[SIGH]

Tonight I re-read a blog post I made on my website shortly after I moved to Colorado. Click here to read it. (Gerard posted a few replies but bear in mind that English is not his first language so you may have a little trouble getting what he's trying to say.) It's a really good post.

Reading my own post made me feel a little better. Though how lame that my shoulder to cry on is often my blog. Makes me cringe.

I have this weird thing where some stories, usually completely fictional, can reach through the pages of a book or the flickering images of a screen and do terrible things to my emotions. It isn't as simple as weeping for a minute after a sad movie and then going home as if nothing happened. It's more like a dark curtain descends upon me and I stay trapped in it for days, sometimes weeks. It isn't depression, at least not any variety I've ever heard of. I really can't describe it very well at all and it's probably best that I don't even try. But it inevitably results in me doing some extremely deep soul searching.

I want more than anything to talk to God. I'm not ready to die, I just need to know that God is real. I'm not necessarily asking to know details, just that our lives are not in vain. I need to know that we're here for a reason and that death is not the end. I need to know that we'll meet again on the other side. I need to know that the suffering people of this world will find eternal comfort, that their suffering was not needless. I need to know that hard earned bonds of love and friendship chiseled out of a lifetime will not just fade away like a campfire at dawn, having served no purpose greater than to keep someone warm for a few hours. I need to know that the vast majority of humanity who believes in some kind of afterlife and higher power aren't just suffering from mass delusion. Culture and tradition can flavor the details, but generally the very core belief is the same: we die, we go somewhere. We don't just cease to exist. Surely that means something.

Most of the time I feel rather confident that there's no need to worry about afterlife and purpose and all of that. Mostly I feel that I've seen and experienced enough to know that there is purpose to our existence and sufficient evidence to assume death is not the end. But now and then something will happen in my life that triggers my mind and I dive very deep. It doesn't have to be anything bad or even real. Like I said, the right movie or novel can do it. For whatever reason, I happen to be an extremely sentimental person and far too nostalgic for my own good.

You know this is really far, far more complex than I can even hint at here and I feel like I'm grasping. I desperately need to express myself but I don't have the energy to write a novel tonight, and even if I did and you chose to read it I would only end up succeeding in making you cock your head in confusion. On nights like these I mostly find myself saying silent prayers until I tire myself into sleep. Guess it's time to start.