Outside of all this, I have been pondering some of life's mysteries. Religion for instance. Most days I can do the church thing, but lately . . . I don't have the mind for it. Reading the bible and applying its principles is fine but everything else gives me a headache. Going to church. Having to talk to people. It just feels like a waste of time to me. I'd rather be at home getting work done. I don't imagine that I'll be penalized for it. I don't see God striking me down for not following religion and maybe that's my problem. Religion is pretty much built on the idea that God will strike you down if you don't actually follow it. And that's what I don't believe. Yet I still go. And it's days like this that I ask myself . . . "why?" Regardless, I will wake up and drag myself to church and no doubt get inspired. It's just everything else that gets on my nerves. The guilt. The feeling that I'm required to do more. There's no such thing as a free lunch, I guess.
Speaking of religion...I talked to a friend a couple days. The guy from this post. We haven't talked in months. He hit me up a little after I returned from Japan but after that we kind of lost track. To be honest, I let it happen because the boyfriend was feeling uncomfortable with my talking with him. Either way, I was hanging out with my New Jersey family and ran into my friend. We talked a little about my web series and being that my friend is very funny, I told him that I'd love for him to be in an episode. He invited me to his place because he and his roommates were having a party. So . . . I went. (Sorry boyfriend!) The place was very "frat-housey" complete with beer, bongs, really loud "white people music" (heavy metal and I mean really HEAVY) and a bunch of weirdos. The only thing was, everybody was like thirty, forty years old. So me and my friend walk in, my friend is obviously high as a kite. His eyes are red and he's really laid back. He also looked really skinny and that made me realize that it'd really been a long time since I last talked to him. So, he invited me up to his room and I had to measure whether I felt safer listening to the loud Satanic music pumping from the basement or whether I should just risk getting raped upstairs in his room. After a while, his room felt like the better option. So we go to his room, where it's quiet and we can talk. I drank a beer and laid back on a futon chair, feeling super relaxed.
Until he starts telling me stories about his life since I was in Japan. At first it started with him telling me that he predicted the earthquake, amongst a bunch of other predictions that he said he'd made about me including my taking up knitting, to my getting back to America a week before the tsunami hit. (Which he was wrong, because I got back like almost a month before it hit . . . but I've been telling everyone a week, because, honestly, it sounds better.) Either way, he was essentially telling me that he was a prophet. Fine. Plenty of religious people think they're prophets. Everybody wants to be important. I gave him that. Life is short. He goes on to tell me about how his grandmother passed away, which was really sad. I told him that I was sorry to hear that. But then he goes on to tell me that he went up to heaven with her. Mmmkay . . . 0_o So from the heaven story he went into his "breaking into" WWE story which, from the way he told it, meant that he drove his car there at night and got a back stage pass. Also, he feels he was reincarnated from someone in the bible and that he is spoken about in Revelations and that Satan himself is going to murder him. It was creepy, weird and at the end of the day sad. I'm hearing this guy go on and on while hearing all kinds of crazy Marilyn Manson music being shouted from the floors beneath us (live band, by the way) and listening to my friend tell me about how he is going to be murdered by the devil and that he is a prophet of God and can control the weather and that essentially the apocalypse and the fate of the world depends on him. But honestly, the only thing I could feel was overwhelming sadness for him. Because it seemed like he was in a place that was so dark, that I couldn't begin to imagine how he got there or if he could get out. My heart really hurt for this guy. And throughout his stories, he kept making references to my being in Japan. He was telling me that he was on a journey, just like I went on my journey. And I wanted to tell him, "Our journeys have nothing to do with each other." I don't know how to explain it but it felt like he was affected by my trip more than I ever knew. He told me that God gave him a bunch of wisdom and he's consciously chosen not to live a life where he gets married, has children or does certain things (I'm guessing career-wise) because he chose wisdom and nothing else. He then asked me what my goals/plans are. I told him that I planned to move to CA and get my Master's. Suddenly, he got a little somber. He asked me when I was leaving. I told him. A quick moment of silence. We talked some more and then I left. A couple days later he sent me a text, asking when I was going to be shooting the next episode of my web series. I told him, in a couple weeks. I guess this wasn't soon enough because he replied, "I want to see you. If you're going to CA, I want us in a better place than before when you left for Japan." Sadly, I can't say that I was thinking about the guy before I left for Japan. I really wasn't. As for why he feels it's important for us to "be in a better place" I have absolutely no idea on earth. But if he needs a friend, I can be that. I just hope that whatever this is - depression, insanity, whatever - he gets the help that he needs because I doubt being a listening ear can be the solution to whatever demons he seems to be fighting. He told me that he's alienated from his family now and after talking to him for 2 hours, I totally understand why. It's just crazy how things happen in life.
So that's all for now. There's more, but I'm tired.
Goodnite!
