To-Read List.

1. We the Animals by Justin Torres

2. You Deserve Nothing by Alexander Maksik

3. Open City by Teju Cole

4. Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner

5. The Borrower by Rebecca Makkai

6. The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson

7. Ten Thousand Saints by Eleanor Henderson

Family matters.

I have so much on my mind right now and it's all flooding out in tears. I can't stop crying. I just think of everything that I hope for and how I never quite reach it. Ever. I know I have a big heart. And I try to express my love as compassionately as possible toward people, try to make them as happy as possible. I know I won't always receive it back. That's just natural. But I would like to think that from time to time, my family would try, too. No. My family doesn't know how to express or show their love. My family is stale. I am a passionate and emotional human being and being around them makes me feel like I'm drying up under a hot sun. I don't feel anything from them and that is extremely difficult to deal with.

I remember a thought that I had when I was little and my parents had just begun the process of being divorce. Our family was splitting up, well my parents were, and I just remember thinking "well, maybe this means Mom, Matt, and me will get closer." That didn't happen. It doesn't matter if we're under the same roof, different roofs, or no roof at all. No matter what, we're all apart. We don't think, do, or feel anything together. That's all I want is to be together, really together. Not just bodies in a room.

It depresses me to believe that that's never going to happen. We're never going to connect. They're never going to feel like I do, or love like I do. That sounds beyond arrogant. And I seem unbelievable selfish.

I just want my family to want me, too. I don't feel safe with them. I feel trapped, ignored sometimes.

None of this sounds the way that it does in my head. It makes more sense in my head. Of course.

I don't know how to explain how I am feeling, or why I feel this way. All I can say is I want a family. I want a family who supports me, loves me, protects me, inspires me, encourages me, talks with me, believes in me. Not one that just exists. They are my family, but I want them to BE family.

I thought this would help more, but it really hasn't. I'll just stop wasting my time and end here.

On my Atheism Soapbox.

I should probably be writing my paper instead of typing this blog, but alas I am not. Something struck me last night when I was talking with my mother. I just finished my short film for my Acting I final and wanted to show it to her. The entire process has been extremely frustrating with her involved. She hasn't been able to wrap her head around how this film gets made. Question after question after question, asking but how can it do that, why do you put it there, what makes the color show, etc., etc. Even after I explained to her all the details I possibly could, in every way I knew how, she still couldn't just accept that the camera would work, and that the film would come out just the way I said it would.

Now what hit me was this: for something so small of thing as camera and film, my mother had to ask a million questions and couldn't just accept what I told her was true. And yet, something so vast and complicated as our universe and the idea of a God, she accepts that and everything that goes along with it so easily. Why do people question all the things that don't necessarily matter in terms of life and death and our beliefs, but not question at all the idea of God when there is so little to support it? I guess I just don't understand why people put so much thought and effort into everyday things and not into the biggest questions of life: where did we come from and where do we go from here?

I question a lot of things. And I question them until I can understand fully or until I get all the answers possible. But I have asked time and time again about God and still I receive no assured answer, no supported answer. I could give 30 pages of support on my Lomokino camera and how and why it works. But no one can do that for God. If you can't even understand the workings and idea behind a silly camera, then how do you suppose you can understand and acknowledge the supposed being and power of a higher power?

This whole topic brings me to another point. A boy in the theatre department at school posted a status today quoting John Updike saying, "Among the repulsions of atheism for me has has been its drastic uninterestingness as an intellectual position. Where was the ingenuity, the ambiguity, the humanity (in the Harvard sense) of saying that the universe just happened to happen and that when we're dead we're dead?" I am extremely tempted to respond with: And where was the ingenuity, the ambiguity, the humanity of saying God did it? At least atheism is supported by millions of years of science, among a great deal else. God is only supported by a book that has been written, re-written, translated, and re-translated for thousands of years by MAN. Stories. The idea of a higher power was created by stories, not fact, truth, nor evidence.

These are the things I think about constantly. I just wish that there were more people around here that understood my thinking. I just wish, too, that people would realize how foolish they really are when it comes to this.