seeing RENT for the first time as an exvangelical

The first time you try to watch RENT, it is to get ready for a college audition you don't end up going to. You watch about a quarter of a recording on your laptop before shutting it down and deciding that you can't audition for something like this, because you are Christian. You're not sure what exactly it is that concerns you - the violence, the swearing, the mysterious Angel figure? Nevermind. Turn it off.

You never forget the line about the girl who slit her wrists in the bathroom.

Sooner or later you are twenty three and sitting alone in a high school auditorium, surrounded by hundreds of people who have come here to see the talented high schoolers put on RENT. You love/hate coming here, because you actually were supposed to go to a performing arts high school yourself. You were supposed to concentrate in acting. Your mother told you no. You really like getting to see the teenagers play this story. It seems just the right combination of fitting and daring for kids so talented. You particularly love how they light up at the sexy parts, how they smile knowingly and yet not knowingly at all when they mention masturbation, and handcuffs, and then how they take things seriously when sex turns serious. It is just the perfect show for them, you think, for these kids who are so talented and care so much about such an important topic. They bring to the performance the perfect level of power, of intensity, but also of pure enjoyment. The enjoyment of putting on a favorite show. The enjoyment of kissing a crush onstage. The power of caring so much about something so important to them - art, love, community.

You cry a lot. Mostly about the life support prayer. For days and days after, you are singing the life support prayer. You are making it your personal motto. You think maybe it is silly to think that RENT is a show about sex. You think maybe it is silly to think that RENT is a show that has anything to do with you. But you ended up studying writing when you stopped performing, and you think there must be some connection to be made. Roger has AIDS. From the girlfriend who slit her wrists in the bathroom. You think it might not have anything to do with sex. But you also think it might. You don't have AIDS. You just have shame. Shame, shame, that builds up inside you so much that it is hard to think. Shame and embarrassment, and horror at yourself, and a wish that you'd never ruined your life with sex, the irreversible decision. You know how stupid it is to compare what you're going through. You wonder if Roger wants to change the past. If he wants to go back and not have sex with his girlfriend. You wonder how he feels about the fact that he can't change it. He did something that altered his life forever. You know you just think you altered your life forever, that having sex isn't going to have a tangible effect on your capacity to keep going, but you also know how it feels to wish you could go back and not have sex, to have to deal with sexual decisions that feel like they ruined your life. You really like the life support prayer. You like to see the way that even in irreversible situations, people are resilient, and they can live and love and move on, and continue to be themselves.

There's only us, there's only this. Forget regret, or life is yours to miss. No other path, no other way. NO DAY BUT TODAY. There's only now, there's only here. Give in to love, or live in fear. No other path, no other way. NO DAY BUT TODAY. You think of how much time you spend hating yourself, and regretting your decisions, and not being able to be happy for the things you did and do have, that you did and do enjoy. You wonder if this is the only way to live, now that everything is destroyed for you. You repeat this all hundreds of times. It probably is.

During intermission you eavesdrop on a teenage boy who is not sure he wants to continue acting because everyone else is so good and he did not get a part in the show. When the curtain closes, you stand up and proselytize awkwardly to him: DO NOT QUIT! You think of how your life has been since you stopped performing. You do not want him to end up like you. You think, some decisions are irreversible, but I can do something to make things good today.

Holy fucking shit!!!!!! Today I pulled the tower for my morning tarot card, and I feel it!!!!!!! I got soft rejected from my top school, and I spent nearly all day basically in an obsessive compulsive meltdown over sex and the sexual dysfunction that comes from Zoloft, and then I just fucking realized clear as day that I’m not ace and sex matters to me and I want to have it in a way that feels good to me and if I don’t have it at all I’m gonna be fucking sad because beneath all the shit I’ve dealt with over it it’s something i actually like at its core. And I realized I fucking have ocd/high anxiety/a mix of the two/whatever you want to fucking call it I have a stress/anxiety disorder and I can’t fucking run from that and the patterns are so clear and I CAN get help and feel better nonetheless and I love myself

Jesus Christ the no man’s land between feeling all the physical side effects and the ssri actually kicking in on your brain is the hellscape no god can save you from

Fuck so I’m taking Zoloft and after taking it I realized it’s supposed to mess with your sexual abilities and sensitivity and that’s one thing I actually am fucking good at!!! Like I can actually fucking orgasm really easily which is something I’m happy about. That’s also probably why I’m in this mess in the first place because I can orgasm really fast and “ruin my whole life” without really meaning to but now I’m terrified that little superpower is going to go away and now I’m not going to fucking be able to enjoy sex again ever which is exactly the fucking point of going to this fucking therapy is that I can enjoy sex without wanting to kill myself. Jesus fucking Christ. I’m so fucking scared

I just swallowed my first dose of zoloft.

I am ashamed that I need prescription psychiatric medication to deal with my boyfriend breaking up with me (which happened 6 months and nine days ago). I feel like I owe it to my little brother to stop talking about killing myself (every time the phone conversation goes on for more than forty five minutes). I'm scared of having all the bad side effects you read about (on the internet). I don't know what is wrong with me (and I don't know if this is going to make me feel better). I just ate a warm egg salad sandwich (and I feel like I have to document that this could be the last time I'm ever normal). I'm scared of who I am going to become.

dbt skills confuse me because they just feel like avoidance of the issue or emotion. Like if the emotion is so difficult that I have to use a dbt skill to not die it seems to reinforce the concept that I can’t get through the emotion organically??? And it feels like I’m reinforcing the avoidance of the emotion bc some dbt skills are literally just like “distract yourself” uh ok????

Focusing on the good feels like cheating. Like I’m just ignoring the Real Truth of things and refusing to look it in the face

I feel like something my therapist and I discuss sometimes is this idea that I can live through things even when I think I can’t. Right now I’m reading Too Perfect: When Being In Control Gets Out of Control and he mentions something similar about how there’s a difference between temporary discomfort and something being truly intolerable.

I’m really genuinely curious what the point of this kind of exercise is. I see that I can clearly live through things that make me want to kill myself, but the fact remains that they make me want to kill myself and I don’t want to live like that. Like I just don’t understand this concept of me saying “I couldn’t live through or deal with [insert trigger or negative situation]” and my therapist saying “but that’s where you’re wrong! you could live through it!”

Like, yes, I could drag my lifespan over yet another series of shitty events that make me want to die. I have the capacity to continue living through that. But what solace is that supposed to give me? That the pain is only temporary? For me currently, the “temporary” pain has been on and off for months rolling into YEARS. the last three YEARS have been the worst YEARS of my life. I don’t want to have “temporary” pain for YEARS. What is the point of dragging yourself on through hell with the knowledge that it’ll end one day, maybe by some fluke? Like, I don’t have the tools to cope with it NOW, so… why is knowing that it’s “just temporary” a helpful mindset shift? Sure, it can be temporary, if YEARS ON END is temporary, in which case I’d really like to fucking learn to COPE with it in some actually effective way beyond just waiting YEARS for it to pass.

Am I making sense? Like it just doesn’t feel like the reframing that people say it is. Great, I have the capacity to continue on through things that make me want to kill myself every week. What—is this supposed to be some kind of congratulatory “I’m stronger than I think I am” moment? I DONT DESIRE TO LIVE THROUGH THIS. I CAN LIVE THROUGH THIS. I HAVE THE CAPACITY TO CONTINUE LIVING YEARS OF SITUATIONS I DONT DESIRE (situations which, by the way, might have the capacity to massively change my life trajectory in yet more negative ways) DURING WHICH I WOULD RATHER BE DEAD. great. None of that makes any sense to me as a mood lifter. This “temporary” issue has continued LONG PAST the expiration date I would want or believe to be truly temporary…. There is not much solace in having lived on and on through it, especially with there being no end in sight….

I just don’t understand what this reframing is meant to convey or help with. Even if I am sometimes holding on by a thread not to start harming myself, a situation that sucks is a situation that sucks is a situation that sucks and I don’t want to be in it. And the fact that it’s making me suicidal is intolerable to me. Like I just do not understand the reframing of this situation that brings me to such distress as something temporary tolerable and maybe even normal. None of that makes sense or does anything for me

went to the psychiatrist and she thinks it’s ocd so I’m getting on Zoloft

something I’ve been thinking about the past few days is this concept that things come to us because we attract them, sometimes subconsciously, thanks to the ways we act and react and how we interpret situations.

Like the idea that we all have our own perennial same shit different day sorts of battles that we keep coming back around to, maybe because there’s something about the situation that we instinctively recognize or there are things we haven’t dealt with for ourselves that cause us to attract these same types of issues.

This idea helps me to not feel so bad about the direction my life has gone the past few years because it suggests to me that I am the center of my life and I am the one who is drawing in the same kinds of trouble—this trouble is not finding me in some way despite the fact that I’m undeserving of it. It’s finding me because in some way I need to face it to finally evolve past it.

There is a sense that things are happening for me instead of to me, and whatever is going on is just a new situation that mirrors back to me the same sorts of problems until I move through those problems.

this relationship contributed so much to my suicidal ideation and i feel like at the time it was like well thank god im still in the relationship at least that's one thing i can hold onto and i can continue to try to work things out with this lifeline with this safety and instead sam broke up with me so now i have to deal with this shit - a lot of which I feel like i went through for him - alone. every day i have to remember not to die!!!!!!! Every day! I am really glad I've made it far enough that soon i'll go to a psychiatrist and maybe i can get a diagnosis or meds that make it easier not to want to die

i need to remember that my life isn't over and it isn't ruined because of this relationship. i still have a job, a roof over my head, i have a final interview with an opportunity i'm really excited about later this week. i have to remember that this relationship did not end my life - I am still alive! And there are still things worth doing! There are still things worth being excited about and there are still reasons to be happy! I have not completely destroyed my life with this relationship and i don't need to kill myself over it! There are other things I can do besides that! I need to keep living!

I feel like every day of my life is basically like “just make it to therapy just make it to therapy just make it to therapy just make it to therapy”

Trauma is not the same for everyone and everyone‘s bodies will internalize traumas differently. (read “When Religion Hurts You” by Laura E Anderson) So just because you didn’t think being taught that you deserve to go to hell wasn’t harmful/traumatizing doesn’t mean it’s not a traumatizing teaching for someone else. Just because you didn’t think being taught that you’re inherently sinful and broken wasn’t harmful/traumatizing doesn’t mean it’s not a traumatizing teaching for someone else. Be empathetic to those leaving Christianity due to trauma even if you don’t understand their hurt.

For me the teaching that I’m broken and sinful and dirty was traumatizing, while the teaching of hell was not. I exist in constant anxiety and panic because my entire life I had to police myself for threats to my goodness to survive in an abusive church environment. I know people who after religion live in constant anxiety of hell because their body spent so many years in fight or flight afraid they are going to go to hell. I know people who are traumatized from the teachings of “thought sins” because they couldn’t safely exist inside their own minds and bodies without being under threat. These teachings affect people differently, and if they didn’t hurt you then I’m glad. But they did hurt thousands of us.

portrait of myself as inner monologue of unhinged girl in dark comedy:

Today I have to say to myself many times, “Having sex did not ruin my life. My life is not over. Having sex did not destroy my life. My life is not ruined. My life is not over.” I wonder how many times I will have to say this to myself before I believe it. I think this is the root of my extreme hatred and negativity toward my ex. I feel that by asking for sex and having me actually open up and give him sex, he completely ruined my life. This is the reason I want revenge, the reason I can’t let go, the reason I want him to worship me, the reason I need to kill him. He destroyed my life and took everything from me. That’s the kind of rage I feel. I’m like fucking John Wick after they got his dog.

Made an appointment with a psychiatrist for the first time. Think I’m gonna get diagnosed with ocd. Kinda can’t wait because then that’ll mean I can actually get better treatment for my actual issue instead of people bouncing me around to all these different treatments and attempts and having nothing work well :)

oh boy. I might have to go to a psychiatrist and get on meds now which is terrifying to me. But also could be really good and really helpful if it goes well