Author: theapostateturtle

A cousin who has been there for me through thick and thin commented yesterday that I had “come so far in the past two years.” This really meant a lot to me because I tend to have my 🤬-hole dad’s voice in my head characterizing my “entire adult life” as ” a steady decline.” On…

A strange thing happened today. I was going through old journal entries, looking for things written by me about religion, which was hard to find because I had to dig through near-infinite entries about pain and suicidality. And for some reason, something in me was genuinely moved by what I was going through in 2011….

I’m still reading The Happiness Hypothesis (I’m a slow reader) and to anyone who hasn’t read it, I cannot recommend it highly enough! Last night I read chapter 8, “The Felicity of Virtue,” and a point he made was that Western values were not as useful as they could be in part because we’ve striven…

Someone commented a while back that I was creating my own religion with this blog and personal reflections. I asked myself whether that was true. Someone–I believe it was Tim Keller, although I cannot find the reference anywhere–defined “religion” as a point of view on what causes the most human flourishing. He said that some…

I recently spent a couple days in a panic that I don’t think your body is supposed to be able to endure for that long. I was just lying in bed, literally writhing. I wasn’t perseverating, just experiencing physical symptoms of anxiety cranked up to a really high level. Today they finally figured out medicine…

I’m forever writing on here when I need to process conversations with my providers. You’d think that I did nothing but talk to them all day. I do do other things. For example, Wednesdays are my favorite day of the week because the pet therapy volunteer comes in with a beautiful dog. It’s literally the…

One of the hospital’s chaplains came by to see me today. For some reason, they think I’m the bee’s knees. It made me feel really good. Although I’m not religious now, I was for most of my life up to this point, and I feel like the chaplains here can relate to me in a…

I’m considering going through this blog and taking out some of the more intense content, just in case I actually am discovered one day. For now, it’s been a rocky week. I keep making really bad decisions and I’m confused about how much “blame” I need to take for them. On the one hand, chalking…