Not for the first time does it occur to me that much of my struggle lies in trying to remake and/or understand myself from the outside in rather than the other way around. Which makes a great deal of sense, when you consider that I grew up in a hyperfundamentalist Anabaptist town—talk about relying upon The Divine Without versus same within.

And I dare call myself an atheist.

In any case, as I’ve learned to understand it, one must literally remake him or herself through Christ—or, if you’re an averred atheist like me or my parents, through Freud. Or perhaps “one” must do neither of these things, but I’ve never been convinced that I’m not so pathological and/or “bad” that I am allowed to give up on this method.

And of course, everything has “meaning,” whether you’re Christian or Freudian (although even Freud said sometimes a cigar is just a cigar). And this meaning is universal, even if you yourself are unaware of it. Chewing ice cubes indicates sexual frustration. A dream about two dolphins frolicking in the reflecting pool under the Washington Monument indicates latent homosexuality. Latent homosexuality, as we all know, indicates a lack of a relationship with Christ, and must be cured. And if one cannot be cured, one must be eliminated. After all, if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out.

And while I’m intelligent enough to recognize that this is all bullshit, on an emotional level, I’m still about five, and I’m still looking for my identity according to some exceedingly rigid points of view, and am thus unable to fully accept that I, at least, am not the “bad” or “pathological” person some perversion of Christianity and the teachings of a neurotic, if brilliant old patriarch have led me to believe.

Yikes. Too much info, I think. But there it is.