The phrase runs over and over, around and through my head. It infects everything I touch, everything I sing, everything I think… I cannot get away. I wake in the morning to wonder why I’m here. I wander through my day wondering why I bother to go on living. I’ve cut ties from the nagging judgmental voice in my head. There’s no one left telling me what to do. One problem: I was never prepared for this moment.

There was this assumption that I would hold to the insistent and impossible expectations for the rest of my life… a life ever shortened by the attempt to fulfill such. The list was so long and so detailed it even told me to tie my shoes in an effort to be sure I caused no one else to stumble. “Have a relationship,” it said. Then it made every effort imaginable to make that commandment impossible.

I have no desire to pretend anymore that I’m satisfied with letters written to someone else thousands of years ago. No lover would accept that as enough to maintain an ongoing relationship. So let’s put that notion aside, shall we? Let’s get very real with ourselves and begin to treat the divine as though it is living since we so vehemently claim that it is. Let’s walk very far away from this notion that others have any say whatsoever in how and whom we worship and be truly respectful instead of hateful, but presented “with love.” Let’s keep our appendages inside the ride from now on as no one really needs to be bloodied by our own flailing foolishness.

Let’s figure out why we’re really here. The reason I was given was so abstract as to be an impossible deterrent to ending my personal existence. In a nutshell: not good enough. I need a reason that justifies the food I eat each day that could have been better utilized if given to another… because, what did I do today? I managed to make it to the end.

Sex and money. That’s the answer, really. At least that’s been my experience. Occasionally you run across someone that wants something else, but generally it all comes down to sex and money. It’s like people no longer value friendship, music, philosophy, art or “by hand” fabrication of any kind. What do you do when the thing you have to provide to the world is undervalued? Even in ancient Israel the church musicians were paid (via meat and other foodstuffs from the offerings and money from the tithes). What makes us any less important today that we should be providing this service for free?

Look back in history. There’s always been artists of all kinds: musicians, philosophers, writers, weavers, sculptors, painters, wood workers, metal smiths, seamstresses and tailors, hatters, jewelers, glass blowers, cobblers, storytellers, dancers… the list goes on and on. The ability to innovate and create- this is how we connect and relate to the divine. So why are we not provided for in such a way that allows us to do that? It is a blatant hypocrisy that a faith would tell you your purpose is to glorify the divine and then not support you in such a way that you might pursue that calling.

And sex? May the divine have mercy and rescue every single young female still entrenched in the ways and thoughts I grew up with. Be a perfect wife. Become a mother. Satisfy the needs of your man, because it really is a need, after all. Bullshit. Those who abstain do not die from the effort. No woman is less because she is unwed. Absolutely no one on this earth requires a legal or religious union to another in order to be the pinnacle of themselves as a person. The choice to take a mate is just that: a choice. Inside that chosen union they choose to love and need one another so that together they might achieve greater or other things they could not otherwise do alone. It is not necessary. It neither cheapens nor enhances anyone’s worth. It is a personal choice that we make.

And now we’ve arrived at the heart of the matter. It’s personal. Everything we were taught to stick our noses in was, in fact, personal. I’m not required to open any door of my soul to another for any reason whatsoever. My soul is my own and I have every right to close every door and window until I believe the climate fair enough for a cross-breeze. On the scratched side of the coin, I am also not under any obligation to acquire a crowbar and force my way into the soul of another. Anyone who sits walled away in their own tower awaiting some shiny suit of armor to haul them out is fully capable of screwing up their own courage and opening their own doors. If they are paralyzed by fear, I shall stand under the window and sing to them. In the end, coming down to mingle must be done under their own power. It is neither my responsibility nor my fault if they do not come down.

All this time and my mind has been programmed to ask the wrong question. Any intellectual knows that finding the proper answer is far less important than asking the proper question. I have recently begun the battle to leave this flawed line of thinking far behind and replace it with something that will yield superior results. I have recently begun to ask myself, “What do I want from me?”

peace     acceptance    love     happiness

That was my answer. This is what I want from myself and for myself. I’ve written it down now and placed it in front of all of you… opened a tiny window into a room of my soul. It is suddenly so much more real. It is suddenly so much more obtainable because it is concrete.

Let the journey continue…