Let's Start Over, I'm Blackrook and I'm Here to Get Some Answers to Important Questions

[Creed of Heresy]

Anyway, let's start over.

My name is Blackrook and I'm a Catholic in crisis and I'm here to get some answers to some questions I have.

Catholicism has been a great comfort to me when I had feelings that I didn't want to live, and felt like killing myself.

I felt God's presence, literally reaching out to me and telling me I was loved.

Even now, in my current state of pessimism, I can look forward to something better after my bitter struggle in this world is complete.

What can atheism offer to replace that?

See. Next time? Next time, start like this. Humility and civility are things I can get behind. I can respond to civility and humility. I can't respond to arrogance and generalization. Not civilly, anyway.

So. Allow me to tell you a quick story. It's the story of a guy named LG Mills.

LG Mills was born into this world January 27th, 1988, at 9:45pm. At 10:30pm, one Diana Mills died, 45 minutes after giving birth to LG, leaving behind her newborn son, his two older brothers, and her husband on this mortal plane. Three years later, Gregory Mills I boards a military plane and deploys to Iraq to fight in the first Gulf War. Gregory Mills I, the father of the three sons, dies due to friendly fire, leaving his three children wards of the state. The children are left in the care of one Rose Mills, their grandmother. She takes the death benefits money left in their name, meant solely for them, approximately $150k worth, and jets to Las Vegas, leaving her grandchildren in the streets of DC in the dead of winter. Well, mid-March but this year was one of the worst for winters in Virginia/D.C. Eventually they are taken in by social services, and divided up into foster homes. They do not see each other for another eight years.

The foster society at this time is even less regulated than it is now. Foster families and adoptive families that take in these three brothers turn out to be people just doing it for the monthly stipend checks which they spend on themselves. There are a few good foster families for each, but for the most, the people participating are gaming the system for their own gain, and some are downright malevolent individuals.

LG Mills is now 24. He suffers from relapsing schizophrenia, bipolar 2 disorder, depression, schizoid personality, and recurring psychoses, not to mention acute insomnia, PTSD, and extremely intense night terrors.

He is me. My life is a pile of shit. But I don't need a false promise to get me through my day. I live by a different creed.

"Hurt me with the truth, don't comfort me with a lie."

Pain is visceral. It is real. It is something that reminds me I am human. It reminds me I am alive. Because I can feel it in so many forms. I hate the feeling. But simply feeling is all I need. I live for experience. I live for the sake of existing, of being aware, of seeing this massive fucking universe [or at least as much as my limited eyes will allow me to see when I'm outside at night, anyway]. I can be dragged through the gutter more. 24 years later I'm still getting dragged through it yet I have no god, no false promises, and I can say I have had it at LEAST as bad as you have, maybe even worse [case in point you have a wife and therefore have likely gotten laid more in the last year than I have if you've gotten laid more than once].

What is the difference between us? It's simple. You convince yourself, you LIE to yourself that without this little tether to what you think is sanity you will fall into full depression but the funny thing is you WILL find another reason to live if you seek it out. You sought, clearly, but you found the easiest, most contrived of answers. Look deeper. Look for something more grounded in reality. After all if your life is shit and you say you can look forwards to utter bliss and happiness in the next life...why not just kill yourself? Or, failing that, have someone else kill you? Or join the military and volunteer for front line combat and be the most gung-ho Rambo badass ever and end up full of holes?

Because you AREN'T sure of this. You THINK you are certain but you aren't. Subconsciously you are aware of the very real possibility that there is nothing afterwards. All the questions without answers or with answers far too convenient to be believable, it's all stacked up but your faith blinds you to it because you tell yourself that to let this all in is dangerous.

Trust me. It isn't. I mean it when I say trust me. I've lived the same experience.