Calling the Kettle Black and Dragging Eyes for Logs

I feel:: hurt, angry, depressed, self-injurious

I feel angry. I went to bed angry. I woke up angry and I'm not even sure if I should be angry. I'm angry with the people at my church. For the past few weeks, it seems like every time I leave church I'm in tears or so depressed that I want to down all of my Klonopin in one go and never wake up. Usually, though, what I do is take two Klonopin and two of Dad's headache pills, which serves to knock me out for most of the rest of the day. Maybe it's me, but I don't think this is the appropriate reaction when one comes from a church service.

Save for a very few, anyone I try to confide in seems to think that just because I'm struggling every day with this depression and these memories of mine that there must be something wrong with my spiritual walk. (Is there a "spiritual walk" store where one can get replacement parts for the soul? That's what I feel like they see me as: something broken that needs to be fixed and that their solution is and has always been right in front of my face and is so simple that a child could understand it.) Like I don't pray enough or that my faith is somehow lacking.

I lay in my bed at night, longing for sleep with my brain running a thousand miles a minute, replaying old and not-so-old conversations, wherein I'm the aggressor
(Because I'm angry. Did I say that already? Oh yeah, I did [/sarcasm].) and I have these imaginary confrontations with those people whom I feel have hurt me by their words or by their apathy towards me. Now, I realize that church and every thing else in the world is not all about me and I don't consider myself a selfish or self-involved person. I mean, I do have a shoe fetish and to a lesser-degree a purse and jewelry fetish, but that's not the kind of self-involvement I'm talking about. Most people are self-involved to a certain degree.

Am I not daily struggling to find ways to deal with my issues? Do I not stay awake at night wracked with sobs of heartache and in prayer for the things God has laid on my heart? Have I not ALWAYS prayed for those people at my church that were with me in Sold Out (and for those who weren't)? Do they pray for me? Do they care about me? Do they love me? I don't think so. I could be wrong, but love is not what I feel from them. What I feel is disdain.

Granted, I can be over-sensitive sometimes. Now, I am asking myself this: Am I over-sensitive when I have been experiencing the same feelings of depression , desperation, and self-injury for at least the past four weeks after going to a church service? Some of it has been due to my frustration with Marshall. I can freely admit that, but I find increasingly that I'm being ostracized. After the service, no one comes to talk to me. (The norm is that after service, everyone sort of wanders around and socializes and eventually a consensus is determined about where everyone wants to eat. This usually takes an hour at least.) I've even sat in my place in the pew after service (for at least twenty or thirty minutes), making eye contact with people who pass by and smiling at them, only to find out that most of them act like I'm totally invisible. (Sometimes, I get a pat on the head, like I'm the church pet or mascot or something. As if I'm something to be pitied.) I feel like they think I'm not worthy enough of a person to even notice. There are a few people who talk to me, but even those don't make any effort to contact me outside of church (It's not like I haven't contacted them at least once or twice a week just to talk. Usually, they are "too busy" to talk to me.).

We had a guest pastor come teach for the past two Sundays and I keep thinking about how he kept remarking that we were all such a strong family because otherwise everyone would have gone their own way when Pastor David left. I don't find "family" there. What I find is a clique.

Last week, after service, one of the men in my church came over to where I was sitting and started to talk to me telling me ways I could "make myself right with God". He even went so far as to ask me, "What does it mean to be a Christian?" He kept telling me that "maybe" I wasn't doing what God wanted me to because I am majoring in Psychology (he said that like I was majoring in the practice of Occult sacrifice) and then went further to suggest "maybe" I wasn't even at the right college. All of this, of course, suggesting that I am compeltely outside of God's will. He was so presumptuous, so condescending and his ideas and opinions of me were completely baseless. He doesn't know me. He's never attempted to know me. I felt like punching him in the face. (Incidentally, when I told him [more like spat venomously at him] what I was really struggling with was the fact that my grandfather molested me for like ten years and that I've been raped four times, he shut his trap and quick. He stopped trying to suggest that "maybe" I was outside of God's will. I asked him bluntly, "What am I supposed to do with all those memories and feelings? I'm just supposed to pretend that none of that ever happened?" Again, no response.)

Not too long after he had stopped to talk to me, his wife showed up and began strongly urging him to come and have lunch. That's a normal thing: whenever I talk to a man who is married, his wife inserts herself in some obvious way. This even happens with the women I worked with in Sold Out. I've known them for 16 years. You would think by now that they would know I have NO DESIGNS on their husbands. (Most of the guys there I've known since before they were married.) The way the women treat me makes me feel like a whore. Not only are they condescending, but also they act as if even to touch me would communicate something from me contagious and incurable.

I hate getting caught up in this petty bullshit. So, I'm not going to go to church for several months. I need a break from them. It's just like it was when I was in Sold Out. If you claim to be a Christian and you struggle with something, then your walk is not right. It's your fault that you're having troubles. I could never reveal anything of what was going on with me when I was working in Sold Out (even though I was so depressed that I contemplated suicide several times a day) for that simple reason. Now, everyone says that they've matured; that they've moved to a different place in their lives. I don't think so. I think they are the same as they've always been.

By the way, during my absence, I can guarantee that NO ONE will call me to see what's going on or even just to see if I'm ok. Talk about self-involved. Hey pot-this is kettle-you're black.

What hurts the most is that I've ALWAYS loved them. I've ALWAYS wanted them to love me, but they never really did. It's sad to finally realize that after nearly twenty years. It makes me feel really, really empty and like I've been lied to. I've said this before, I know I have. I guess it just takes some time for the realization to sink in that people you thought loved you whom you've known for nearly twenty years,just... don't.