Today marks an anniversary that I’d rather not remember. A date where I feel like my entire life changed.

The last year has been… a challenge… to put it mildly….

So, let me fill you in a bit.

The last few years have been an overwhelming challenge to me and my faith tradition. I was raised as a conservative Christian. If you have have kept an eye on the state of things in the US, you know that the divide between liberalism and conservatism has come to the forefront of attention time and time again. I was once part of that conservative crowd. I no longer am. I have not walked away from my faith in God, but I have come to a place where I can no longer claim “evangelicalism” as a home. It has been devastating for me. I have lost more than just a church. More than just a “family”. My entire identity has been challenged. The church was all I knew. But… I was also raised to be kind, to care for others. I was told that “God is Love” and “Jesus loves everyone”. Unconditional love is key. The first and greatest commandment, to love God and your neighbor as yourself. It has become clear that the evangelical church in the US, by and large does not reflect those sentiments by its actions. Oh, there is definitely lip service toward that, but real action and sometimes inaction, well, they convey a deeper truth. Evangelicalism seems to have problems with anyone that doesn’t fit their “mold”. People of other faiths and other cultures, people who identify as something other than their “sex assigned at birth”, people whose sexual orientation is something other than heterosexual and even people like me who are just trying to figure out where they fit into the big picture. People who are just trying to live their lives in peace. People who have lost family and friends just for trying to be true to themselves and how they were created. Some have lost more than that. People who are genuine and honest and wonderful and beautiful. I know some of these people, I care deeply for them. How can I be a part of a group of people who shun people and even sometimes demonize them? Simply put, I can’t. If I am to be true to my conscience, I cannot be a part of the conservative church in America any longer. This has been absolutely gut wrenching for me. It has called into question everything I was raised with, everything I once thought I knew. I know that some of my Christian friends will probably read this and be appalled with me. I guess that’s the way it is and maybe this is where we part ways. I don’t know, but know that I do care about you. I think we can learn from each other, but we have to have open minds and open hearts to do so.

I know this is going to seem like a random linking of events, but hang with me. I promise, it really does all tie together.

In January of 2021 I had an MRI preformed. I was born with an abnormal aortic valve in my heart. It isn’t super serious, but it does need to be monitored. The MRI was just a routine procedure that my cardiologist ordered in order to get an accurate measurement of my valve and the ascending aorta. This particular abnormality often is accompanied by a slight aneurysm. This is the bigger issue that the Dr. wants to monitor. I went into the MRI thinking I wouldn’t be claustrophobic. I’d had an MRI once before and had not had any problems. We’ll… I could not have been more wrong. Maybe it was because I was wearing a mask because of Covid, maybe it was because I was positioned differently in the machine, maybe it was because they had this plate kind of thing over my chest, maybe it was a combination of all of the above. I don’t know. All I know is that I got super claustrophobic. I somehow managed to hold still and breathe my way through the procedure with my eyes shut, but that was a very long 20 minutes or so. I had the uncontrollable shakes when they finally took me out of the machine. Later after I got home, I was still picturing myself there and the claustrophobic feeling just kept coming back. After that, I started to develop a real fear of closed in places, low ceilings and even depictions of these scenarios on TV or in movies. Windowless rooms, basements, caves…. you get the idea.

Fast forward to June of 2022. My niece, Allison, passed away after her long battle with Friedreich’s Ataxia. She passed on June 14. Her passing, even though we all knew it was an eventuality, was difficult for everyone who knew and loved her. I was no exception to that.

Finally, we come to Sept. 6, 2022.

It was your average night. I was just trying to go to sleep, like every night. I sleep with a CPAP machine. Every once in a while since the MRI episode I would wake up a little panicky and claustrophobic with my CPAP mask. The remedy was just to take the mask off, get up, go to the bathroom or get a drink of water or something and go back to bed. Not a big deal, just the need to refocus. I had one of those instances that night. That night, the getting up and going back to bed did not work like usual. I decided to get up and go downstairs to the living room and read for a little bit to try and change my thought pattern a bit. I read until I felt a bit sleepy, so I went back to bed. Once in bed, my brain was right back into the claustrophobia again. Then out of nowhere, my brain thought “I wonder if this is what it feels like to die. Was it like this for Alli? Oh God, I hope not. Oh God, I’m going to die someday, will it feel like this?”. And that was it. I had to get up again. Long story short, I didn’t sleep at all that night. I tried to watch TV to see if that would put me to sleep. I tried the recliner in the living room, I tried the couch… nothing. You know that feeling of falling you sometimes have when you start to go to sleep? Every time I would feel that, it was like I thought I was going to die, like I was going to suffocate, like I was falling into some sort of deep dark bottomless pit. Needless to say, I would jerk back awake every time I felt that. It was as if someone or something had uncapped a geyser of all of my deepest and darkest fears that just came rushing out all at once and would not be contained. Fears about death and hell and my own mortality. Questions about God and all that I had been through up to that point in my faith journey. I could hardly even close my eyes without my brain feeling like it was some sort of deep, dark cavern where I was lost without a map, or a lamp or anything to keep me from falling into some unknown abyss. I finally managed a few hours of sleep the next day, but when it came bedtime the next night I found myself in a full blown panic attack. Jason wound up taking me to the ER at about 9 PM. We were there until 2 am. I had to wear a mask that whole time, which, claustrophobia and all, was a nightmare in and of itself. They sent me home with some medication for sleep and medication for anxiety.

The road over the last year has been a slow, sometimes frightening, arduous road back toward healing and some semblance of myself. Re-learning how to sleep. Being ok with the lights off in the bedroom as I go to sleep. Struggling with weird thoughts, sensations and emotions when watching TV. Anything to do with the distant past, or the distant future, or closed spaces, or extremely vast open spaces all gave me anxious feelings. I normally love historical documentaries and archaeology shows, but well… those were too “deathy”. I still feel the anxiety in my chest nearly every day. It’s like i’m hyper-aware of my heartbeat. With therapy and medication, and self reflection I’ve come a long way. But, I realize that I also have a very long way to go.

I’m telling you all this so that the change in focus here will be easier to understand. To be true to my desire to be more transparent and authentic. Life is much too short to live it wearing masks, hiding our truths and trying to fit into molds that don’t fit. This is my truth and whether I want it to be my truth or not, it is. I’m taking the mask off and throwing it down. I want to live where I can just be me, with my flaws, my insecurities and my anxieties along with my talents and my goals and ambitions, my big, crazy ideas and the little silly ones as well.

That’s the goal from now on.