Sometimes, I feel like I struggle to find the will to live.

I mostly post movie and TV character stuff and entertainment coverage, so I doubt this will be seen by very many people, which is kind of nice because I just want to say what’s on my mind so things don’t stay trapped inside my mind.

I need to clarify that I’m NOT suicidal whatsoever, and I would never end my own life, but finding the will to live lately has been… really challenging.

I think personally this vibe is stemming from the total loss of identity I’ve gone through over this past year from losing my career to AI, deconstructing the religion I was brainwashed into from childhood, going no contact with my super conservative mother, and just generally feeling like I’m failing as a wife to my husband.

The religion piece has been rough, tbh. I was raised to believe that the Christian Bible was completely factual, not simply just a belief system to lean into. So I grew up believing I was inherently born bad because I was told I was a sinner from the age of understanding, when I was like six or seven. I spent so many nights grappling with terror over the possibility that I’d be damned to hell for all eternity for having impure thoughts. I never questioned the Christian faith because I was raised in it, and when you’re a child, your brain is like a sponge. You absorb all the things you’re taught, and you trust the adults who are teaching things to you. I was once told, “not to educate myself out of my faith.” Not to dig into the plot holes of the bible, or question any of it. Questioning it meant I wasn’t believing hard enough. So anytime someone brought up a topic that went against Christianity, I dismissed them immediately. I’d scroll past videos of that nature immediately.

But one of the first cracks in my belief system happened when I scrolled onto a video about deconstructing Islam as a religion. I stuck around and listened to the video because I was curious to hear someone’s perspective on leaving behind the Islamic faith. But at the end of the video, I was hit with a twist. They revealed they were actually talking about Christianity the entire time, and that’s when I realized Christianity and Islam were cut from the same cloth, with a lot of the same sexist rhetoric and patriarchal propaganda. In my mind, I saw the Islamic faith as more of a falsehood or a cult because women are encouraged to hide their hair, and their rituals feel a bit excessive. That religion came across as more oppressive to me. But it turns out that Christianity isn’t too far off, even though some of the rules are different. And then I did more research and found out that Christianity has only been around for about 2000 years, even though humankind has been around for 300,000 years. That means Christianity is a baby religion that was only made up… not very long ago. Upon further research, I learned that Christianity was developed based on political motivations from men who were in power at the time. They wanted easier control over the masses. Because controlling people through fear and shame is one of the easiest ways to control people. And when people are living in fear of eternal damnation to hell, it makes them easier to control across the board. I’ve come to the conclusion that I do think there’s a God, because I do think humankind was divinely created by a higher power than us, but I don’t subscribe to the God of the Christian Bible. That God is described as being an angry and jealous God. Human emotions slathered onto an “almighty creator” doesn’t feel realistic to me. A God with human emotions doesn’t sound heavenly, transcendental, omniscient, or infinitely wise. He sounds like he was written up by human men who wanted to control people. And the concept of being damned to hell for ETERNITY based on short-lived sins you committed on earth for a temporary period of time also just doesn’t compute for me anymore. It honestly sounds completely outlandish the more I think about it.

i’ve looked into bible stories more deeply now than ever before, and it turns out the majority of bible stories are recycled tales from ancient tribes, mythology, and other completely different religions that existed hundreds to thousands of years before Christianity was thought up. That includes the virgin birth of a messiah, which is a story previously told in Roman tradition about a virgin named Rhea who gave birth to twin boys who became leaders of the Roman Kingdom. AND the story of a global flood that resulted in one chosen man building a large boat, which is a story that comes from ancient Mesopotamia about chosen men named Atrahasis and Utnapishtim in the Epic of Gilgamesh. In that story, their God warned them of the flood to come, told them to build a boat, and told them to preserve life on it. AND the story of baby Moses in a basket floating down the Nile river? That was repurposed from the much older Legend of Sargon of Akkad, also from Ancient Mesopotamia. In that story, a baby named Sargon is placed in a basket, sent down a river, and eventually grows up to rise into power. Bible stories aren’t original.

Imagine being handed a pair of cloudy glasses as a child and told this is how the world actually looks. You wear them for decades, and then one day someone asks you to take them off. And you realize you have never actually seen clearly. That is what leaving Christianity feels like.

I did further research into Jesus of Nazareth, who was definitely a historical figure who walked the Earth at one point in history. But none of his “miracles“ are recorded anywhere else outside the Christian Bible. Which seems strange to me because if someone were walking the Earth performing those types of miracles back in the day, you’d think those stories would’ve been recorded in multiple historical texts since there were allegedly thousands of witnesses. But that’s just not the case. And Christians typically just use the Bible as their claim to prove their claim. That’s not sufficient to me anymore. The fact that Christians use the Bible as their excuse to vote MAGA genuinely makes me sick to my stomach. They use it to shame gay people, childfree women, women who want autonomy over our bodies, people with different religions than them, and beyond. It’s honestly disturbing. Realizing that I no longer consider myself a Christian has been a complete and total loss of identity in every sense of the word. Waking up every day and realizing my Christian faith is no longer part of who I am is a very jarring feeling. I still pray to God, but I don’t subscribe to Christianity, and that has been an adjustment. It’s been many nights spent crying. Many nights spent questioning everything. Many nights spent resenting my mother for the overly religious indoctrination, slut shaming, and her obsession with overzealous purity culture. Many nights spent filled with rage over the hours of sleep I lost, dreading and fearing the possibility of burning in hell. That fear consumed me from the age of 6 or 7 until I turned 30 years old. I still pray to God, but I don’t know if any actual divine intervention is happening in anything. Right now, in this very moment, there are hundreds of kidnapped victims around the world being brutalized inside basements and torture chambers. Many of them are crying out to God to be saved, and they’re being ignored. Right now, in this very moment, as I speak. In July of last year, 25 little girls drowned to death at a Christian camp in Texas. Two teenage counselors and the camp’s director died as well. They were all Christians. They spent their dying breaths begging God to save them, and they were all ignored. The innocent children in third-world countries and war-torn countries are calling out right now and being ignored. The victims of the E-files potentially prayed and begged for help, but they were ignored. Christians use the tired excuse that sinful humans exhibit “free will,” and that’s why the world is so bad. That’s their way of explaining away all the ignored prayers and ongoing suffering. Christians use the tired excuse that Satan is running rampant on this planet to explain away all the ignored prayers and suffering. But humans have always suffered — before AND after this 2000 year old baby religion was formulated. Christianity attempts to rationalize suffering and give meaning to suffering as a coping mechanism. I get why so many people cling to it. But now that I’ve deconstructed it, I don’t think I can go backwards.

I feel like losing my career in professional entertainment journalism was one of the biggest hits to my mental health this past year. It impacted me so deeply because of how much I aligned myself with my identity as a writer and journalist. To have your identity stripped away from you prematurely when it’s at its height takes you to a really dark place. It now feels so heavy to wake up and function in this world. So many people across so many industries have lost their careers to AI, so I know other people get where I’m coming from. I built my career for seven years, had thousands of my articles published, and I hit the six-figure threshold of earnings. I was happy. I didn’t like getting nitpicked by my editors every once in a while, but I was generally happy in my day-to-day. I had disposable income to spoil my husband. I was always able to do self-care days. I could always donate money to causes that tugged on my heartstrings, and I could always send money to my friend who lives in Ghana without hesitation. I hired a small team of writers for several months to contribute to the website I launched. I never felt concerned about my bank account… It felt good to be a generous person. It fulfilled me. But things are different now. The job market is terrible, and barely any places are hiring in my field anymore, so I no longer have the funds to employ other writers.

I do have a job that I work on weekdays, but it’s really not pleasant whatsoever. I gotta do what I gotta do because I feel way too guilty about solely relying on my husband’s income, even though he has never once complained about providing for me, even in seasons when I was earning zero dollars. But I love my husband so much that I feel more fulfilled when I contribute income towards our expenses. The issue is that even though I’m working a lot, I’m being severely underpaid at the main job I’m working right now. I used to be a cocktail server in Vegas, so I still have all the legal and active required cards and documents to serve alcohol in my state, but I’ve applied to probably hundreds of cocktail server jobs inside casinos to try and supplement my income, but I’ve heard back from no one. I also used to be a barista. I applied to a shit ton of barista jobs too. I got ghosted. I used to be a receptionist/secretary as well. I’ve applied to a bunch of those positions too, and no luck. It’s pretty much just been me tapping into every skill or job I ever had to try and create a better financial situation. But again, I do my regular job on the weekdays still as I search for something else or something more.

And I’m juggling multiple side hustles on top, trying to make everything work. I offer private yoga and crystal sound bath healing sessions locally in Las Vegas. I monetized my YouTube channel, and I post videos almost every single day. I self-published my graphic novel, and copies are being sold at an indie bookstore in Vegas, as well as on Amazon. I took a role as a mentor at the dance studio I go to for the financial savings benefit of it. But even though I’m stacking so many side hustles, I’m not even slightly coming close to the income I used to earn in professional journalism. There’s a special level of pain and anguish that comes from knowing how much money you used to earn and what you’re capable of achieving, but then no longer having access to that anymore. It’s like the most depressing anguish to show up every day doing a job you hate because you’re stuck in survival mode and you have no other option. All I ever wanted to do was write. But AI has taken over my industry, and my dream of being a writer has died.

There’s not much to say about my choice to go no contact with my mother. She decided her conservative views and fixation with Christianity were more important than supporting political policies that keep her Black children safe in this country. She made her choice, and she took her stance. Christian conservative politics are the winner in her world. She’s an intelligent person. She can grasp the concept that conservative views go hand in hand with bigotry. And it’s not a deal breaker for her. I didn’t get the luxury of having the type of mother-daughter relationship you see in movies. Her response to life’s difficulties has always been to “pray about it.” I needed a mother. Not a walking NPC who operates on the surface level. People ask me if I miss her or if I’ll regret going no contact, and those questions have given me clarity. I miss what I wish I could’ve had in a mother-daughter relationship. And I grieve the reality that I will never have that. She’s stuck in her ways and too closed-minded to ever open her mind. She will never evolve.

I want to be a better wife to my husband because he deserves to have a better wife. But I feel like I’ve been a massive disappointment. We share household tasks and chores, as in he does the dishes and takes out the trash. I do the laundry and the vacuuming. But sometimes I’ll let weeks pass by with piles of unfolded clothes scattered in every room. It’ll get so bad that it’s almost impossible to see the floors, aside from narrow walkways to get around. Our home turns into somewhat of a depression den because I get so overwhelmed that I just fail to function. My husband works twice as many hours as I do, so the least I can do is fold the clothes after they’re washed and put them away. But I keep failing. I just… keep failing. We’re so focused on paying for bills and essentials that my self-care days are long gone as well. AKA, my beauty maintenance and beauty upkeep. So I don’t feel like the pretty wife he married on our wedding day, or the pretty girl I was when we first met anymore. He reminds me that I’m his dream girl every single day, but I don’t feel like myself anymore. I feel like I’ve lost myself in capitalism, debt, and survival mode. We both work every single day, but affording life is difficult. Everything is more expensive than it once was. Legitimately, everything.

And when I sit there and think about it for long enough, I start losing my will to live altogether. I’m so tired of being on this hamster wheel. I truly wish I had the resources and capital to open a wellness studio where I could offer yoga sessions and sound bath healing on a schedule. I think the secret to a happy life is leaving the world a better place than you found it, and I envision a wellness studio as the perfect way to accomplish that. I have the skill set and ability to lead yoga classes and sound bath healings, but I don’t know how I’d be able to afford those startup costs. I envision sales of my graphic novel leaving the world a better place than I found it because my graphic novel resonates with others who struggle with existential dread, and it helps them feel less alone. But I don’t exactly know how to boost sales there. I envision the success of my pop culture website and YouTube channel leaving the world a better place than I found it because my dream is to be able to employ writers again in this era when writers are becoming obsolete. I want to pay them a livable wage. It’s my dream. I also love being able to share movie and TV content with people who crave distractions from reality, cuz reality can get kind of dark, and most of the stuff I post stays on the lighter side. However, the growth process with these things is absurdly slow, even though I post and publish stuff daily. I’m doing a lot, upwards of 13-hour and 14-hour workdays most days, since I’m combining my regular work hours and side hustles. But I don’t see a light at the end of the tunnel. I don’t mean to sound hopeless, but yeah, I just don’t have hope. I would never hurt myself, but the idea of not waking up in the morning doesn’t sound scary to me anymore. It sounds like a peaceful escape from this hellscape of existence. That’s pretty much it. Thanks for being here.