From The Other Side

It was quite a year. 

A year of self reflection.

A year of growth. 

A year of painful realization.

A year of beauty.

A year of death.

A year of breaking free.

I still have much to learn and overcome. But, I feel like the struggle is behind me. I feel like I have peeled off the layer that I carried in burden, for so many years. I was able to strip away and leave behind the things that bound me. Those religious teachings. Those biblical rules. That toxic theological mindset I tried so hard to spin and pull and justify. 

Religion has no power over me anymore. The guilt I had to work through while letting go is finally cast off and left behind. I feel more alive without Christianity. I feel more at home and at ease without the pressures and the notions of a sky daddy. 

My logical mind is free. I am free. Free to be a free thinker who is sometimes open to the idea of spirituality and other times feeling like an existentialist. I can be all of these things and none of them. It's the most freeing thing.   

I don't fear church or the people in it. 

I don't fear hell.

I don't feel disregarded by God if/when things fall apart in life. 

I don't feel blessed by God when things go right.