Teenage angst revisited

For the past few years I've been trying as hard as I can to keep religion out of my life. It stole my sanity for as long as I can remember - first as a christian perpetually overwhelmed with doubt, next as a skeptic fearing social rejection, and finally as an agnostic struggling through a year-long existential crisis in which I had to re-shape my life and learn to see the world through an irreligious lens. It wasn't easy finally being honest with myself and admitting I really don't believe this when so much of my identity was centered around my christianity.

Even now, my relationship with religion is strange and something I don't quite understand. I feel so drawn to it - or at least its imagery and romanticism, kind of like Nick Laird says in an essay comparing poetry and religion: "I like ritual and heightened states. I like mind-altering drugs. I believe in invisible forces - radioactivity, magnetism, sound waves - and I’m more than willing to sit for an hour listening to a church organist practice, which I did just last week. And I’ll let myself shiver along with the immense chord changes. I don’t like faith but I’m fond of its trappings- the kitschy icons, the candles, the paintings, the architecture and, especially, the poetry."

And I like all of these things, too - save the drugs. They bring back fond memories; they make me feel at home.

The problem is whenever someone describes a genuine religious experience to me, I can't handle it. I break down. I feel frustrated. I feel the way I always felt in church when others were having religious experiences around me -falling down on their knees and weeping - and wondering why I couldn't have those experiences, too.

Ever since I started going to church when I was little, I've had the feeling I'm missing something. Maybe a "religious experience" structure in my brain that's absent or microscopic. Either way, it never seemed fair. I never felt like my doubt and rationality were my fault, and I still don't. I don't even find it to be a fault at all on most days.

Sometimes, though, I get so angsty thinking that others believe in a God who made me and yet, made me in a way in which I can't believe. And I know I'm not alone in this; I know there are others who, try as they might, just can't have faith in any sort of god. The problem is to the majority of faith-havers, it seems us doubters just aren't trying hard enough.

If religious people are right and I'll have to answer to God in the end, I just hope he understands that I tried for years and years and years. I hope he understands that this brain he put me in is just too logical and skeptical. And most importantly, I hope he'll answer my questions as to why he'd make some brains wired in such a way that they can understand him better than others. I'd also like to ask him why he chose to be so damn mysterious.

Until then and after I finish this book, I suppose it's back to keeping my life religion-free. And that's okay, because I only long for religion when I think of other people's experiences. I'm perfectly happy without it, and I need to remember that. I need to remember that like Nick Laird, I don't need religion when poetry exists.

I want my mom to always be here to ask a
hundred times, "what do you want to eat?"

at the McDonalds drive thru, cigarette in
her mouth, refusing to complete the
order and file obediently to window #2.

She is always sure I must want something,
would like at least a burger, at least a drink,
and that I'll want some food once I smell it.

"Just get me a value fry,"
I always say in the end.

And after "a value fry!" has been
shouted at our poor order-taker,

her big silver car stops holding back
the impatient automobile parade

and pulls on up.

2010 Tracie was cheesy.

Just found the only love poem I've ever written on my computer!

On some days I love you. I love you

to the depth and breadth and yes, even

height my soul can reach,

which isn’t very far, mind you.

But I still feel a stirring as I pass a man selling

peaches on the highway, and sometimes when

I see your name written in a Holy Bible. 

Some days I see flowers and think

of how they might have fallen from a love poem

written years ago about our very souls.

And yet, some days, I love you with the

intensity of a mere fading star, and my love

feels like a fish, when it used to be the ocean.

But I love you,

not only for the affection I feel when hit

with the recollection of your favorite fruit,

but also for the stars that can't be seen when

the earth moves its body to face the sun

and wake the world.

I love you for the morning.