It was one of those mornings* where I was feeling so miserable that I should have walked on past my roommate, said goodnight and curled up in bed. However, I held on to a feeble hope that he might come up with some antidote to make everything better, so I sat down in my chair with my self-pity and lit my cigarette.

It was that chest crushing anxiety that afflicted me, and one that just would not let go… even after a candlelight bath that I’d hoped would wash all my troubles away, it remained and flared with a burning intensity as I looked at the shoes of a man who’s admiration and approval I so intensely desired.

As the one sided conversation began, it was clear that my mood would stubbornly refuse to improve. I missed every joke. I got lost on every reference.

He chided me for my indulgence in the fantasy of the angst-ridden artist my impulse was to get up and smack him in the mouth for crossing the line, but instead I took another drag off my cigarette, and looked to the floor as I attempted to hold back my tears and replied tersely, “Probably.”

He even tried the old standard of poking fun at himself, to which I looked at him sadly and shook my head no and said, “I’ve got nothing.”

“I call bullshit,” he insisted.

I sighed once again, “Probably.”

Because as usual, he was probably right.

*Note: It occurred to me after I hit submit and got a few comments that less regular readers among these parts might not know that our home partly runs on a night shift schedule, so morning is bedtime for the majority in our household, this was how I ended my day… not began.

At the time I left my church, it was going through some growing pains. We had an interning assistant pastor who I had grown somewhat fond of who was doing the internship to require a denomination requirement to start a new church. When his internship ended was when the trouble started.

I didn’t know which church I should go to. The one with the pastor that I connected with but was 45 minutes away or the one that was 15 minutes away that I could get on time.

Frustrated with my feelings, I took it to the Internet and wrote a blog post about it to crowdsource opinions because… well… when I was young and growing up as the first generation of the digital age, that’s how I learned to deal with my feelings for better or for worse.

The head pastor saw it and didn’t take it kindly.

I don’t remember what the email he sent me said exactly anymore. It’s long lost in the ether…

I remember isolated snippets that context will forever be lost.

Mentally unstable. Unbecoming of a young Christian woman. You should delete blog posts where you talk about X. Don’t be a gossip. Don’t write about people online, talk to them first.

I’ll never forget how it made me feel.

Attacked. Hurt. Powerless. Less than. Scum.

Whether or not he intended it as harshly or as angrily as it translated in my brain, I’ll never know.

I didn’t even respond because the only thing I could think of to say was, “Fuck you,” and that didn’t seem like something that was becoming of a young Christian woman.

I just walked away and didn’t look back, it felt like the only dignified thing I could do at the time.

It was one of those incidents where everything changed in an instant.

I was wounded.

Suddenly, I was unsure of my own voice. Self-conscious of who might be reading from my “real life” and would might be the next to turn against me. People were not to be trusted. Ever.

I went from prolific blogger to the blogger who posted once a month because she was afraid to show weakness, lest she be seen as emotionally unstable for being candid about the dealings of her life.

Even now, the submit button gets pressed less for fear of being hasty and out of line… I hesitate to even write about the good things in my life that my loved ones are party to for fear that they’ll resent it.

As the years have gone by, I’ve realized that he wasn’t necessarily wrong in all of the things he said…

It was true that it’s better to talk to someone privately if you’re having an issue than to post it on the Internet for strangers to provide commentary for, and the fact that I gravitated toward that practice was very likely a result of a fear of intimacy.

It was true that I wasn’t exactly the most emotionally stable person in those days, and likely needed a therapist… and I found one a few years later.

His presentation of this information just sucked.

And who could blame him? I can’t imagine it was comfortable to watch your congregation split in two, even under healthy circumstances. No wonder he snapped.

I wasn’t capable of that level of empathy at 21… but at 29 I can say I forgive him.

And these itchy wounds? Might be a sign that something is healing.

It seems like ages ago now (but probably only a couple of weeks) but Rachele from Nearsighted Owl tagged me in a “tell us five facts about yourself” meme, and then I started writing an answer to it and then life happened and I got distracted when it was halfway written but I just remembered about it now so I figured that this was a surefire way to sneak in some more kitten photos without boring everyone to death with the fact that the only thing that seems to be going on in my life these days is furry and four legged.

1. I’m really bad at lighting matches because I’m afraid I’m going to set my fingers on fire. I went to light some candles tonight and all I had was matches because apparently the boys can’t leave me a lighter and it took four different match sticks before I got one lit, and then it took three more sticks to actually get a candle lit and then at that point I said “fuck it” and opened a package of spaghetti to find something I could light the other two with. Clearly, I’m special and took the “Don’t play with fire!” rule a little too far into adulthood.

2. I don’t sleep at night. Or rather, I rarely sleep at night anymore. I’ve always been something of a night owl and I fair so much better getting actual quality sleep if I crawl into bed around 5 or 6 AM and then wake up around 1 or 2 PM. I love how quiet and peaceful it is in the middle of the night when everyone’s asleep.

3. I’ve been sharing my life online since I was 13 years old. To give you a little perspective on that… I’m now 29. I’ve been at this whole online journaling and blogging thing for a really long time and I’ve seen technology evolve from writing posts in Notepad and uploading them with FTP onto your server into robust blogging services and platforms and witnessed the rise of social media… It’s been a wild crazy ride.

4. I’m spiritual but not religious. Though, I tend to prefer Rachelle Mee-Chapman‘s term for this… Relig-ish. I don’t consider myself to belong to any particular faith tradition, but I’m very interested in faith and studying the wisdom contained in many traditions, and I create meaningful spiritual practices for myself to keep myself in touch with that aspect of myself. It’s not something that I tend to talk a whole lot about publicly because I tend to get overwhelmed when I try to describe what I believe… but I’m more than willing to field any questions if you have them.

5. I’m addicted to independently published self-help e-books and e-courses. Maybe it’s because my life is in a serious amount of flux right now, but the type of blogger that I’ve been gravitating towards reading these days tends to be the life coach blogger, and many of these lovely ladies (and men, I’m not trying to be sexist here… it’s just that there are more ladies that I see) have created their own light a fire under your ass and inspire you to do better with your life course. I think I counted that I’ve bought 43 of them…. I might have a teeny tiny little problem with buying courses to help change my life. But rest assured, I bought most of them when they were on sale as a package deal or there was a name your own price special…. I was frugal about it!

Bonus Kitten Update: The girls are adjusting to life here quite well. Sally is laid back and chill about just about everything, and Izzy tends to be a little bit more vocal. Izzy seems to lag slightly developmentally behind Sally… She still needs a little extra help with things like cleaning herself and hasn’t quite figured out that it’s not really necessary to stick her whole body in the food dish.