empty parking lots, empty pill bottles.

im not super religious.

The first time I ever went to church was Easter Sunday, two weeks before I turned 14.

God and I have an on-again-off-again relationship. My dad's Catholic, but was also divorced once before he married my mother. My mom was raised Methodist, but stopped going to church when she moved out.

I wasn't raised religious, though I was baptized Catholic.

I go to church now, to the tiny chapel in my tiny town that claims to be interdenominational but is deeply rooted in Christianity.

The thing is, I kind of believe in god. Like, you can have any opinion you want, I don't care— but I think that if he's there, he's either horrible or can't control a single thing we do. I like to believe in the latter. I think religion is stupid, though.

I never gravitated to one, not heavily. Catholicism is homophobic, Christianity believes that Jesus was Devine and I don't, Islam requires to much out of me, te cetera. Judaism was a good choice, I thought, for a while. But I'm just some girl in rural America who wants to be Jewish? That's weird. I'm a weirdo. (I wear this hat all the time? That's weird.)

Nobody in my family's entire history has been Jewish. The only person I know who is is somebody that I deeply respect and think is awesome. He kind of showed me that it's a welcoming religion.

But I don't know. Identifying myself with any religion, any group, really anyone at all makes me feel weird. I don't identify myself with people because, in the brief history that I have, it didn't ever really turn out well.

I know I'm queer. Asexual? Biromantic? I don't know. But I think I'm queer. I have a preference for men though, and being intimate with another girl kind of intimidates me. Not knowing my identity placed me in the weakest place to call yourself queer— "questioning". Not to all people, it's weak, though. Some people are strong about it— they're confident that they're going to figure out who they are eventually, and who they want to be.

I kept looking up names and definitions as to what I'd called myself. I couldn't find one, though, and it only aggravated me more. I was annoyed, because I wanted to find the quickest way out of the situation I was in— which was, in retrospect, the confidence of myself. The fact that I felt, to feel confidence in who I was, I needed to figure out who I was.

I'm not sure if that's the case anymore.

So, to feel confident in my spirituality, I'm doing a similar thing. I'm going to where my nicest dress, I'm going to curl my hair and where mascara, and I'm going to look nice. For Passover, for Easter, for imminent damnation, I don't know.

So I'm just going to try to figure it out. This time, I'll take it slow.