Well, I’ve finally scraped together time to make this entry. I wish I had done it three weeks ago, but hopefully it will still come out okay. This is the first in a three-part series that I drafted out in my mind while I was in the hospital. (The next two will be on Building Friendship, and then Life Plans.)
The Divine
In the past, I had an extremely close relationship with a being who I thought of as God. I blogged about that once, but it was hand-written. So I re-typed it before leaving the hospital:
I pissed off my doctor the other day. Then I freaked out for about a week over the fact that he had been angry. Honestly, I’m still not entirely over it. Every time I see him, I’m so afraid that he’s going to get mad that I hold things back. I’m afraid to trust a person who has been consistently nothing but good to me for months. Who has gone above and beyond the minimum requirements of his job description not once, but over and over.
After I discussed it with him, he said that my attachment disorder and consequential inability to withstand any rupture in a relationship were “a problem.” I asked him what the solution was and he said that, unfortunately, I’m just going to have to go through the rupture and repair process a lot of times. Which is sucky news.
I thought back to see if I could remember any relationship in my life in which I didn’t freak out if we had a disagreement. Oddly, the only relationship that came to mind was the one that I had with what I once believed was God.
As a tiny kid, I was taught the “fear of God.” God me was going to send me to hell unless “he” saved me (I believed God to be male at the time). I was terrified of God, but my eternal destiny hinged on my loving him. When I was scared at night, the babysitter told me that I wasn’t alone because God was with me. For some reason, that was not comforting at all. I lay awake a lot of nights terrified of damnation.
Eventually, though, I learned to use prayer to help me escape the bone-chilling loneliness that came with being homeschooled. I shared my entire internal narrative with God, literally praying “without ceasing.”
Then I began to fall away, but the process took several years. During that time, God and I went through the rupture and repair process quite a few times. I viewed myself as [a member of] the “bride of Christ,” a concept mentioned constantly throughout both the Old and New Testaments.
After college, my mother manipulated me into moving in with her mother, my maternal grandmother. I had a great relationship with my paternal grandmother, but not so much my mom’s mom. It’s not that I disliked her– I thought she was a good person. But clinical aphasia, combined with undiagnosed childhood trauma that left her with the life’s mission of being seen but not heard, combined with shyness, combined with seas of other issues including the onset of dementia, made it hard to find comfort in her companionship. I lived alone with her in a village of literally less than 500 people. Add to this that we were located halfway down a very long road that separated uncharted wilderness to its north, and a lake to its south. Add to that that the road was difficult to traverse because it wound its way through the mountains as best it could, but was susceptible to whiteout conditions, ice, frost heaves the size of major potholes, and large animals crossing. We watched PSAs on local TV warning us to be careful not to hit a moose. The newspaper told the grim story of a neighbor who hit a black bear. The population was below 500 for very good reasons.
So there I was, alone in a house with one other person who had such crippling social anxiety that I had to tip-toe through the living room to protect her from detecting me and being terrified. I needed a friend. God was the only one available.
Now, throughout this, my mom and my aunt were convinced that the reason for my depression was that I hated Grandma. The truth is that I loved Grandma and felt terrible for her and completely helpless to do anything. But that did nothing to prevent Grandma’s daughters from compiling an ever-increasing list of grievances. They positioned themselves as Grandma’s long-distance advocates against me. Enter loneliness coupled with an equal amount of self-hatred.
So, I found myself asking Jesus for forgiveness quite frequently. He had a reputation for being good at that. And I talked about God and me using the pronoun “we.” I was fully convinced that he had partnered with me when “we” invented the “one apology policy.” I felt his absolute approval when I used it, and his gentle reminders to return to it when I forgot.
Here’s how it worked: previously, when I believed that I had done something wrong, I sent a quick and exasperated prayer for forgiveness up to the Heavens every time I thought of it. This resulted in my praying for forgiveness probably hundreds of times a day. The one apology policy changed that. When I felt guilty for something, I paused and identified exactly what I was sorry for. Then, I apologized for as long as I wanted, knowing that when I was done, I would never apologize again for the same event. I could list the reasons it was wrong, who I had hurt, etc etc but eventually, I would have to consciously move on. Whether the policy was divinely inspired or not, it made me feel closer to God and helped me cope during a difficult time.
Later on, when my “doubts” were more pronounced, I noticed a different phenomenon. I would be totally unable to accept some biblical concept, and then I would find a way for my faith to be restored. Finally, once this had happened enough times, I felt safe when “God and I” were “in a fight.” I used to try to explain this to other Christians, but they never got it. “God and I are on the outs right now,” I would say, with total confidence that our overall relationship was intact and we would work it out eventually.
“You can do that with other people but not with God!” they would exclaim. “God can never be the one in the wrong!” But as much as they tried to get me to feel guilt rather than peace, I had developed my relationship with God to a point where I felt that I knew if I had done something wrong. If we were just in a fight, I didn’t need to worry about whether God was perfect or not– most of the time, I hadn’t done anything wrong either. It was okay.
It’s ironic to me now that the one relationship [in which] I’ve ever had the ability to tolerate rupture and repair, was the one relationship I’ve been in where the other person turned out never to have existed. For years and years I couldn’t tolerate rupture and repair in my relationship with God. I cried and agonized and coped maladaptively to no end. And then, just a few years after I learned to trust, I realized I’d been catfished.
Maybe this is bad for my attachment disorder and contributes to my fear of abandonment. Or, maybe it’s good that I at least had the experience while it lasted. The only thing I can say confidently is that it makes my weird, unrelatable life story just that much more weird and unrelatable.
Rupture and Repair with a Divine Catfish – The Apostate Turtle (November 26, 2021) https://apostateturtle.com/?p=429
Now, I one of the best resources on the historicity of Jesus that I personally have ever found is this:
Prophet of Zod. (2023, May 4). Why the Historicity of “Jesus” is Nonsensical [YouTube video]. Retrieved October 18, 2025 from https://youtu.be/Rcd5VXkoz0s
It’s extremely logical, and my thanks to Prophet of Zod for saying this so well. Essentially, there probably were one or more influenctial apocalyptic spiritual figures in Israel 2,000 years ago, but what actually happened has been put through the filter of supernatural powers, political motivations, etc. So parsing out what parts of the gospels are true and which were “added later” is impossible.
By that time, I had already pretty much abandoned the idea of a historical Jesus, but I felt like there was something within me that I had identified as Jesus, which was real. But it’s really, really hard for me to tap into that, because any and all memories of being connected to Jesus are now pair-bonded with my mother’s mean rumors and losing my whole family. Like, I never felt like there was any animosity between myself and the Divine, but my mother definitely insisted that I hated Jesus, which was why she had “no choice” but to remove me from the family, etc etc.
So, I’d been kind of considering Earth Worship, which I’d posted about in this highly-scattered post. About two years ago, I was in a little shop with a friend and saw this sign:
So, I made a mental note. About a year after that (so November of 2024), I made a pilgrimage back to the shop and picked up this book:
If it looks like I made lots of progress, looks are deceiving. I’d pretty much just managed to add a pencil loop. Because, even still, it was impossible for me to tap into the part of myself that had been once so important, without feeling infinite condemnation– not from God, but from my mother. I tried to just remind myself that my mother was not God. I tried to make it into a joke. Or intellectualize the problem: for example, her life choices are diametrically opposed to anything and everything that Jesus in the gospels was portrayed as having stood for. I try to figure out what could possibly have happened to her to make her become a sociopath, start a de facto cult, and kick out her own daughter on the grounds of lies that she personally spearheaded and propogated. But knowing that my mother did not have a monopoly on the Divine (and probably didn’t have any appreciable inner spiritual life whatsoever) is a completely different thing from feeling it. And the feeling of being disowned completely by one’s own mother is awful. Sadness, fear, shame, and righteous indignation all enter the scene where peace once was.
Enter Ketamine
Now, I was in rough shape when I got to the mental hospital at the end of September. I don’t like abandonment, but there’s nothing like abandonment when the person is telling me that I’ll thank them later. No, I won’t. And you’ll never know that, because you’re gone. Fun fact, “You’ll thank me later” is also what my parents usually said before beating the absolute shit out of me multiple times every single fucking day as a little kid. I haven’t thanked them yet, and I definitely have yet to thank any of the chain of therapists who have terminated with zero warning and told me that having absolutely no say whatsoever in my care would be the best thing for me. So, I told the most recent therapist to do this that she was hurting me. I didn’t tell her I was wildly suicidal over the incident, because that’s rude. But I was pretty much ready to do myself in. Fortuantely at this point in my life, I don’t have people who freak out on me for asking for help (which was very much a thing for most of my adult life), so I was able to take myself to the emergency room and get help. Unfortunately, the hospital thought I was fine. Which, I took to mean that there was nothing they could do, there was nothing anyone could do, and I responded the way most people might to a “terminal diagnosis.” I tried really hard to not cry because crying is scary, but I was really destroyed.
Fortunately, an up-and-coming young staff member with a friendly face drew out from me what was actually going on, which I thought I had communicated but apparently hadn’t. My doctor “put on the brakes” on discharge. I was deeply thankful for the help, even though I would have preferred to not need help and to be able to go home to the turtle and cat who were waiting for me. After the weekend, the doctor came back and said that I could do either TMS or Ketamine, but slyly and indirectly implied that Ketamine would be preferrable. So, I signed up. When I tell you my expectations were in the basement, they were really really in the basement. Especially since I had already briefly tried Ketamine once in this “clinic” operating on a shoestring budget in an old mill building. The hospital felt like maybe they could do it better. They said bring a notebook.
So I did, and this is what I got out of the experience:
It was the first time since deconstruction that I had felt the presence of the Divine without the condemnation of my mother. Critically, in no way whatsoever did it feel like “rupture and repair.” It felt like the Universe and I had never had any problems. It was me, my grandma, the Universe, and Divine Mystery just vibing. Subsequent sessions yielded things like:
So, it was very nice. I would say that, by far, the most helpful part of it is just that it’s helped me with grief around losing my grandmother. Which, before she died in 2017, Grandma wrote like so many books, mostly for me. But I’d never been able to actually read them, because I wasn’t ready when she was alive, and after she died, I was just too sad. Even eight years later, it felt just as hard. Thanks to Ketamine, I felt like she wasn’t gone. And guess what, her books (at least as far as I’ve read so far) are actually amazing, and since they were literally written for me (and her other grandchildren), the wisdom in them is specifically tailored to what I needed. So many things in there, it’s like, Grandma, how did you know?? But she knew. She was nothing if not intuitive.
Now, I didn’t know that the Ketamine is only effective for 8 weeks. I did the calculations, and the first treatment (I think) was on October 15. Meaning, I only have neuroplasticity until December 10. Unfortunately, you only get four weeks at twice a week, so the effects of peace have worn of faster than I’d thought.
Compounding the issue is probably the fact that I keep forgetting to eat. Like, today I was all down in the dumps, then realized I hadn’t eaten a meal in at least 48 hours. I persuaded someone to drive me to Burger King and perked right up after some fries. It’s not intentional; my body just doesn’t get hunger signals anymore because of reasons.
But, I’m scared. So, I’ll write more about future plans in an upcoming entry. In the meantime, I’m trying to sleep, eat food, and drink water. I also got out my sun lamp thanks to The Depression Cure, so in the mornings, I read Grandma’s book for 30 minutes. I want to be done with at least the first in her trilogy by the end of the 8 weeks. And, as hard as the taper has been, I will say that the Ketamine has shown me that peace is possible. So, maybe something else will help me as well.