaving stinging welts that would nonetheless fade. I didn't want notice or pity, because I didn't deserve it.

What saved me was my best friends, the ones who helped me navigate the rough waters of anxiety way back when.

I wrote a blog post (back when Xanga was a thing) about how I was feeling. I don't think I was looking for pity or reassurance. The last little treacherous part of me that craved the concern of my friends (the last little part that was still sane and didn't believe depression's lies) felt weak and selfish and greedy. What I wanted was confirmation, was agreement with my viewpoint. I wanted them to realize, Oh yeah, that's right, what have we been thinking, of course you're not worth our time! How silly of us! I wanted to get rid of those links of affection, because the affection hurt me.

But they didn't.

They didn't douse me in trite "It'll be okay"s and "Cheer up"s! They listened to me, and didn't minimize my feelings by telling me I'd feel better soon. They just expressed love, refused to let me hold onto the lies I'd been telling myself. They shared their own battles with depression and anxiety. They chipped away at the unfeeling armor I'd been building up. It sucked.

Cracks started opening up in the armor. Everything hurt. Being selfish hurt. Allowing people to care about me hurt. But it let me entertain the possibility that maybe it wasn't that everyone was deluded about me, but that maybe I was deluded about myself. I set up an appointment to talk with a therapist at the local hospital. My college has an arrangement with the hospital; counseling and therapy are provided for any student who wants it, for free.

I only went for a couple months. We didn't work through any great revelations. I already knew what I needed to be doing, had thought through all the logical side of things. But what helped, what I needed, was someone who didn't know me who cared. My therapist called me kiddo, was generous with concern and affection. I know it's part of the job. But it was good, needed, to be cared about by someone who had never known me happy and whole. For someone who only knew me as broken and raw to still find me worth time and effort, in any capacity, helped me start to see myself that way.

Being depressed wasn't itself something to be ashamed of. It happened to me. It wasn't because I wasn't vigilant enough. It just happened. It's something that happens to a lot of us. For me, it was a brief period, a depressive episode. For others, it's a lifelong struggle, a constant battle to care and be cared for.

Mental illness, like most poisonous things, is a danger when it's hidden and not talked about. When its victims suffer in silence. When it divides us and whispers or screams lies at us.

We fight stigmas against mental illness by having conversations. We move forward by sharing. We win when we speak up and reach out.

You know someone who suffers from mental illness, whether it's anxiety or depression or any other disorder. We all experience hardship and grief. We all need support.

Share your stories. We can lift the stigma against mental illness and therapy. The time to talk about depression is not when it claims a life. It's now, so we can know we're not alone.

Here are more personal stories of fighting mental illness:
#sparkofmadness
Becky's story of fighting compulsion and anxiety
Mickey's story of fighting depression
Allie's story of fighting depression

Learn more about depression:
From the Mayo Clinic
From the National Alliance on Mental Illness

Glib

A friend of mine from college recently reposted this picture to her facebook.

Seems reasonable, right? Right?

I don't know. Maybe I'm just feeling combative, but this bothered me so much.

Firstly, let me just state that, broadly, yes, I agree with the statement. I think we all need to be decent to one another. I think our conversations need to be respectful and empathetic and honest and authentic. I do like the idea behind this, but I also think it's overly simplistic and even dangerously broad and vague.

Most people, face to face, are decent to one another. Most of us don't go around picking fights with strangers and acquaintances. Most of us aren't all that selfish, and most of us don't hurt the people around us intentionally. Mostly we're all just trying to get on with life. Decency is pretty ubiquitous. As often as someone cuts me off on the road, someone else will let me merge into the lane. People are decent.

But here's where this statement falls apart:
It really does matter what you believe, because your worldview dictates how you vote, the kind of education you approve of and fight for, and your opinions of/actions regarding many other large-scale topics which have distinct and demonstrable effects on broad segments of the population. Being decent in daily life is good, but it's not enough if you don't also support legislation that is decent (for as many people as possible) and doesn't curb basic human rights.

This statement is not saying "be decent to each other" - don't be fooled.

It's actually saying that heated discussion is mean. It's implying, "Look, when someone gets uncomfortable, drop the subject." And this is the opposite of the decent thing to do! Yes, when having debates, you should be respectful and listen and try to understand a subject from the other person's point of view. But that is a far cry from not saying anything that might make someone feel bad. Listen, it feels bad when you are forced to confront the holes in your reasoning, when you have to face inconsistencies and and admit fallacies in your dearly cherished beliefs. It does. It's not a fun experience. But being asked to confront those things is not a cruel or mean act, and allowing someone to hold onto a flawed or ignorant viewpoint is not being kind.

If someone is uncomfortable discussing their viewpoints and dislikes hearing others, it's still ultimately a disservice to him to halt the conversation. Feeling bad is not a valid reason to stop thinking critically.

Also, this is nitpicking, but the text should read "It doesn't matter whether you're an atheist or a theist," or perhaps "nonbeliever or believer" (which is obviously the less precise of the two). Keep the syntax parallel.

I realize all this makes me sound like a jerk, and not decent. But glib statements like these ("it doesn't matter, just play nice") make it too easy to dismiss honest debate and discussion. It provides an easy shut-off-valve. "You gotta stop talking about this because it's making me feel bad, and that means you're a bad person!" Nobody likes to think of themselves as a bad person, so it works. We stop talking. We stop sharing ideas and thoughts and beliefs. We divide and subdivide into little groups where we never experience discomfort. It's damaging to us as individuals, damaging to us as a species.

We're better off - even if someone ends up feeling a little offended or put upon - having the hard conversations than we would be if we all just gave up whenever someone felt uncomfortable for having their viewpoints challenged. I don't mean we should hound people if they disagree with us. Various viewpoints are beneficial. But it's not indecent to challenge ourselves.

The decent thing to do is to refuse to back away from things that make us uncomfortable, that cause a little cognitive dissonance. The decent thing to do is for everyone to pile in! just get right in there! and share and communicate and have to think critically about what we believe.

Also: If someone really thinks that what she believes doesn't matter and has no weight in determining whether or not her actions are decent, then they must be such insignificant beliefs! They must be worthless! What viewpoint has no bearing on your behavior? What behavior has no bearing on interactions with others, on decency?

Embrace mental discomfort! It points us in better directions. Friends don't let friends wrap themselves in comfortable viewpoints that have no foundations in conscious, critical thought! If your viewpoints are important to you, examine why they're important. Find out the flaws. Figure out the weak points. And then - attack those spots with everything you've got. Rip it apart. Start refining. Challenge yourself! Build better foundations! It's how we figure out what's worth believing.

tl;dr

"No, but where are you from?"

I've been sitting on this post for a while now. I've hesitated in posting it, partly because I'm still working out my thoughts about it, and partly because it feels like pointless complaining. It probably is, but ... awareness is the first step leading to prevention, right?

Just recently, I was at the grocery store, picking up stuff to make slow-cooker chicken and rice ("Leta's favorite hot dish" as it's known in my family, similar to my brothers' eponymous fave mom-cooked meals: "Ryan's favorite hot dish" and "Evan's lentil chili"). It is about as Midwestern as you can get, except for maybe Tater Tot Casserole.

As I was looking at almost-stale loaves of bread and dented tins of soup in the day-old clearance section, a rotund, Caucasian, white-whiskered, middle-aged man came up behind me and said without preamble, "Konichiwa!" He then proceeded to speak about four or five more sentences of what I assume was proper Japanese. I planned on just ignoring him, but my damned politeness kicked in after a few seconds of silence, and I burst out, "I don't speak Japanese" in as robustly a native-English-speaker-accent as I could manage.

He promptly switched to Chinese, which I only recognized because he included "xiexie," a phrase meaning "thank you" that my best friend has added to her daily vocabulary since her semester studying abroad in China a few years back.

I wanted to walk away, but I also wanted to be able to browse the day-old shelves in peace. All I wanted was to stand there and debate with myself over the pros and cons of buying discounted cookies.

Instead, I was being sucked into a conversation (yet another conversation) about my race / heritage / background / culture.

"No, I don't speak Chinese, either," I said shortly, hoping my terse tone and lack of eye contact and generally stiff body language would deter this man from his current efforts to ... whatever he was trying to do. Show off his language skills? Make a friend (by making assumptions - presumptions - about her history)? Connect with a stranger (in a vaguely intrusive and mildly offensive manner)? The thing is, I'm sure this man's intentions were kind and friendly. I'm sure he thought he was being inclusive and interesting.

But the fact remains that he, seeing an Asian woman, assumed that she A) spoke a different language and B) wanted to stop and have a conversation with a complete stranger in the midst of grocery shopping.

I wouldn't have been upset if he'd treated other people who were browsing the day-old bakery aisle the same way, like if he'd gone up to the woman next to me who had dark wavy hair and a strong nose and started speaking to her in Italian or something. It would have been the same casual stereotyping, but at least I would know it was universal for this man.

Listen. I'm not saying I don't like talking with strangers. Sometimes, I really enjoy it. Some of the most interesting conversations I've had have been on airplanes or public transit, striking up impromptu chats with the people around me. I once spent a good four hours having an astonishingly fascinating conversation with a guy as we sat on a train from Illinois to Iowa. I think I shared more with him and learned more about him than I shared with or know about some of the people I went to college with.

But the thing is, those conversations started from a shared experience: waiting for a bus to arrive, flying to the same location, getting caught in the same unexpected rainstorm. They started with eye contact, shared looks of impatience, resigned shrugs, sheepish grins. The basic formalities of invitation were made, and conversations grew up naturally, springing up suddenly like dandelions.

The conversation the man in the grocery store was different. It started with an intrusion, a voice speaking to the back of my head. It started with a minimization of my autonomy and uniqueness as an individual. Someone looked at me, saw dark hair and almond eyes, and boiled me down into "speaks an Asian language" or "is not an American" or "would be really pleased / surprised / impressed that I can speak her language."

Also, the general blindness of the differences between the residents of Asian countries is tricky. As someone not raised in Asia, I'm just as ignorant. But - I also wouldn't just pick a language and start speaking, hoping it's the right one. Because I understand that that would be rude, or potentially even offensive.

A big part of me was tempted to just start speaking in German to the man. Nothing about him really screamed "German" but it's definitely likely that, as a white American, at least some of his ancestors were German, right? So it would make total sense to spit a bunch of friendly, well-meaning mothertongue at him. And if that failed, I could just switch to French! And then maybe Polish, or Italian, right? It's gotta be one of those!

But instead I just smiled thinly and walked away.




About a month ago, I was waiting at a bus stop and was reading a book to pass the time. A woman and her boyfriend were noisily gossiping together. I focused harder on my book, in part to not appear to be eavesdropping (not that I think the couple would care), and in part to divorce myself from the environment (since I don't really like listening to gossip). But suddenly I found it impossible to ignore the couple, because the woman was leaning over and almost-shouting a question in my direction.

"Where are you from?"

"Here," I said, knowing if I stayed silent it would just prompt more questions and possibly hostility from this boisterous woman.

"Oh." She was quiet for a moment. I thought maybe she'd reflect on the fact that barging in on a stranger's reading and demanding personal information from her might be a weird thing to do. Unfortunately, she seemed to just be taking a minute to figure out how best to get the information she wanted out of this apparently-dimwitted Asian.

"So, like, what is your nationality?" she asked, obviously pleased at the specificity of her question. Now she'd get the answer she wanted!

"I'm American."

"But, I mean, your ancestors. Where are you from?" she clarified, drawing out the from in almost exactly the same way the guy in the above video does. "Frommm?"

I turned back to my book, tired of being polite. "Korea."

The woman laughed delightedly. An answer! "I knew it!" she said, unknowingly mimicking the video again. I couldn't believe it. "I knew you had to be Korean! You have such pretty eyes."

Perversely, the compliment just made me furious. She liked my eyes? Because they're uniquely pretty eyes, or because they happen to be almond shaped? Would  my eyes stand out from any other Korean woman's eyes? It felt like a comment like "Your people have such a rich oral history" or "You're all such hard workers" - meant to be praise but feeling so alienating. And not terribly complimentary, because I have no control over how my eyes are shaped.

(not my eye, btw)

If someone compliments my clothing or my hairstyle, I'm okay with that. They're conscious efforts I make - my style is a personal expression I'm actively sharing with the world. I actively enjoy when someone notices my glasses or tells me they liked something I wrote. I don't even care when someone compliments my skin (it's happened) - part of its clearness and evenness is genetic, but it's also partly due to my beauty regimen (i.e. I don't wear makeup because I think it ruins skin), so I'm gratified when someone notices.

But my eye shape has literally nothing to do with me as a thinking being. It's not an accomplishment to look Asian when I was born Asian. Compliment my hair because I woke up and styled it. Compliment my handwriting because I had some say over how it looks. Compliment my ideas when they're praiseworthy. But waiting to tell me I have pretty eyes until you clearly establish my race (thereby implying that it's my ethnic background alone which makes them pretty) is ... not a compliment. Or, at least, it doesn't feel like one.

Again, it was this unthinking removal of my individuality.





I don't have any real conclusions to draw. I think I'll continue these thoughts in another post, or maybe a few others. Mostly I just needed to say it, to work out what I think about these things. It's both fascinating and infuriating.

More complaints/introspection to come.

Pursuit

I've been reading Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a candle in the dark - a birthday present from Nick (who knows how much I love books, science, and Carl Sagan).

It's mostly been talking about scientific literacy, and how important it is. Not just for scientists, but for everyone. Students. Politicians. Parents. Educators.  It's about how seductive pseudoscience and ignorance can be, and how dangerous they are, too.

I'll write some more about it when I've finished it.  Suffice it to say, it's wonderfully written and makes me want to be Carl Sagan when I grow up.





I'm considering going back to school.  For premed, maybe? So I can be an optometrist? Or a speech pathologist? Something. I was lying in bed this morning, thinking about the future, thinking about things Carl Sagan said in The Demon-Haunted World, thinking about the science teachers I had in grade school and high school.

It struck me how, after fourth grade (when I had a wonderful science teacher who made it hands-on, who showed us that science isn't a big abstract concept, that it's immediate and breathing and inseparable from existence), I didn't have any teachers who painted the big picture.

They taught their subject well, but it didn't connect to anything. I just learned about lysosomes and mitosis and balancing chemical equations and finding the coefficient of Mμ, without understanding the why behind the how.

No one stopped to point out that the beauty of the scientific method is its tireless pursuit of the truth, its ability to admit when it's wrong, its capacity to look past the obvious and seek the unknown.

I never connected what I was doing in the classroom with the concept of critical thinking. It was just a lot of rote memorization and standardized test preparation.

Not one teacher lifted off the lid of procedure to reveal the romance that lies so close to science's heart.

I've been mulling all of this over a lot lately.  Maybe I should be a science teacher.  Maybe I should be a science writer. I'm no scientist, but I do think about the future. I think about everything I don't know or understand, and I think about how there are other people out there who ask the same questions I ask, who work at chipping away at humanity's ignorance. I think about all the kids I went to school with who wouldn't even understand the point Sagan makes in The Demon-Haunted World, and of the politicians who think science is an unimportant sideshow.

I think about all of this, and I think about how it seems like so many people out there have no idea how beautiful and humbling the universe is, and I think about what it would take to show them, even just a little bit of it.

I don't really know what I want to do with my life, but this seems like something worthwhile.

birthdays

So I didn't achieve everything from my list. But in the last couple months since I posted last, I did check off

4. Go to the Celestial Seasonings tea factory in Boulder.
     (went with Nick, Sonora, and Phil - the peppermint room was amazing.)
9. Make a pitcher of lemonade from scratch.
     (made Brazillian limeade with fresh limes and sweetened condensed milk)
11. Read, at the very least, eight new books.
     (Dodger, Spook, Stiff, Packing for Mars, Bonk, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, and I'm currently reading The Demon-Haunted World.)
16. Watch a sunrise.
     (saw it while waiting for the bus one morning before work.)
17. Have a picnic.
     (had cheese and bread and pickles with Kara out on her porch.)
19. Take a road trip (even if it's only an hour long).
     (went to Steamboat Springs to see an ice castle with Nick, Sonora, Phil, and Teri.)
21. Make something beautiful and sell it.
     (sold a bunch of mugs from my etsy shop over the holidays.)



 Still doing the job search thing. I had an interview at the museum for a more sciencey position. It would be amazing. Fingers crossed on that one.

Questions without answers

Lately, life has been filled with stress and uncertainty. Well. More than usual. It's mostly to do with trying and failing to find a job, attempting to figure out what I want to be doing, not knowing where to go next. The usual post-collegiate sense of failure and ineptitude, compounded by the three year gap since graduation, during which time I was supposed to have been busy getting my act together.

It's not hopeless, I know. It only feels like all that initial potential has been slowly draining away. But, I tend to think that things will work out one way or another. I tend to think that it's good to be proactive, but not useful burning up energy worrying - because one day soon, I'll find a decent job and life will continue. It's the inertia of being alive.

During a recent phone call with my parents, in which I was discussing my lack of success in finding steady employment, my father advised me to pray about it in the hopes that god would open the door to a job.

This was a loaded statement, heavy with worry for my damned soul and disapproval of my sinful ways and disappointment at my failure to keep to the religious line. It breaks my heart every time I hear it, or any of its many incarnations, come from my parents' mouths.

Of my circle of friends, I was probably the one who clung to religion the longest - at least, outwardly. I was good at it, good at acting the right way and saying the right things. It was easy, and it won me approval. Approval and acceptance were, for many years, the main motivator behind being religious. Which is terribly tragic. Sometimes I reread old journals and see myself struggling with religion, desperately repeating that I'd always believe, hoping to convince myself. It was a security blanket I held onto long after I ceased to really trust in its ability to grant protection or comfort.

One of the hardest things for me was admitting to myself what I'd known for a long time: that all the worst experiences and thoughts I've ever had have stemmed from the misplaced sense of inadequacy and guilt that was ingrained in me by religion. It was hard to admit that religion had driven a wedge between me and my parents. But my fear of letting go of the comfortable lie I'd built was overcome by my desire to live honestly. I was able to let myself say out loud that I've never seen religion do anything to edify or empower, instead of just choking back the words.

Original sin, humanity's inevitable fall, the essential brokenness and darkness of the world, any instances of good being instances of god - these are tenets of religion that have never sat well with me.

It's cheap. It's disingenuous.

To blame the horror and iniquities of life on humanity, and to credit its moments of grace and kindness to a deity, is so cowardly and despairing.

My parents want me to be religious. I know it comes from a place of love and concern; from their point of view, faith was the only thing that got them through their turbulent times. The generosity of their friends, the support of their community (which was largely religious) was attributed to a strong shared sense of faith, and to the ministrations of a god that watches out for his own. (I think it should have been attributed to the bonds of friendship and loyalty.) So I understand why they want faith for me. They find contentment and relief in "letting things go" and "giving it to god." They distrust the world, have experienced the dangers of putting your trust in people, who can fail you. They want me to think of my eternal soul, of the place I'll hold after I die. They want me to recognize and accept a loving and caring god.

And given half the chance would I take any of it back?
It's a fine romance, but it's left me so undone.

But I want to live in the world, among this flawed and imperfect people, a member of a beautiful and strange species. I'm not just a visitor here, as so many sermons have said. I'm a resident. This is my one real home.

I want to participate in the human pursuit of knowledge, in flexing our young ancient wild minds. I want to fall down and make mistakes. I want to be picked up and dusted off by other people who have fallen down and made mistakes, too. Failure is an occupational hazard, a mark of courage, a rite of passage - not something shameful, something to need forgiveness for.

I put my trust in my friends. Yes, people can fail you, can leave you wounded and lost. But shutting out the good for fear of potential pain is widely regarded as a culpably stupid course of action. It has always been my friends who supported me whether I knew I needed it or not. It was never faith that soothed me when I was hurting, never a sense of god's presence that healed a broken heart. It was the sense of camaraderie and love among friends, the immediacy of their understanding of being hurt and flawed, the balm of human empathy, and the tangibility of held hands and wordless loving embraces.

I don't need to think of a creator to feel awe when I stand at the edge of Lake Michigan, or when watching a sunset over the Rockies. I see the time, the staggeringly slow geological processes, that led to their births. And it's amazing. The thought that I'm able to stand here, aware and vibrant, is made all the more wonderful for the thought that it happened by chance rather than by design. In the heaving, roiling battle between life and entropy, this lonesome planet coughed intelligent life onto its shores. That makes us precious and rare.

For me, it's so much more freeing and humbling and awe-inspiring to think that I'm just one small, fleeting being in the vast universe, using this 1.5 kilograms of soggy brain tissue to imagine and question.

Disease and war and danger is understandable in a world that evolved by trial and error, without a master plan. It's unforgivable in a world supposedly guarded by a loving creator. The difference between living on a world that's evolving and a world that's the pinnacle achievement of an all-powerful god is that the evolving planet will keep evolving. Religion tries to take the despicable way out, running away from our problems to a different plane of existence.

I don't want the simple, narrow answers or the thin comfort that religion provides. The beauty of life lies in the risks we take, the recognition of our own smallness and worth, the marveling we might do at our achievements and the glorious world we find ourselves in, the seeking we do in the darkness, the lights and fires we set along our brief timelines.

My limitations are what make me worthwhile. My existence is made precious because it is ephemeral, because it's doomed but not despairing, because it reaches for the universe that dwarfs it, because it is so improbable and hopeful and lonely and loving.

I'm ready to suffer, and I'm ready to hope.

I'm never going to stop asking the questions, because no answer is ever going to be big enough for all the goddamned wonder I have for the minutest vibrations of atoms, the grand sweeping swirl of galaxies, the ridiculous amazing complexities of humanity.

I'm a child of four billion years of evolutionary success, and I will never stop being in love with this universe.