I Bet My Soul On You And Lost
This week's newsletter questions all the beliefs one has held to be true thus far and searches for answers in unlikely places when they come under fire
Greetings dear dreamers
Welcome to the third season of The Abandoned Dreams Collective.
As someone who has lived in many places around the world, I’ve often felt that there is a part of that life experience that isn’t talked about very much is the near constant undoing of yourself and finding it in yourself to redo, a little better - or so you hope. A constant stream of instances where you find yourself breaking down or being broken up and then building it all back over. A sense of having your assumptions, your belief systems, all that you hold as canonical and right and true being questioned, discarded and then come back to in a different way from the first time. You try experiences that you never would have even considered when you were in your home environment, some parts of who you have become will forever remain a secret, admitted only to yourself - and sometimes not even that. You become a new person with a harder skin and steel insides but in so many ways, all of that is indiscernible to the outside world. You spend hours, days, months, years searching for answers when you’re not quite sure what the questions are. With all the changes in and around you, you start to wonder who you are, whether the person you started out as would recognize the person you’ve become and whether they would claim you as themselves. You question what is the fundamental part of you that remains when so much has changed and how you’re going to make sense of all there is to come. This week’s piece is that elegy to all the past beliefs and that yearning for the right way.
I Bet My Soul On You And Lost: An Open Letter To The God I'm Not Sure Is There
Things are simple in the beginning.
You knit me together in my mother’s womb. You know everything. I can trust you, as you are the ultimate truth. Singing your songs, hearing your words, living among your people, I am surrounded by homogenous safety. Not unlike having another womb, truly. A womb at the beginning of my life. It makes me feel so safe. I can ask you anything without any doubts. I ask for you to enter my heart while sitting inside a Chevy on a cold Colorado evening, my father guiding me through the prayer. This is a rite of passage. This is the Way. And I have found it forever. There’s nothing else to it. Simply believe and it will be so. If faith is a wager, I gladly stake my life on it to reap eternal rewards. And upon this solid rock will I build the house of my faith.
I am yours.
But then I eat the forbidden fruit, also known as growing up.
My eyes are wider, my mind larger, my heart bigger. And with knowledge comes darkness, as the Fall tells us. I have become aware of the forces at work in the world- yours and Satan’s. He lurks at every turn, waiting to grab me. He’s under my bed. In the pantry, gesturing at cupcakes and sweets. He’s even in the wind, whispering dark words to me, teaching me to fear. Even worse, he’s in my thoughts. How can I trust myself when my own mind betrays me?
Caught in a hurricane, where you are calm waters, safe harbor, and absolution all at once. If only I bow every atom in my body will I earn passage into your good graces.
What does it mean? How can I give everything? Pray more, read more of your Word, treat the pastor’s word like it’s Divine, and always be good. Keep that darkness inside yourself and never let it out unless to repent. To understand my darkness is to give in to it.
The weight is too much. It’s crushing. But it’s bearable. You only give us burdens we can carry. But these burdens are relative to the weight on your shoulders, carrying all of humanity like Atlas. Comparably, my burdens are easy and light. Yes, so much of this is getting confusing to keep straight. But I trust in your mysterious ways. I trust that you are good. I trust in these solid walls to shield me from every uncomfortable thing.
This is the Way. And I will stumble up that endless stair. There’s nothing else but darkness to my left and right. I will simply do more and more and more and I will be safe in your arms.
I am still yours.
I get lost along the way.
I don’t know when it happened. I don’t know exactly how. But I don’t have it in me for blind faith anymore.
That’s not entirely true. I know how it started. I got tired of myself. I got bored after an entire youth spent in your communities, listening to cut-and-paste sermons, and bearing the ever-heavy burdens of having to be perfect. After exploring every nook and cranny of my sinful mind, there’s no stone left unturned.
You have taught me how to be so inside myself I cannot get out. You have made me afraid to take a step in any direction. But who am I kidding? I can’t blame you for everything. I can’t even claim to believe you’re there all the time.
I can’t take your Word at face value anymore. Not when people I know use it to defend their cruelty. Not when world leaders cash you in like a check to buy our loyalty. You preside over a world that vacillates on a continuum, goodness on one end and evil on the other. Maybe it’s not a continuum, but an arrow, a peak. We climb up and down the ends, searching for you. I have spent my life building my faith out of timber, thinking it was marble, and now under heat it begins to combust and curl and warp..
Had I built this? Was it really me the whole time? Not you or my leaders or parents or friends? I feel the need to crucify myself just to stop my heart from slipping into believing that none of it meant anything. Of course, this doesn’t work.
Where are you and your angels to catch me? Why does this thing in my hands resemble ashes and not the faith I clung to? Did I cling too hard? Did I wring out every bit of sweet honey truth? Did my doubts take this fertile soul and make it a wasteland?
I’m tired of blaming myself for things you told me to believe. For one, that you always work for our good. What good is your goodness if it alleviates no pain nor provide no answers in my one short mortal life? And why is eternity so cheap, if all it takes is a little prayer and a couple hours of devotion every Sunday?
I think I missed the point or something.
I think I know there’s a beautiful world inside your Church, but I can’t find it anymore. Not in your sanitized walls, bereft of beauty. Not in your cathedrals, cold and old. Not even among your people, who have sterilized their hearts and minds with empty promises that say:
All things happen for a reason.
He works in mysterious ways.
Jesus is all you need.
If you just focus on what is good…
The Word has all the answers.
I am uninterested in these promises. I am leaving them behind now to find that beautiful world elsewhere. You are no longer the Way. And I have no other road. There’s nothing but darkness before, behind, and below. I wish to do no more. I wish to become that darkness and disappear forever.
I belong to no one.
Epilogue: The storm is gone, leaving questions.
You and I used to match. Like puzzle pieces. Like oil and pistons. Like polish on fine shoes. You were the thing that gave my soul a greater purpose, a stronger hubris, a spark that I shared with your people.
What happened to us?
You might find it funny for me to ask the question. Or disturbing, revealing that I know myself far less than you know me. But really, I want to ask you: what happened?
For me, I changed. I outgrew the notions and systems that I once held high as virtue. That old Word, too, lost its luster, becoming ever more confusing.
I have given up.
I can’t hold on to what melts like sand in my fingers. An outsider might say I’ve turned my back on what’s good. To that I say, there’s a whole lot more good in the world than I ever noticed before.
I’d bet you can see that I’m happier. Now, I don’t go on witch hunts for evil thoughts. I don’t punish myself for having bad days or wonder why you won’t fix them. I don’t question why it never feels like you’re there.
Either you never were or you just recently left us to ourselves.
Or, stupidly, you’re still here and working in ways that confound the senses.
It doesn’t matter which one of those is true, I can’t very well wait around for you to do something anymore.
For so long, I was content to burn down the relics of my old faith. Now I’m looking to reforge new foundations.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m still living off the light of those beliefs burning down. In some ways, it seems like that’s the only light I’ll see for a long time. But I catch glimpses of that simplicity I once held, lighter than air. It feels like coming home, but a home destroyed, walking and praying in the relics of my youth.
Here I am now, sweeping aside the splinters and wood, the lies and doubts, looking for the treasure I once beheld. I’m keeping hold of the old flame, dried out, in a matchbook, waiting for a new home.
Maybe I’ll turn to the wilderness, to strange places and steeples, and see if they hold anything true.
Maybe I’ll rebuild, burn it down, and build again. If you are who you say you are, you won’t mind one bit.
You might not be the Way, but I am finding a new one. My feet are sore. My will is tired. I am walking some beaten paths and some wild ones. I can see darkness and light in the passing of the life seasons. I would love to be yours if it means anything. But I would love to be my own, too. I want both. I want to belong to myself and something more.
I want to find you, again.
-Zachary Rousch
Abandoned on the interwebs
Abandoned on the interwebs is a new section on this newsletter where I recommend some riveting, spine tingling, evocative articles, books, essays that I’ve stumbled across when I’m left to my own devices on the internet.
Fleabag’s “so just tell me what to do speech”: If you haven’t seen the much acclaimed (deservedly so) show Fleabag, you absolutely must. For now though, this speech is my Roman Empire - the thing I keep coming back to, the questions about our place in this world and the endless decisioning articulated in a way that makes me feel seen
Notes on Heartbreak by Annie Lord: I have long admired Annie Lord’s writing as Vogue’s dating columnist. While I was frustrated at her personality at the start of the book - a “boyfriend girl” who constantly prioritized her relationship over all other friendships and made that the centre of her life, I enjoyed reading her journey of having built herself back up after that came crashing down to being a self assured person, comfortable in herself and taking taking in life in all its glory, with or without a partner by her side.
Before I leave you to dream
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This will support the newsletter grow through increasing reach, growing its pipeline of contributors, optimize submission management and eventually pay contributors.
I hope you consider contributing to this mission.
Thank you for reading this. Moving forward I will be posting with longer breaks between each piece so as to be able to breathe in between and give every piece the time and energy it deserves. I look forward to being back in your inbox when I’m ready with the next piece.
Much love and many dreams
Nirmitee
The Abandoned Dreams Collective