letter-to-my-therapist

It has been a revelatory 2+ weeks. We have much to discuss and process. Not to bury a lead, but I have a new tombstone epitaph, “Nothing will make you believe in God faster than a 32 year old figure skater."

We’re approaching our one year anniversary, you and I. I didn’t even realize that this was basically when my ex wife moved out until I started to write this email. Through out, you have helped me re-contextualize my past, helped me face my trauma head on, helped me realize and embrace things I used to use as flaws. In short, you brought a lot of changes.

It was about a month ago that I started having trouble describing myself as a “nihilist.” It did not feel internally consistent. With a certain amount of horror, I realized I was becoming an existentialist and, far more surprisingly, a deist. Reframing my story, focusing on the positive and reevaluating parts of myself, lead me to connect with parts of my past.

Once I started looking around me, I started seeing a divine intelligence everywhere. I do not believe in a plan, or an external morality, but I do believe in my need to connect with something abstract. I could not be a nihilist because the meaningless universe abruptly stopped resonating with me. I could not deny the interconnected of things by forces that science could not explain. Or, my scared monkey brain took a look at the black monolith and did what all humans do in that situation, they invent an explanation - let’s call it god. Let’s called it a “Divine intelligence.” Let’s call it, “Di."

So, I found Di. It was not something spontaneous and overnight, manic or passion-filled. It was a slow awakening. Deep debates with friends, reading an entire library worth of philosophy, consuming every theological debate I could fine, therapy - my quest to find myself with an unrestricted inquiry let me down an unexpected path.

Walking that path has allowed me to reconnect with my mother, my sister, my roommate, my Shamisen teacher, the moment I started exploring my return to faith was the moment that all sorts of doors opened.

Now, let me get a few things clear:
I still hate the Catholic Church and would happily tear down every church with my hands.
I think Di is, at best, an interconnected pattern or a human-evolved trait to help contextualize the universe. There is no fate, destiny or purpose - there is only the grand experiment of life that teaches us all.
I still believe in science and the rational world.
There is something that science cannot explain. No arguments of unfalsifiable claims required. I finally understand how I will It is the only way to explain how blessed I actually am.

I am surrounded by wonderful people and have an amazing life. Despite all of my personal tragedies, I am very proud to be who I am. I am in a position to help the people I care about. Logan has put out two jazz albums already and got praise from one of his heroes, John Zorn. Caleb is filling this house with plastic miniatures as his STL printer runs day and night. I have reunited my family after