2004-12-16 @ 2:25 p.m.....

my mama didn't raise me using religion as a result of her own issues regarding how she was raised and her doubts and fears about God.

people look at me all kinds a crazy when i say that i am not affiliated with any religion, that i was not baptized, that i was not christened, that i was not introduced into any particular religious community as a child.

i think i inherited my mother's skepticism. i say inherit, because she handed that shit down to me. i don't think i was a born skeptic, or that i necessarily don't Believe. i think i wanted to, i've always yearned for it.... as a young child i would philosophize and create my own concepts about the world.... reincarnation, the laws of the spirit, the threads that connect each person to the Universe....

but as far as organized religion, i am as skeptical as they come. i don't even believe in atheism.

what i wish though, and the reason that i even began writing this entry, is that my mama had actually battled her own fears/misconceptions first, before experimenting on us. i wish that she had introduced me to every type of religion, taken me to mosques, temples, houses of the holy. opened me up instead of shutting me down.

i had to do my own searching. and because it was me, alone against the world, i was never comfortable within "someone else's" religion.

sometimes i just wish i had that comfort, comraderie, that came along with the collective.

but in the end, i am proud of who i came to be.

what had happened was.... ~ ....what comes next?