Wandering

I prayed to God honestly and deeply in what seemed to be like the first time in weeks...

Now, I've been really skeptical about religion for a while now. Religion as a whole is okay, unless it is used for hate.

When my parents were taking me to church, on the inside I groaned and on the outside I mumbled. Why sit there for an hour and a half if I could be doing something physically productive with my time? Why go to an establishment full of hypocrites? Why listen to a story that I had heard many times before, and not even half-heartedly sing and pray next to people who seemed to do it so well? Most people who go are just trying to get their tickets punched so they can "reserve" a spot in Heaven, anyway, I concluded. If there even is one...

I walked out of the car dragging my feet. My parents, fed up with my attitude and apathy, walked on ahead with my brother to attend mass. I felt no guilt for not being with them. I, having played the part of peacemaker in the family many months ago, was fed up with their petty arguments and on-and-off love, and didn't care if we didn't go to church as a family. I ended up going in 5 minutes later, to give my brother some donation money and to see that my mom was all the way at the front and my dad was sitting at the very back. Hmph. So much for families.

Wanting to suppress some of my anger, I decided that maybe going into the little chapel would help me. The chapel, after all, was always quiet and it used to help me a lot back in my more religious days. But as soon as I walked in, my anger didn't die down, it only felt like it was being suffocated behind something. I started to hate myself for entering someone else's holy place feeling like this, and my breaths became short and slow.

So I decided to take a power walk. Parks usually make me happy, so I ventured off in that direction. Once at the park I saw parents sitting together, watching their kids play a baseball game. They all seemed so... together. Something that my family doesn't usually have. A man riding a lawn mower started to buzz on over in my direction, which gave me even more anxiety. This didn't help. I quickly walked away and found refuge in aggressively climbing up and down the outdoors steps of the church's school. The cameras watching me probably thought I was crazy. I started to wonder whether anyone was monitoring them, and whether I was going to have to be kicked off the premises for lingering on a non-school day, so I trudged back down and wandered over to the basketball court.

Outside the entrance of the court was a small bench, surrounded by an overgrowth of vines and shrubs. Dozens (literally dozens!) of butterflies fluttered around and on the bench, and in the bushes around me... Yes. This was where I would stay.

To help you get a better picture.. [Florida is known for its Zebras...

these kinds!

and Gulf Fritillaries.

such as this baby.

I've always had a fondness for butterflies. Upon closer inspection, there were also caterpillars (eep!) all around me, nesting and feeding off of the leaves around me. Oddly enough, they didn't frighten me.. 

Even though they looked kinda like this:]

eep!

I tried to coax some of the butterflies onto a flower I was holding. I probably looked like a lonely dork, playing with bugs, but they entertained me.

After a half hour or so, not wanting to enter the church and see my "happy" family again, I made my way back to the chapel, skeptical of whether or not I was going to feel inspired while sitting in silence. But when I walked in, this time was different.

I sat in the corner, and just took in my surroundings. A few chairs, an object of adoration, four people or so, quietly reflecting. The more I stared at the walls and the flowers, the more my heart started to ache. The more compelled I felt to start praying, the more stubbornly opposed to it I became.

But I gave in. I tried to think about everything that had gone wrong in my life starting from that day, and worked my way backwards to the beginning of my days. The more I thought about every mistake and every issue, the more I realized how hopeless I was becoming, and how everything around me simultaneously started falling down. Even though I had suffered from what I'm sure was depression many months ago, and a few years back, I realized that what made me get through it was hope and a will to fight. It might've been God inside me, or it might've been just me, but that one small light shining through the crack was all I needed to focus on to push me through.

And I wasn't sure why or to whom, but I prayed. I prayed and cried and felt my emotions spill over like water at the top of the glass. A shard of conscience, a part of something that had been already smashed to pieces so many times, whispered to me to start fighting again.

And it was God who called to me. Not anyone else's God, but my own. Not exactly the one they teach in schools or preached about at that one church, but the one who cared about me despite how fucked up I had made myself to be. The one who surrounded me while sitting alone in a garden, the one who resided in my writing when I let all my feelings out, the one who quietly stood back as I made mistakes over and over, because happiness and success weren't just going to be handed over to me on a plate. No. I had to fight for them, just as I had to fight everyone and everything, including myself, to find God again.

I'm more of a spiritual person than a religious person anyway, and I'd rather have a God that is for me to share in this story to you than a God that is what everyone makes out to be and teaches to you.

Gosh, I've got to remember this memory and hold on to it.