Spiritual Girl

Both of my parents are very ardent atheists, especially my dad, who has probably every book ever written on the religion-bashing front in his collection. You might even describe him as militant- he thinks the world would be a much better place without any religion, and basically believes that religions are the root of a whole lot of social problems and not much else. To be fair, he has a small piece of a point, though in my opinion he overdoes it. He loves to bring up religion with people and debate them on it, especially at family gatherings- which is interesting because his whole side of the family is solidly Christian. Every Thanksgiving when we visit his side of the family it inevitably turns into a politics/religion debate tournament. Dad, remember what you aren't supposed to bring up at parties?

He seems to get a little more extreme in his views as he gets older, whereas I'm the opposite pretty much. As you might imagine, I basically absorbed my parents' beliefs as a child and just parroted them to the world, which is what most kids seem to do. But at the same time I've always been a very spiritual person at heart. While I was copying my parents' ideas outwardly, I was busy making up my own religion in secret.

Thinking about it now amuses me very much because while I thought I had this secret religion that no one knew about I'm sure it was pretty obvious. I had all sorts of daily rituals involving leaves and trees and dancing around outside. As I hit puberty candles and altars were added, and it got more focused on small meaningful objects. At this point it took more of a new-agey turn because of my rather new-agey friends. We used to get together and have ceremonies and make up deep things to talk about. We had an elemental theme most of the time, and of course lots of candles and tea. It was really fun and felt meaningful in a way that I hadn't experienced before.

By then I was starting to feel tired a lot, and I remember when I had to stop the dancing ritual because I almost fainted once and could hardly stand up after the short exercise. I used to dance to specific songs that resonated with me for whatever reason, but even after I stopped being able to sustain a dance for an entire song I kept the concept. I would put a song on endless repeat and draw or think or arrange sacred objects in patterns on my floor by candlelight.

These rituals helped me feel safe even once the hallucinations started. I started to sink into that horrible mental haze full of monsters and paralysis and horror movie nightmares, and I had to find some way to explain it, some way to not feel like I was going insane. I theorized that what I was experiencing was impressions of ghosts, which makes sense if you think about it- the banging and creaking sounds on waking, the feeling of hands grabbing me when I was falling asleep, the intense reality of the nightmares. It sounds like every ghost story I'd ever heard.

This belief got me through a lot. On the one hand, there was a reason for what I was experiencing that made some logical sense, so I didn't worry about being crazy anymore. Plus it made these impressions and hallucinations seem like they were someone else's experience that I was only seeing, but that wasn't directly impacting my life. I kept up my own rituals, sometimes incorporating things from what Narcolepsy was throwing at me, and my secret religion got more complex. And now it really was a secret, because I was a teenager and therefore actually good at hiding things from parents.

When I went away to college I began to question the beliefs I had built up. After all, that's what college is for. About my sophomore year or so I had a total life crisis and switched completely to thinking that I was actually insane. I realized I needed help, but made the mistake of assuming every single spiritually-inclined feeling I had was a result of whatever was wrong with me. This made me really depressed- the most depressed I've ever been, actually, and believe me when I say I've been all the way at the bottom. I fessed up to my parents, who helped me through multiple doctors until I landed in the capable hands of my first sleep neurologist. I was a typical case, minus the cataplexy, and a sleep study confirmed it. I had my answer, but that didn't make me happy.

Completely religionless, then, I left for my study abroad experience in Tokyo. While there I learned many things, including how to be a spiritual person again. I slowly woke up from the haze as the Xyrem started to work on me. And by the time I left, I had a philosophy and spirituality once again all my own. In the years since it's had time to cure a little, and nowadays I think I've pretty much found where I want to be. It's a bit Kung Fu Panda (there is no secret ingrediant, lol), and live-and-let-live, and I've found that I still value nature and the elements and sacred objects. I do believe in something greater, but it isn't quite the same as a god; it's more like a universal feeling of connectedness among living things. I don't see it as sentient, exactly, but it's still very profound to me.

At some point my parents noticed I was diverging from their beliefs. For a little while this caused some tension in the house, but eventually my dad learned not to start religion-bashing tangents in front of me. I've been forced to stick up for myself on multiple occasions when I would rather not, and eventually got it across that I don't approve of the intolerance that some people, on any side of a religion debate, tend to express. So now it's not something we talk about, and that's fine with me.

I'm not sure how I would identify now. I'm no longer an atheist, but I really don't think I need a new label. My own sense of spirituality has always been a private thing, and it will continue that way. I don't feel the need to convert anyone or even explain all this to the people in my life. It's just something to keep close, something that gives deeper meaning to my life and the world around me.