I don't talk a lot about my religious views and experiences. The reasons are many. Religion is one of the more divisive and controversial topics when you get into it, for one. It's painful, for another, and it's painful for reasons I perhaps don't fully understand myself. And, it just kind of sucks.
But I want to talk about it now. I was a self-proclaimed Jesus Freak back when that term was (mostly) still fresh. I wore the WWJD bracelets and church T-shirts, I went to Christian rock concerts with many friends, mostly girls, from my church. I listened to the music, knew all the lyrics, and I was even one of the Worship Leaders for quite some time, using my talent for harmonizing vocals for God. I went to church, well, religiously, often two, three or four times per week either to volunteer during services or for youth group, etc. I ran a classroom for VBS one year, and went full out on the decorating and preparations. I went to church camps in the summer, and as I got older, volunteered for the younger church camps for weeks at a time. And it wasn't just these outward things, of course. I really lived and believed that Jesus is our Savior, and that to live Christlike and witness to others was my personal mission. I had church friends around me in youth group. One of them was the girl I met on my first day of school who brought me to the church. Others were the friends her and I made at school and brought to our church. Still others were friends we met at church and either did or didn't go to school with. In some ways, we were a tight-knit group, but in other ways, our circle was often expanding, and sometimes, but rarely, contracting by losing people to geographic moves or other personal things in their lives. I see these women now on facebook, they reunite periodically and its like nothing has changed for them, their all still as close-knit as we were before, this OG group of ours. But I'm not there anymore, and nobody really seems to miss me.
I remember a time in high school that I felt completely ostracized by this group. I think we were at the church camp in Michigan, called CIY, and it was hosted on a college campus and we stayed in the dorms. I had revealed my feelings to Tarne, the wife of our Youth Pastor, and such a powerful, beautiful force in all of our lives. Her and the Youth Pastor, Sean, had started at our church within two weeks of me, so it felt very much like we were intertwined from the start. Tarne's first baby, Katrina, was ever present with us, and her subsequent girls were also often around. I don't think Katrina has any memories of me, but I love seeing pictures of her on facebook now, a full grown adult. It's weird to see someone grow up like that when they don't know you. Anyways, I had confided in Tarne in the dorm room one night that I was feeling left out. Ostracized was her word, and although it made me think of an ostrich, I thought it wasn't too far off, given that sometimes I felt like it would be better if I just stuck my head in the sand and pretended I didn't see what I saw. To be honest, I don’t even remember the circumstances that led up to me feeling like the odd ball left out, but I think it was less of a direct and obvious attack and more of a subtle thing - like flakiness. Nobody was actively excluding me; I
was just not being actively sought out and brought in, I was forgotten, lonely when not alone. Tarne, bless her heart, tried to dig in and figure out what was going on, and I think I left her room convinced it was all in my head, that I was the one ostracizing myself. I made a concerted effort to participate more and not wait for an invitation, and I think it worked for a little while. There was a similar time when we were all together and I admitted that my biggest sin that I struggled with was my pride. I admitted that I felt especially prideful while on stage leading worship, that my heart wasn't in the music as much as the beauty of my own voice, and concluded that I should probably stop leading worship to focus on the worship itself and not on my pride in my talent. But I was proud about other things, too. My ability to convert people to Christianity, for one, made me feel better than others. Pride in just how well I was living my life for God - ironic since pride is a sin, but I was proud that I did everything else right and my pride was the only thing wrong with me. I sought out Tarne's guidance and advice, as well as that of the OG girlpack, and we prayed on it and read the Bible and did all sorts of things to try to help me. In the end, I never really got over my pride and it's still something I have to watch in myself.
My Senior Prom was one of the happiest moments in my high school years. My date, Jon, was a younger boy from church, and not my first pick. Jon had a huge crush on me, but the feelings weren't reciprocated with the same intensity. I liked Jon, he was cute, but I had my heart set on Nathan, who was a good friend of Jon's. Nathan was also from our church, and he knew my feelings for him but didn't want to crush Jon, so asked me to go to the dance with him, and he'd come along as someone else's date. My ex-boyfriend and prior Prom date, Ryan, was oddly in the group, too, even though he neither went to our church or our school. He was dating one of my friends, though, and I was happy for them, as I left Ryan because he wasn't religious. There was Jackie, my first best friend who was super bubbly and weird, and made me feel at home on my first day as the new kid at school, and who went to the dance with Nathan. And Lindsay whom I had struck a relationship with on the bus because she laughed at all my jokes - she was the one who brought me to church. There was Erin, or Erhead as I called her, the lovable, cheeky young woman who was destined to work in the church and change people's lives since I knew her in 6th grade. Jessica, my junior high best friend outside of church, she and I had had a third friend, Jenny, from whom we were inseparable until we weren't - we sang ensembles together and called ourselves "Be the Fish" and we each had a fish name like the Spice Girls and wrote encoded fish messages to each other. One day, Jenny just didn't join us at the lunch table like normal, and she just avoided us, didn't go near us and didn't talk to us, even when we tried talking to her. It was super weird, we never got an explanation, and went through five more years of school together never hearing another peep from her. Jessica and I stayed friends but not as close, and she replaced Jenny with another Jen, who had taken my ex- Ryan to the dance. Rachna was there, too, she was a newer best friend, the younger sister of an older boy I had liked once, but dated his best friend instead. Rachna was also not a church friend, she was a band friend, and she was one of the bubbliest, silliest people everyone adored her I think. And Carrie, rebellious, tough, independent, lovesick Carrie. We met her at church when her family moved the summer before one of our last years of high school, but she quickly became integrated into our circle and had a support system on day one of the new school for her, which is pretty neat. 
The moment came when we were all packed into our limousine on our way home, and even though none of us drank because that was against our religion, I felt drunk with happiness. I was sitting on the floor in the middle of the limo, and my eyes were watering with tears of happiness as I looked around and saw all my closest friends from the past 8 years in the car together. I had already registered to attend Arizona State in the fall, and knew that I couldn't possibly stay close to all of these friends as I went on my journey to college half way across the country from our church and lives in the south suburbs of Chicago. Jon was devastated and yet still hopeful we could try a long-distance relationship, although I knew I wasn't going to put in the effort for that. I had decided I would throw myself whole-heartedly into divorcing myself from my life in Illinois and starting anew in Arizona, in college(!) and embrace the college experience - drinking, partying and all. But as I looked around the limo, I felt such a happiness for the shared memories, the way our group expanded to embrace all these different people, the way each of them had touched my lives and had been there for me when I need them most, and were still here for the most part. Literally surrounding me were the people I had loved the most over the last 8 years, and I was both thrilled and devastated to be leaving them. 
Well, I spent my summer birthday with Jon, Nathan, Rachna and Jess, a quick respite from the grueling Japanese classes I was taking in summer school at University of Chicago to start making up my foreign language requirement deficiency. I ended things with Jon that summer, spent my last few days with Rachna and Jessica, helped break ground on our new church with the OG girlpack, volunteered to help build a house with Nathan, and then headed out to Tempe, AZ to start my new life. I studied really hard and worked a lot to try to catch up to the brilliant people in my calculus class. I excelled at the industrial engineering topics, which was fortunate since that was my chosen degree, and I helped tutor some of my classmates in 
those subjects, while seeking help from my classmates on the subjects I struggled with, especially calc. My first roommate and I did not work out, she was too much of a princess and her school workload was light so she didn't like me studying all the time. I partied a lot with my suitemates, Layne especially, and Layne moved in with me after my roommate removed herself in protest to my hard-working lifestyle. I partied a lot with my engineering classmates. I met an apparently good Christian boy in my English class, Kyle, and he convinced me to start going to church with him, which I did. I went home briefly for the state marching band competition, met Jon's new girlfriend, caught up with some friends, but overall felt like a complete outside already. For Thanksgiving, I chose to stay in Arizona, so Kyle and I ventured down to Sierra Vista to spend the holiday with my grandparents. I think we were both somewhat interested in each other, he was good looking (although short), but we never really made it very far romantically, even despite my grandmother's best efforts to get us to sleep together. I retained my virginity, but messed around with guys up to the brink, including having them spend the night in my bed and then kicking them out so I could go to church. This was in the days of AIM (or AOL Instant Messenger), and I did from time to time see some of my church friends from back home online. Kelly, with whom I hadn't been terribly close with previously, IM'd me quite a bit, specifically checking that I was still a virgin. 
I went home for Christmas break and reunited with my now so-distant church friends. The church had relocated to the newly built one that was further away but with room to grow, and it was simultaneously familiar and foreign. But we broke the ice a bit, and towards the end of the holiday break, I started to feel at home again with my OG girlpack from church. And then I admitted to them that my life had not been Christlike while in college, and that I felt like maybe I should return to my Jesus Freak lifestyle. I told them about Kyle and about the church I was going to, although he wasn't always there and I didn't really have any other friends at the church. We talked about it and they all counseled me, and in the end, I resolved that my freewheeling party and mess around with boys should be over and done with, and that I would put forth a concerted effort to connect with other Christians on campus instead. They all, and I mean, about 12 or 14 of them, ALL agreed to check up on me weekly and hold me accountable so that I wouldn't slip back into the partygirl girl lifestyle. With Tarne, they all prayed over me, hands on my head, shoulders, back, and I wiped my tears dry with renewed energy and hope. I went back to school, joined up with an on-campus Christian group, continued going to church and actually switched from the rock 'n roll youth church service to the calmer, more serious normal adult church service. Some of my new friends from the on-campus group invited me out drinking, and I questioned them in light of the seeming hypocrisy. They brushed it off, "Jesus doesn't expect us to be perfect," and saw no conflict with having a little fun and being Christian. I may have drank with them, ended up making out with one of them and seriously crushing hard for both. They were in my programming class, so I sought their help on the homework I was falling behind on as it got harder. Layne moved in with me and she brought me out to parties again, and when I wouldn't go out, she'd bring the party to our dorm. Serge, a massive basketball player from Africa, barged in one day, asked me to dance, and so started one of the weirder relationships I've ever had. He and Kyle got along really well because they both spoke different dialects of French. Annoying-ass Tim became a quirky
friend and even made peace with Layne when she took care of his injury from a crow attack. Things got weirder and funnier, until we were having study parties in our underwear. Not once did any of those church friends back home reach out to me. Not. Once. Not any of them. Kelly, the one who had previously been checking if I was still a virgin, even stopped IM'ing me, and I found out through the grapevine that she got knocked up and was moving in with her baby daddy's parents on a farm somewhere. I finally got tired of the seeming hypocrisy I was portraying when I was kicking the guy out of my bed to go to church. So I thought long and hard about it, about the priest's selfish pride and how I hated his sermons that seemed to just be giant brags about himself, and I just saw hypocrisy every where I looked in the Christian community. My accountability partners especially, my friends of 8 years, these fellow Jesus Freaks who swore to do God's work and promised to check in on me, had all flaked. No letters, no phone calls, no emails, no texts, and no IMs. Nobody was there for me to help me make my decision. So I made the decision that made the most sense; I stopped going to church. Now, not going to church doesn’t make you immediately a non-Christian anymore than going to church means you're a devout Christian. It's just one indicator, one symptom of where your heart really lies. I still held my beliefs, albeit abridged in some ways to accommodate my party lifestyle without making me feel too guilty. So one the literal last day of freshman year, when I met Dallas, another "good Christian boy," hope spurred in my heart of hearts that maybe, MAYBE, Dallas would be the one to steer me back on course and help me see the good in Christians and church again. Dallas and I started dating early summer before I went back home for summer school at University of Chicago. I was a little astonished when he brought me to this big family get together, and found out at the party that it was a going-away party for him, sending him off to the Navy. I then learned, interestingly enough, that he'd be going to boot camp near Chicago, so he'd actually be closer than expected for the summer. He wrote me love letters all summer long, as did one of those other good Christians I had met at the on-Campus group, as he traveled around the world that summer. When Dallas graduated boot camp, his parents came out for the celebration, and then we were to all meet up for a movie and dinner. But, Dallas and his parents were running late. I watched about half the movie completely alone after waiting and waiting and waiting for them. When he finally came in and put his arm around me, I just cried. Once again, I felt burned my someone so completely flakey after all that time talking about his love for me over the summer. Ah well, I thought. At least I had that other guy. I returned to college no longer with Dallas and hopeful to start a new relationship with my world-traveling suitor. But, he had found another girl, and in his desperation to stay true to his Christian values, was prepared to marry her within weeks so that they could have sex.
My journey with religion has been very strange. Even years after leaving the church and closing myself off to Christians, I still retained many values around homosexuality and abortion. I've since turned my thinking around on homosexuality, deciding, for one, that it's only a sin if you subscribe to a religion that says it's a sin (in other words, you can't judge people by your own beliefs, only be their beliefs), and two, even if it's a sin, it's no different than the kind of sin I have lived in with my boyfriends over the years. And finally just deciding that love is love. I still believe strongly that abortions, especially later-term abortions, are wrong, but I don't advocate shutting things down because if desperate women want an abortion, they'll find ways of doing it illegally and dangerously, if safe and legal means aren't available. I've just made it a personal thing - if I don't think abortions are right, I won't have one. Even with many of my other values in tact, I don't really consider myself a Christian anymore because hypocrisy is one of the worst crimes in my book and I certainly don't want that mark on myself as a Christian or have Christianity get a mark of hypocrisy because of me. I also am seeing more and more that there are some flaws in the Christian mindset and institution, besides simple hypocrisy, and I don't want to ever blindly follow something like that. But more than anything, it’s the flakiness of the Christians that were so near and dear to my heart that broke my relationship with the Christian lifestyle.
Alright, so that took more words than I meant to on the Christianity thing, but this was meant to be about flakiness. So, on a much more light-hearted note, early last year I was inspired to create and develop a network of strong, intelligent and wonderful people, and I thought the best way to do it would be a book club. I put the idea out to my friends on facebook and LinkedIn, and got some really positive responses. I put a lot of work into it, creating a group page on facebook, setting up voting for books, designing fun graphics to make it look cool and exciting. We collectively picked the book, set the time for first meeting, and then I got to work reading and then preparing for the first session. And nobody came. Not one. Some gave me reasons (excuses), conflicts, etc. Some were just no-shows. But a book club can't really go on if nobody comes. Or so I thought. I reflected on the life and times of today, and decided maybe we could do it virtually instead. So I pivoted to a discussion forum. And, nothing. I finished the book, waited for anyone to say anything about it to me, and again, nothing. All flakes. All people who were super excited about the idea, had helped picked the book and the time, many thought it would help them to read more, or were doing it for other reasons like the networking, and in the end, none of them could even muster a response other than their excuses.
Over the years, I've invited people for dinner parties and various other things. With very few exceptions, my invitations are received with positive responses and then blown off time and time again. I've also reached out to interview people about various ideas big and small, and at best, the responses have been disappointing, uninteresting, uninspired, and useless. At worst, as you might expect, I get nothing. I know there are smart people out there. And indeed, I have some really smart people on my socials and in my personal network. Yet, the flakes reinforce the notion that I can succeed where others continue to fail, even when they say they want to do something. And on the flip side, when people respond poorly, it reinforces the notion that I'm smarter than everyone else, and the masses don't actually know what's best. Reference Henry Ford's line of, “If I had asked my customers what they wanted they would have said a faster horse.” So this flakiness, non-responsiveness or disappointing responding has ultimately only reinforced the pride I have in myself and the notion that the only person I can count on is me.
It's for these reasons I am really struggling right now on so many levels. The last few jobs I've had, I've felt like I am the smartest person in the room, and that I don't have an ally that can do much more than ineffective cheerleading. I love those people, by the way, don't get me wrong, I appreciate that I have people who will support me and make me feel like I'm not crazy. But I don't have smarter people around me to drive me to succeed, to act as a sounding board for my ideas, to challenge me to grow. I have become self-reliant for my development because nobody else is smart enough to keep up with me, let alone to challenge me. And that's just my professional life, in my personal life it's much of the same. My boyfriend may very well be my number one support, and he does a ton to put me at ease and let me deal with my issues, but he alone is not sufficient for the network of wonderful people I still wish to build around me. I've read several books recently that have touched on or outright touted the importance of building this support network, and I feel like all my efforts to do so have failed, so why try? Maybe I am enough for myself anyways.
Look, I love helping people, especially in certain ways in which I feel most impactful. I educate and train people, I tutor people from time to time, and I coach people a lot professionally, personally, psychologically (without crossing the line into therapy, I leave that to the professionals). I use some of my little wealth to donate to causes I believe in, and often to those my friends believe in to support their fundraising goals and personal journeys. I have been a sounding board for entrepreneurial ideas and a subject matter expert for people striving to learn more about various topics of interest. I think a lot about what other people need or could improve their lives, and how I can provide them and those things. I love doing all of this. I share my perspectives, when I have one, on challenging topics or controversial issues, and try to help people see the good and the right in things. And yes, helping people does fuel my pride a bit, but it also fills me with great joy that I can share my wealth and knowledge and it is equally humbling. But when people say they're on board, and then they flake on me… well that just ruins everything. It makes me think of the worst. It makes me decide the only person I can count on is me. It makes me think other people are useless, why do I need them in my life anyways?
And this is all just terribly sad to me. I want to have close friends, I want to have a professional network I can count on for advice and ideas, I want to feel supported and energized at work. But I feel like I have to do it all myself, I am my only source of fuel. That is why, I think, I have resorted to reading so much, the older I've become. I never liked reading and still don't usually enjoy it, but it gives me new things to think about in the ways that I wish I was getting from my network of friends and brilliant people. But then, I'm tired of these books' authors telling me to find other brilliant people to support me, because it doesn't work for me.
I don't know if its so-called "Cancel Culture" or if people really are just so overwhelmed with technology and working too hard and experiencing burnout like never before, or maybe it's just me and I'm not as inspiring and awesome as I think I am. Whatever is going on, I have no patience for it, and it's just sad and exhausting and disappointing to me.
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