The Religion Of The Moon
Every cry, every laugh, every broken heart, and every idea that was once believed in, but was cast to the wayside, creates a ripple. These ripples make their way through our minds, forming who we are, shattering expectations, healing, hurting, and positioning a vast ocean of canals, that ultimately are sent and received back into ourselves. Our experiences and all that comes with them have this effect.
When I was a child, I watched as families and relationships, my own health, and a life I thought would stay the same, all began to twist and contort into something unrecognizable. In other words: Life Changed. And not in a way I would’ve liked it to. Many I would come to observe, drifting in and out of my timeline, when confronted by the things they didn’t want to happen, broke down. They’re sent into spirals of depression, distraction, using whatever they can to separate themselves from, well, themselves.
This is the primal problem, the avoidance, the running away and blowing off of those things that hurt us.
But I was different.
For a reason I still don’t know to this day, I had an unquenchable desire to contemplate, to think, to figure out the world around me with my mind. No good would come from distraction or from ignoring the things that are slowly killing you.
Different people have all kinds of different things they use, to do what I did, but I was only attracted to one.
So, as a boy, I waited until everyone in the house was asleep, and I walked outside. There was no noise, no cars, no rustling of people busy doing things they wish they weren’t. All was silent, save for the crickets and wind, each supporting one another’s melody.
But the one thing that drew me into that moment was the moon. Its blue haze filled the sky like an ocean, the wind acting as the crashing of its waves. And in that second, I began to think clearly. The bullshit fell away, the confusion melted, and the opinions of others had no hold on me.
The words began to flow, and I spoke. Call it prayer, call it talking to yourself, call it whatever you want, but I spoke. And almost intuitively, I could tell the moon was listening. She could hear, and she cared. Even when the sun rose, and the day began, the moon was still somewhere, not visible, but waiting to converse with me when the night returned.
I talked about my life as if someone was listening, I asked for help, and little by little, it seemed as if the answers were revealing themselves. I thought, wow, this must be God! He listens, he answers. Now I know for sure.
But as time went on, the road became impassable, the skies became cloudy, and the moon hid herself from me. The pain crept in again. Depression, heartache, hopelessness, the realization that the one person you love most in the world, simply has no idea how to love you back. These are the things that took the moonlight’s place.
And so for years, I dragged on, without answers, with confusion, without the help I thought I was receiving from the one who lived above. LSD trips, deep conversations with friends and I all worked together to find what I had lost, but nothing helped.
Until at my lowest point, in the numbness of my own depravity, I saw the moon again. I cursed her, I yelled at her, I spat in her face, screaming questions of why she took herself from me, why she took away my peace, why she took away the girl that I loved? With my last breath, I questioned why I no longer heard the voice that gave me answers, why the religion of the moon had failed its only believer.
And in that moment, she answered for the first time in years. In a split second of perfect clarity, I knew that it was not the moon, nor was it God’s voice that supplied the answers all those years ago. In the acid trips, in the weed, in my friends, it was never God’s voice that spoke. It was never the moon’s salvation.
It was my own. And upon knowing it, I saved myself instead.
