I am not an atheist because I believe in myself

An attempt to write about the weirder things in life

Or

I am going to give myself permission to write and share something that probably doesn’t make sense

Or

There Is Nothing Wrong With Me
part 2

I was burdened with myself. Laying in bed. I couldn’t sleep, again. Another night knowing the power of earlier thoughts of “I hope this doesn’t prevent me from falling asleep tonight”
But this time I surrendered into over intellectualizing it. I know it won’t help me sleep.
Whatever, it’s what I do, and if I am going to lay here for 8 hours, might as well be me.
I would drift off---concrete concepts would become fluid, and I would recognize my dream state, recognize I recognized my dream state, be mad at myself for “waking myself up” and continue on this cycle.

Yep, cycles of shame and self hatred.
Yep, I won’t fix them tonight.
Yep, I am causing this myself, yep, yep, yep.
I know, this time, there is no point in trying to fix anything.
Is my ego stronger than other peoples? Have I not been meditating enough? Why is this happening to me. Blame.

I’m tired of wrestling with all the broken parts of me.
I surrendered, once again, to the solutions, as is the solution to nearly every single problem I have ever had:

There is nothing wrong with me

The problem: not believing it

I didn’t sleep this time. Chanting “there is nothing wrong with me” to fix the brokenness doesn’t work.
Ok.
I didn’t sleep, but I was ok with it. Which makes a really big difference.
It’s ok.
Remember?

She is 14 and perfect, but her perfectionism causes her lots of problems. She knows she is perfect, nothing is wrong with her, she just doesn’t feel safe enough to believe it. We were on a walk in the dark fog, we chose to leave our jackets, both knowing the cold helps us feel alive, but we just said it’s more fun. She told me she knows she is god.

We weren’t really talking about anything deep. She doesn’t know any of my beliefs. I didn't ask her. She is just a smart, amazing human who knows her power.
But sometimes forgets.

When I am feeling low about myself, I always think about what I would say to my kids that I mentor.

We were doing Meisner work in my improv rehearsal. We were watching two people go back and forth, making subjective or objective statements about each other. The tension and nervousness created obvious patterns of compulsions. The two in the hot seat were ‘trying to do it right’ but their emotions fogged their vision of what we in the audience could so clearly see.

It’s like, that bad relationship you see your friend in.
They can’t see how obvious it is, because they are too...in it.
Gets foggy.

I was in it. Fear, emotions. Lizard Brain screaming. Fight or flight, you know?

I’m in bed, scared of my own thoughts.

If I am god—

what is self-sabotage?

Let me try to explain that…

A guy on the internet once explained to me (they do that) that The Patriarchy doesn’t exist because gender stereotypes hurt men too. He imagined that I believe in some secret underground society of men who got together and planned this all, but it didn’t work out the way they thought.

That is not what The Patriarchy is and that's not what god is.*

The patriarchy is a system, and I am part of it, and you are part of it. When we make the choice to laugh at rape jokes, or scuff at men who wear skirts, we are feeding The Patriarchy.

When we litter, or steal a Kombucha tea from Whole Foods, we are contributing to a world with more trash and more theft.
The world we live in.

I don’t believe in a man in the sky who is up there keeping track of my good or bad choices.

I also don’t believe Karma is some type of cosmic energy that is keeping track for future lives to be good or bad, or to have to pay anyone back.**

I believe the consciousness I have now will end. And my body will dissolve back into this big messy world in which we , collectively, as constantly as our brains can understand the concept of constantly, are in charge of what happens to us.

*My god, at least, you have the right to have a different god than my god and that’s cool too.

**Again, you do you Boo.