Losing my Religion

I will ask my sister and mother to look away at this point. They don't like these entries.

So 2011, I am already breaking my resolution and analysing. I have been off school sick for three days after my Mutant ninja cold evolved into yet another illness. It's been a vomiting bug followed by violent dry cough that caused serious asthma issues, next up was a rush of snot that can surely be compared to the Australian floods mixed at the same time with severe sinus pain, a result of the volcano like pressure that seemed to be exploding out of my nose every second and is now a chest infection...the snot went south for the winter only the south didn't want it and is trying to expel it as fast as the French are trying to expel gypsies. This people has allowed me and my head time together. We should never really be allowed time alone. We tried to distract ourselves by watching the chronically bad but utterly addictive 'In Treatment'. A series loaned to me about a counsellor played by the delectable Gabriel Byrne. Well he was before I watched him play a typical man in a mid life crisis and ruined all my illusions of him. It follows four of his sessions and then his session with his own counsellor as his marriage unravels when he falls for his 30 year old patient who is in love with him. She is seductive, gorgeous, whiny as hell and because it's a therapy session totally self involved. Which is kind of the point of going to a counsellor to address yourself but I'm afraid I couldn't forgive her for it. I got through the entire 49 half hour episodes in two days. It didn't have the desired effect to keep me distracted. Of course not. It's about counselling and the issues addressed by the various patients were exceptionally easy to be turned onto myself. And so my head and I begun the dialogue we are not supposed to be allowed this year.

In these self analysing counselling sessions I am conducting with myself at the moment I have realised that what is going on with me at the minute could be compared to losing my religion. It feels like all my belief systems, dreams, hopes, needs are being challenged. Everywhere I look I don't like what I see. I don't understand anything anymore. Including myself. This quickly spins me into really dark places where I literally don't know what to do with myself. Is this the human condition? Is this why we have religion? To stop us from unravelling. I'm beginning to understand it's place in the evolutionary process after all and why people cling so desperately to it. So what of your average atheist? We all have belief systems we live by, be it about love, work, art, morals, death. What happens when something happens that challenges them all and every single thing you believed in turns on it's head until you can't see the ground anymore. What happens to you? Because everything I have defined myself by, and let's be honest we define ourselves by the people around us, has disappeared. I don't know who I am or what I am supposed to be anymore. Everything that made me myself, as I thought I was is no longer there. I imagine this is what people call an existentialist crisis. But without God and his various guises and prophets how do you pull yourself out of it?

Why has everything disappeared? Why don't I believe in anything anymore? I can't really explain it but I will try. I think I have always defined myself through my relationships with others (as we all do) and never more so than when I am in love. This is done unconciously. And I'm all alone in Paris with new friends who don't know me really. My old friends are so far removed from my experience here that it is impossible to relate it to them. And the longer it goes on the more alone I feel. The more alone I feel the more I lose a sense of who I am. Without the reflection of others. This in turn has turned into a cycle where I get so lost, confused, hysterical that when I do speak with my friends it is this state they see and therefore this state I see reflected back at me. And it's not comfortable to watch, for either of us. And I don't recognise myself. And I hate myself for falling apart. And in that I start questioning again, who am I? And on and on it goes. I don't know how to stop it whilst I am here. When I was in Hitchin and London over Christmas after a week of collapse I felt like myself again. I felt like I knew who I was. And yeah, I'm sad about a break up and confused about it but I could cope. The minute I'm in Paris I'm totally lost again and I don't know how to get through the next six months. I can't make friends as well as I would like because I don't really want to show this Hannah to anyone. And the only Hannah I see reflected whilst I'm in Paris is the one who's a mess and I hate looking at her. She makes me angry. She's self involved and pitying and pathetic. And she needs to grow a pair.

How can we know ourselves without looking through the eyes of those looking at us. Is it possible? Is this why people need God...so they can see themselves in his eyes and forever be happy? What is this power of the mind to judge ourselves through our deeds and our relationships and does it ever stop? Seriously, Ryan Gosling is never going to marry me whilst I'm a sissy like this.

And now the mutant ninja is evolving into a sore throat. Dear God, please forgive me for not believing in you...I take it all back...where is Christopher Hitchens when you need him?

I guess, ultimately what I am trying to say is the more I learn about the human condition and how our minds work and define themselves the more I lose of my original belief systems. As someone who has a huge hunger to learn and understand and eats up knowledge like candy I am disillusioning myself with every new discovery. The minute you start to dissect the human condition and the power of our psyche is the minute you lose the mystery and therefore beauty that is life. I have always believed in feelings and instinct and the power of our emotions but as I have got older and at times found them too overwhelming I have started to examine them in a more scientific manor in order to get control back. But all I've done is turn everything I think and feel into some theory that can be explained by psychology. And that is deeply depressing. Letting go of the little girl I have been clinging to all my adult life has turned me into a terrible cynic...maybe letting her go is not the answer. Maybe the Bible is one big fairytale to keep us happy enough to put one foot in front of the other and keep going, even when things are bad.

This week we were exploring our childhood selves. I think I needed to be at this week of school more than any. Because seven year old Hannah was so sure of who she was and her place in the world and that all her dreams would come true and she was loved and never questioned it. Instead of letting her go in order to grow up, maybe I need to cling onto her. She was pretty damn cool.

All of this has started because one man chose not to love me. That is the scariest part of it all. That one person can have that power. And that I have let them. What does that say about my relationship with men? Never again. Not even Ryan can make me lose my balance like this. Although to be fair on myself I think he had that power because he did it when I was already questioning myself by being here in Paris, away from everyone and at a school that asks me to dissect myself every day. Had it happened when I was at home I think my response would have been less dramatic. And maybe everyone needs an existentialist crisis at least once and I was in it before he left. So that comment is bullshit. But I like it's drama so I'm leaving it there. Fucking actors.

I write this entry partly for myself, to get it out and start trying to face it but also in case anyone reads it who has been in a similar experience. I feel very self involved at times when I write this blog and never as much as when I write entries like this but I get so much comfort from reading or listening or watching experiences similar to mine that I guess someone has to be that idiot who writes it.

But now let's remember... in the words of Monty Python...Nobody expects a Spanish Inquisition. After all, it's only the life of Brian.