How?
I'm not sure when these thoughts and doubts started consuming me. And I'm definitely not sure why it had to be me out of all people. However, as soon as I started being a passenger in my own mind, I knew that I was different whether I wanted to be or not. For the longest time, I felt different, alone, and I felt imperfect.
I felt like a failure.
To be honest, there was a point in time when I hated how I thought, and I hated that I couldn't be normal.
At the time, normal to me was just being happy and ignorant; it meant not caring and it meant not looking too deep into things. After all, everyone raved about how ignorance was bliss and how life was too short to be riddled with such worries.
So for the longest time, I felt abnormal and I kept wondering how it was so easy for people to just live their lives. I blame my curiosity for one. Now, by no means did I want to be a know-it-all or be this superior intelligent being; I was just one who had to put a meaning and a purpose behind everything. In short, I wanted there to be an explanation for everything and I didn't want to do anything without reason.
I just wanted to understand and not blindly follow and agree.
If I had to date things back, I'd say things started changing for me a little before I went to college. Before then, I was sure of my faith. Before then, I was going to church religiously every Sunday. Before then, there was no room for doubt. In addition, I grew up believing in God. I grew up knowing that God was a thing. You prayed, you served, and you lived according to His Will and if you didn't, you were a sinner that was going to Hell without repentance.
So what changed?
My theory is that I became more self-aware and as things around me changed, I changed as well. I was never really one to exclude myself from any type of group. I hung out with whoever I could; after all, I was literally into anime and things most people found weird at the time. I was the last person to be picky about who I wanted to hang out with. Plus, I was never really popular in High School.
Or ever.
If I was known for something, then it was somehow connected to anime.
Why?
If nothing else, I quickly realized that a lot of my questions began with ''why?" yet they never ended with an answer. My questions only increased and the more they increased, the less certain I became of my faith. I wasn't even sure why I was here in the first place.
I mean, I know that we were created to praise and worship God, but why did I have to partake in that? I never once asked to be created. It was also said that God wanted us to have the choice to choose him. He wanted us to have free will. But I never understood God.
Why create Adam and Eve knowing what He knew? Why did He create us knowing what He knew? What was the point of having the Tree of Knowledge? Why create a world that He would ultimately destroy twice? Why is everyone so diverse and separate if we are all supposed to be united through the blood of Christ? Why did there have to be illnesses and evil?
And why did generations and generations to come have to be continually punished for something that Adam and Eve did once?
I always said one thing about myself and I believe it is still true even to this day. I have always had some weird capacity to understand. Some weird capacity to see things from the other person's perspective; I was always understanding and slow to judge for the most part. If someone didn't believe in God, even though I did, it was not my job to make them change their ways.
Nor was it my job to impose my views on them.
Relationship-wise; however, I did want someone that shared the same views as me. I wanted to have as much in common with my significant other as possible, but when it came to friendships and family views, I was different. I heard them out. I answered what questions I could, shared with them things I didn't understand either, and then I prayed for the both of us.
More so myself because I needed it.
This may be one of the reasons I'm in the relationship that I am currently in. Because for some reason, I try to understand. I try to be sympathetic. I try to care. I try to be the person I hope someone will be for me. I try to be open. Needless to say, I consider that to be more of a weakness than a strength. I struggled a lot to get to where I am today. Mentally, I am not the same person I was years back.
But because I endured such a heartbreaking journey and because I'm just now getting to the point where I can say I am strong in my faith, this is going to take more than one post. This is a series. This is a journey for whoever is reading and this is a reflection for myself. I can't be the only person that went through this, but I can help others if they have the same questions I did.
Stay tuned for part two!
