Leaving Evangelicalism is like the plot of a Christopher Nolan movie
It rarely makes sense at first, it’s anything but linear, it’s difficult to explain to someone secondhand, and nobody fully agrees on what actually happened or what’s next.
This is an introduction, of sorts.
I draw on this analogy as a kind of advanced disclaimer. Those who have lived this reality can likely understand what I’m talking about. You’ll think you have a Unified Theory of How Current-You Came To Be, and it’ll be a fairly tidy package with loose ends mostly reconciled, until a new realization hits you and reshuffles the pieces of the puzzle. It’s anything but linear. Reader, please understand that the scattered narrative is itself a story. Evangelicalism fractures one’s being into numerous pieces. How can I write about what I went through when the pieces of me that experienced what they did are strewn across the landscape of my mind? How do I put this puzzle together in a way that makes sense to me, let alone to others? Even further, what do I do with the black holes? Like cosmic giants except in the microverse of my mind, I see light bending around empty places, I see nearby planetary bodies which move in ways I would not expect based on known phenomena. Things are missing in my story, I conclude. Loud gaps sit there, things I experienced which still wield great power, and they alter the trajectory of my present day experience. What is it, what are they? It’s one thing to know the pieces of the puzzle exist and that they need to be put together, even if it feels overwhelmingly difficult. It’s another thing entirely to observe that your past is affecting you but not know what or how.
Writing about this is also incredibly daunting. There’s a spider web of interconnected threads. I was taught not to trust myself. My heart is deceitful above all things, after all. I don’t know that I know how to access myself. Not entirely, at least. I’m facing a forest and I don’t know where to go next. I’ve come so far already, but I have so far go to. But where? I know I’m not there, but I don’t know where there is. I know the right answer to this. I’m very good at right answers. There’s no such thing as there. You never arrive. You never get to some destination where it all makes sense. That’s great, but what do I do with that knowledge? How does that change the way I live, how does that change the way I write, how does that change the way I push through the branches as I slowly plod forward?
I have a bad case of impostor syndrome. I’m aware of this, but awareness so far hasn’t done much to chip away at that boulder. I read things that other people write and I deeply connect with it. They know what they’re doing, I think. They’re able to put their thoughts into words in meaningful ways. I can’t do that, not like that, or so I tell myself. What am I even writing about? There are things inside of me and they want to come out, they need to come out. They’re important, even if only to me, and they mean something. I feel a kind of figurative discomfort in my chest about it, it’s as if something is stuck in there and isn’t able to get out. Dissonance, a lot of dissonance.
I rarely proofread or re-read anything I write. I dislike my words, I dislike the way I use my words, I dislike what I’m saying. It doesn’t sound like me, it doesn’t feel like me. It’s a shoddy approximation of me, and that feels like a failure on multiple levels. I can read and re-read things I write about detached topics. Even topics I’m passionate about, I can read my writing. Writing about myself though? Not too eager to cross the Rubicon on that one.
This was an introduction, of sorts.
Maybe leaving Evangelicalism isn’t like the plot of a Christopher Nolan movie. Maybe I’m like the plot of a Christopher Nolan movie. Maybe both are true. Maybe somewhere in all of this dissonance, a melody will emerge.
