Lately

There’s been nothing of interest going on in my life. At all. I've been too scared to do whatever I want. I keep waiting for life to magically improve.

This idea that someone will come into my life and save me comes from my upbringing. I was brought up with a savior, Jesus, who I always thought would swoop in like a gallant knight and pull me out of my misery. Now I know that if he does exist, he doesn't seem to care; and if he doesn't exist, no one cares. My life is in my hands. God is not in control, I am. And that's terrifying. 

We're all just masses of thoughts and emotions on a spinny planet, revolving around the sun in an (in)finite cosmos. For any belief we think we hold, there should be some fine print, subject to change. Even the principled Ned Stark proclaimed Joffrey King before he died. No values are absolute in a relative universe, not even the value that no values are absolute. 

There is no certainty, and this bothers me. Sometimes I'm like, Please, someone, tell me what to do with my fucking life. There's no way of knowing if I'm doing the right thing. No way to know if a choice will end in regret or satisfaction. I look around and others seem to float through life unconcerned with this. It's like they either don't know this is the case or are so centered that it doesn't bother them. To them I say, I envy you. I envy my dog who just is. He doesn't think, he does. He feels shitty, but he only feels shitty as long as the emotion is present. As soon as I offer him a treat, all misery is over. When a treat is offered to me, I wonder if there's a catch, a twist to bring me back to my default state of unrest. 

Leaving religion gave me the initial rush of freedom, but now I'm moving into the next stage I will call riddled with fear. It's realizing I can do anything and feeling paralyzed by all the options. No right or wrong, no god to guide me—only my under-developed frontal lobe and poor judgment. On every side, guilt-trippers suggest that I'm proud and vain for thinking I can decide life on my own. How can you determine right from wrong without help? How can you know you're doing the right thing? 

The truth is I can't, and I wouldn't say I'm vain. I'm scared shitless. God gave me a marginal sense of stability when I was on that path, but that's about it. Maybe guilt-trippers are right and someone is looking down disapproving of my choice to jerk off before bed, of experimenting with guys, of drinking too much on a weekend. Fuck that god, I say [swigs Eagle Rare whiskey]. 

The flip side of the riddled with fear state is freedom. Freedom is something we crave as humans more than anything. We throw tea into harbors for it. We fight civil wars over it. All the fear in the world cannot outweigh an ounce of freedom. That's why even the thought of reverting back to religion only takes hold of me in my darkest, most anxiety-ridden states of mind. "There's no atheist in a foxhole" is sometimes true because anxiety's extremes make us cling to anything for some peace of mind. Although some, even in death, some have some badass last words, like Christopher Hitchens, "Don't keep the faith", or Socrates, "Crito, we owe a cock to Asclepius; pay it and don't forget". 

So take heart, my anxiety-ridden friends, freedom's price tag is worth it.