Carnival God

"I don't believe in love," I told Chasity.

"Well, then you don't believe in God," she responded in a matter-of-fact fashion. Her head was lowered and her eyes rose up to me, her mouth open. Then her eyes rolled down to her spicy tuna sushi roll as she plucked one up with her chopsticks and popped it into her mouth with a suctioning sound.

"Uh, you know what I mean. In a romantic sense."

The setting: An Asian restaurant in Savannah.  Chasity and I met up to catch up with each other.  We hadn't been spending too much time together because of our busy schedules and because her new forty-one-year old boyfriend was taking up what little free time she had.

"He's greaaat," she said, using a baby doll voice that most girls use when describing a male of special interest or a really cute puppy. And this is how we got on the topic of love, which led to God. About the time of our conversation, I had been crushed by a number of people and was conceding to my bitterness, embracing it even. I was also funneling those bitter emotions into my senior film, so that bitterness was skidding on the surface of my skin, real and raw within me.  Consequently, I was a bit allergic to Chasity's warm and fuzzy feelings that radiated off her stuffed cheeks.

No, I didn't believe in love but I was okay with God. Or so I thought. Of course, Chasity was right, even if I didn't want to admit it. Christians believe that God is love and love is God. It's basically interchangeable. And to say you don't believe in love would make most people think you don't believe in the god that is love itself.  I tried to cover my butt by saying I was talking about romantic love but really, I was talking about all love.   You might be thinking, "Well, what about your parents and the love they have for you?"  Yeah, I guess they love me but I almost feel like parents/family don't count because that kind of love feels more instinctual, somewhat forced.  Like, would they really love me, still want me to be around, if I wasn't there child and their responsibility?  I think about that a lot.

The kind of love I'm talking about is the kind of love you choose.  I think it's much harder to choose to love someone rather than love someone just because they've always been in your life and that love is really more of a concept rather than an actual affection. 

And I feel like, in my life, people have chosen not to love me at a certain point. It feels like people just kind of cut contact with me after a certain length of time, whether it be after a few months or even after a few years. Now, I don't want to act like it's entirely everyone else's fault. It's certainly possible that I could be to blame but I honestly don't know what I've ever done differently to make people turn away. I'm like a new toy whenever I meet someone new. They open me up and play with me and once they've put me through all the motions of being funny and informative, and when the novelty of my spring-loaded missile launching and laughter wears off and after my hair has been cut and I've been dragged through the mud, they are done with me. I am thrown at the bottom of the toy box and I'm forgotten as only a six-year-old with no attention span can forget something.

As I've said, this might indeed be my fault. Perhaps, like a toy, I can only do certain things. I'm only so pliable. I have a certain amount of weapons and can take on only so many attachments. So maybe it's my own limitations that limit the love people had for me. Perhaps it just comes down to the fact that I'm not all that interesting after a certain point. Maybe after a while, I have nothing more to offer. And maybe that's okay.

I don't want to just come right out and say I feel betrayed because that sounds way too over dramatic and lame and like I'm a victim and it's me against the world. But, it’s the closest comparison I can come up with. Saying I’ve been betrayed also negates the fact that I am responsible for the dissolution of friendships and as I said, I'm sure I'm also responsible. Yet, it still hurts to the point where I don't understand the concept of friendship.

I don’t refer to people as friends anymore. It’s a foreign concept to me now. Using that word leaves my tongue thick and dry.  What is a friend? What’s the difference between a friend and an acquaintance? Similar interests? Respect? Loyalty? Love? I much prefer to the term acquaintance because that is what I am comfortable with. Acquaintance has the feel of friendship but without the close connection, without the promise of always being present. Acquaintance is safe and lacking the strings of attachment and the insecurity of abandonment. I don’t use the term friend and I no longer actively acquire friends because friendship is too volatile, too slippery and unpredictable. It takes work and the social, moral and connective skills that I believe I no longer possess. It takes care and heart and genuine kindness, abilities that have been lost to me long ago.

I also don’t use the word love in reference to people anymore. This is probably the saddest thing of all. I don’t tell people I love them except for my mom but that goes back to the parent thing as described earlier. And when I do find the words dribbling out of my mouth, I literally have a reaction of revulsion. It’s as if the word has stuck to my lip like a string of snot that catches on your mouth when you blow your nose. It’s as if I’m making some grand declaration of something I cannot uphold, as if I know I’m lying and everyone else does, too. When I was younger, even as my love was being whittled away by the world, I had held on for as long as I could. I tried to spread love, tried to show that it was at least good for other people. And even when I felt my own ability to love was collapsing underneath me like a creaky foundation on which I could no longer stand, I had hoped love for other people. Now that’s gone as well. It’s not like I wish hate upon the masses but wishing love for people is hard because it’s difficult to wish something for someone when you simply don’t believe in it. It would be like me wishing for a leprechaun to slip out from under your bed and pull out a giant cauldron of shiny gold coins for you. Sure, it would be nice if it happened but I won’t hold my breath for its occurrence.

And I have to wonder, if God and love are one in the same and I have sworn off love with the utmost conviction, has that lopping off of love somehow crossed over into my fading faith?

A year or so ago, I never would have imagined I would have sunk as low as I have. I never would have, could have imagined my faith being virtually gone. I’ve never been an upstanding Christian but I tried in my own way, despite my human weakness, to be as good as I could and to be a good example for others. And then college happened and everything spun out of control and after college I was trapped at home and with no job and I almost felt abandoned not only by people that I once held close, but by God for not providing. Yes, I know that is so entirely selfish of me to think that way. But, I did. Plus, working at the electronic bingo facility put me in a funk. Is this what God wanted for me, after all the hard work and ambition to do better than work a menial job and this is what I get? Not to mention the fact that everyone else around me seemed to be doing great. It’s not that I believe Christianity is an exchange of good behavior for good jobs, friends and money. I know it doesn’t work like that and I never expected it to but at the same time, there’s that ingrained sense of “Hey, what about mine?” that goes through my head. It’s almost as if all the goodness I ever did wasn’t worth anything, especially after seeing not so nice people getting their way. I thought God would help me out a bit more than He did.

Putting the rewarding aspect of Christianity aside, I also just wanted to hear from God. I wanted God to tell me that, even if He wasn’t going to help me out right now, to at least let me know that things would be okay in the future. I needed some reassurance, some guidance, some validation. I never heard from God or felt Him touch me in any way. I prayed so hard and squeezed my eyes and hands so tightly together that they cramped up. I bore a hole into the blackness cast by my eyelids and felt my heart jump forward in sincerity. The sincerity was met with silence. And this is the way it has always been. I have prayed for salvation more times than there are grains of sand and yet I never felt saved. I never had that feeling of serenity wash over me like I had seen and heard of. For a short amount of time, I found some solace in the notion that God treats you like you’d be treated by people on earth. Some people like touch. They like to be touched and like to touch others. Some people don’t like touch as much. I am someone who doesn’t necessarily like touch so that’s why I don’t feel God physically. Now, I’m not so sure about that answer. I think it's almost a cop out, an easy excuse as to why I don't feel God. I pray and pray and nothing ever changes and I never feel better. Christians tell me I’m not praying hard enough or long enough, that I’m not reciting the right words when I pray, that I’m not reading my Bible, that I’m doing too much talking and not enough listening. I think those are all convenient answers. I also think that it shouldn’t be that hard to talk to God. If He is everywhere and so accessible, why should I have to follow a certain set of steps just to say “wassup”? If I’m really in need of Him, shouldn’t He come swooping through? Religion shouldn’t be about rules and regulations. If it’s all about love, why can’t I skip the red tape and just get to the heart of the matter?

God is like a carnival game.  The game operator tells you the rules just like a preacher would.  It all sounds simple enough.  You knock down the milk bottles and get a prize, say a prayer and be absolved of your sins.  But as you go through the motions, you realize it's not as simple as that.  See, you have to hit the middle milk bottle that holds them all together and you have to pray with all of your heart, not a fraction of your heart or half of your heart.  The Holy Spirit pops in and out of your consciousness like a whack-a-mole and every time you think you've made contact, it slips away and leaves behind a black hole of emptiness, mocking you with a buck-toothed smile, teasing and always out of reach.  You spend so much time trying to knock down those bottles and so much energy trying to find God until you grow tired and weary with empty pockets and empty pews.  After a while, you wonder if it's all rigged.

It doesn't help when I'm exposed to all these stories about God coming to people, reaching out to them and changing their lives, these people who never even wanted to know God.  If He can so easily work his holiness on these people, why can't He for those who actually want it?  I'm jealous of those who are secure in their Christianity, in their God who they know loves and cares for them.  I'm jealous of those who sought and found God and those who were sought out by God.  It seems so easy for some and so impossible for me, reaching my hand so far out only to feel the humid air, dislocating my shoulder and setting in more pain, building it and spreading it out.  How much more pain will it take until submission feels sincere?

I'm left, like I always am, wondering what to do about it all.  I've gotten good at expressing my problems, spewing syllables and slime and slapping them together into these unfocused diatribes in a desperate hope that I can make sense of the mess that I have become and the mess that has been made of me by outside factors.  Yet, the sense never comes.  Questions produce questions while answers flitter away.  Relationships are hard.  Consequences are hard.  Decisions are hard.  But when it comes to God?  How do you make your way around that obstacle?  Emily Dickinson said the brain is the weight of God.  God is only as vast, as powerful, as potent as my brain can imagine but if my brain is defective, does this impairment keep me from knowing God as I should?  Am I just incapable of being in alignment with God's love because my head won't allow for it?  Or maybe my head has nothing to do with this divine separation?  No one has enough head space for God.  Yet, there He is, living within so many people.  Maybe it just goes back to what I told Chasity that night at the Asian restaurant.  I don't believe in love.  I no longer have the capacity to feel anything positive.  It's not a depressing sentence, just a declarative one.  'Cause I'm actually fine with my heart condition these days.  So, maybe closing off my heart to all things closes it off to God as well.  I might verbally state I want God to fill the void but subconsciously I'm still warding off all who try to enter.

Once again, it all comes down to me, comes down to the fact that it's my fault.  Same old story.  Yet, I can't keep wondering why God can't come to my rescue, saving me from the world and from myself.  Despite all the internal conflict that might be hampering any kind of connection I'd want to make, why can't He just cut through the cords of contention and pierce my pathetic heart?  I guess no one will give you a plush prize for free.  Expressing a desire for it isn't enough.  You gotta pay up, take your shots and want it bad enough to keep fighting for it despite the odds, despite the dwindling resources.  And maybe sometimes you have to stop and go home.  But the carnival isn't going anywhere and that prize will always be sitting on the shelf, waiting for you to come back and take another swing.