Lost

I don’t want to write this post, but I want to get it out of the way so I can write about anything else.

I have lost my faith. My previous drafts of this post¹ were mostly attempting to explain why or how, and they read like trying to convince you of my new position or, even more unhelpfully, invite argument.
I want neither, so deleted the paragraphs on paragraphs of explainyness. You don’t need them anyway.

Losing my faith was an extremely emotionally stressful activity. I don’t recommend it. Christianity was a foundational part of my identity. God and being part of the Church was for me the source of purpose, belonging, direction, worth, value, ethic, coping mechanisms, confidence, kindness, hope, joy, beauty, creativity, and so many other good things.

As my faith tore away from me (which took a long time) I closed up. I stopped writing openly. I closed away friendships, many of whom I had absolutely zero cause to hide from. And I regressed so much, falling back into depression, back into a level of social discomfort that I hadn’t seen in myself since before high school.

I feel ashamed at this regression, I feel ashamed of how I hid, I feel ashamed at giving up instead of continuing to try to resolve my various issue with God and the Church and the Bible from within. And I feel ashamed of how I’ve felt ashamed about all this. And now I have no-one to go to with all this shame.

What is ahead? I don’t know. These days I’m trying to build hope and love and boldness and purpose on that which I have always seen as meaningless and worthless² and sometimes it even works?

(Even writing the various drafts of this post has been a roller coaster of emotions and not something I could’ve done even 6 months ago. So that’s something.)