Strawberry Fields Forever

Friends come and go just like seasons. There are high times, and low times that we all face, challenges and difficulties, and my life the last few years has not been any different. Friends that I considered lifelong in 2020, friends, nay brothers, that I would go to battle with, shed blood with are no longer counting me as their equal. Where did I go wrong?

Was it me?

I’ve come to the realization that it isn’t me, it never was. But the concept of feeling like I’ve lost family is hard to cope with.

These last few years has been devastating to me mentally not to mention socially, I won’t lie and say that I haven’t dealt with depression and anger. I know I am not the only one. We’ve battled with covid, and politics, and politics and covid. Along with wars and rumors of wars, fear and uncertainty. I have fallen into patterns I thought I had left behind, and where I had brothers that helped to hold my arms up in the wilderness, I no longer do. In these last few years I have felt alone, excised from community that I never thought I’d be excluded from.

These last few years and my struggles have not been unique to me, I know others who have had issues to, but the crux is not knowing where to turn. Sure I know that I am one in Christ, but knowing something and experiencing something isn’t the same. I have tearful conversations with Papa when I do, other times I just feel like I exist without an outlet to truly live. This is not an attempt to get pity or garner sympathy, but I miss my brothers, I miss hearing their encouragement of me and the opportunity to encourage them. I miss having familiar faces to go to events with, to share in that relationship with. All in all I miss the discovery of when I first started my deconstruction, the joy of seeing new aspects that I would have never even considered before. I am undone by the sheer amount of division I have seen borne in my human family, us and them has become even more pronounced, hared of peers over the color of their skin or vax status, or who they voted for. The violence in the streets, the uncertainty of cost of living. I know I am rambling, but I don’t really know how to put everything I am feeling as concisely as I want. Maybe I will try to write more later. I still plan to record a podcast but my allergies have come back with a vengeance, so working my way through that at the moment.

Thank you for reading, and if the specific brother I was referring to reads this know that I desperately miss you, and even though I know you’ve turned away from the faith, know that I still consider you my brother and one of my greatest friends,