I had an outline hand-written for all of my other posts. I'm only 26, though, so I'm just reflecting now on the last few years of my life. The magic years.

When I met mark I was nineteen. He was the best friend of my best friend's brother. It wasn't until I was thinking about changing who I was spending my time with, to smarter people, that I seriously thought about talking to Mark. I was traveling a lot and I would spend pretty much all my time in the hotel on the internet messaging my friends on AIM.

I started messaging Mark with a serious goal. I knew we could be friends because I knew at one point in my life I used to be really smart. Maybe that would come back to me. Maybe it was like riding a bike. (It wasn't). When Mark moved from living with his friends to an apartment alone, I decided it was time to strike. I invited myself over.

Another absolutely wonderful person to add to my collection! I went from not saying a word around him for hours to aggressively invading his head. Mark and I went through the same childhood. We could relate in a way I have never related with another person. The differences of our lives outweigh the similarities, but when it comes down to it, we were both brainwashed. We were both treated like our honest curiosity was a threat. We were treated like we were evil for asking questions. We never felt a connection with the lord on high who was and is and is to come.

My favorite memory while dating Mark was when we were at his parents' place in Eugene. His older (by 17 years) sister was there, and we were talking about when Mark lost his faith. He told them about how it felt to honestly believe for years and years and years and never feel the holy spirit. He never felt a connection to god. He believed with all his heart and never felt it. His sister mentioned that it might have been because of his doubt in god, and maybe if he gave it another try... I explained it was the other way around completely. He had no doubt that he would feel the same thing the other Christians felt, because he was told he would. He had no doubt until he had actively tried to feel it for years and didn't. He had doubt because he had not felt, not the other way around.

I asked her, "How many decades are you supposed to wait before you feel a little tiny something?" I think it meant a lot to the family to hear that. They understood that it was nothing on the part of the atheist. We tried. We gave ourselves to Jesus and he ignored us. I'm not going to live a lie and pretend that god has a plan for me. When I became atheist, and I made a plan for myself, only then did things really start to work out for me. God's plans are stupid. God's plans are awful.

I have never heard someone call something "God's plan" that wasn't something any nit-wit could have come up with. You know? God's plan is never intelligent. God's plan is never to teach really important lessons of love and compassion to all people. God's plan does not involve peace. God's plan is just man's selfishness, all dressed up like a whore.

The problem for me is when I know what different body parts do, and I know about how the human brain is capable of a panic attack... I know, then, that it is capable of feelings on the opposite end. I know what it's like to feel manic, and I do not relate that to god. It's a man-made state-of-mind. Theists refuse to recognize what the human body is capable of. They refuse to learn, and read, and study. They are extremely ignorant to any science that isn't 50 years old.

In 50 years gay marriage will be the norm. Just like woman can vote now and only a crazy person would say they shouldn't have that right. Remember how women couldn't vote? Remember how there were slaves? Remember how the Bible supported both forms of bigotry. I'm going to try to make this as obvious as possible so that Christians can understand. Woman can vote now because there is nothing about it that harms anyone. Slavery is illegal because there is nothing harmful or evil about NOT owning humans. The opposite cannot be said.

Let's look at homosexuality. It doesn't harm you. You might THINK it does, because it's against your holy text, but come on, grow up. Think. Learn. Progress. It doesn't hurt you, it only hurts them. They are the humans who are having rights taken away from them, not you. You are thinking like a bigot. You are equal to the generations that fought to keep woman from having rights. You are equal to the generations that fought to keep slavery. You are taking away the rights of other humans because you somehow are so much better than them that you get to decide based on your theistic views. That, my friend, is bigotry.

If you think gay marriage will hurt you, you are wrong. Has my marriage with my husband hurt you in any way? If your answer is yes, then perhaps you have a case. My marriage is exactly what you are afraid of letting them have. It's godless. It's an expression of love and nothing else. We made no promises to god nor man. We did it on purpose, too. The reason we got marriage was to prove that a godless marriage hurts no one. We are here to show you what it will be like if gays marry. It will be no different. Our marriage has affected your faith, your marriage, your relationship with god, in no way.

Please, let's stop filling our hearts with hate in the name of god. I don't think that's what he was going for.

When I became agnostic I was having a hard time shaking off the guilt. I started studying the history of religion to gain some perspective. I didn't know why, as a Christian, I hadn't already received this education, until I read it. Either history is a lie or the bible is a lie. I choose to believe what the nerds come up with, they're usually right. And they're constantly in competition with each other to know more facts. They're pretty strict with each other about using the word fact. You can only use it when something is a fact. So right there you see proof that you can trust them. Simply observe them and use your brains, people. They aren't evil liars.

You know who are evil liars? Nevermind.

I didn't date these two years. I flirted and went on a few dates, but few got a second chance. I decided I'm not going to settle. There absolutely is someone out there who I will want to spend a lot of time with. I'm not going to settle for a pretty face.

Instead I spend my time going on blind dates debating religion with theists who don't dare ask me on a second date. They don't understand why I need to know up front what kind of magic they believe in. I eventually trade blind dates for more time searching for atheist friends. I want a community. I'm agnostic, but only because I didn't really understand what it meant to be atheist. And because magic is poetic so I enjoyed hanging on to that. It helped with the loss of Jesus and the fact that people were wasting their lives for gods. I would continue to be agnostic until I experienced the magic in atheism. That's another post. Quit distracting me.

I was still rebuilding my self esteem when I met #3. He didn't much like talking about deep stuff. He was maybe agnostic, but refused to talk about it because it didn't matter. I kinda liked that idea. What I didn't know turned out to be dangerous with him. I still had had no good example of how a decent man treats a woman. I had no way of seeing the signs, and I was brainwashed again. He made me feel selfish for wanting to be a photographer. A job that kept me from being in town for more than a week out of every month. It was not a straight week, it was three days here and four days there. I wanted to be an artist. I was making A LOT of money. I was good at it and people remembered my name and requested I come to their town the next time my company sent a photographer. I climbed to the top. I was a manager, training other photographers. I set my own schedule, I got to pick whatever place in the United States that I wanted to travel to. I liked Alaska best.

He made me feel terrible for not choosing to be poor and be with him instead of doing what I love and what I'm good at. It's not like he made it worth my time. He liked to smoke and play guitar. He didn't like reading. He didn't like to talk about thinky stuff. My friends told me to dump him. I told me I was not worth loving so it didn't matter. No matter what I do I just make boys that love me mad. I'm just trying to do my best. No one else will ever be better than what I have now. I can't do any better. I am a failure.

When I felt my worst he waited until I left for a month-long trip. I called him after the two-day drive to tell him I got there safe and he dumped me. He wouldn't tell me why and changed his phone number and blocked me from e-mailing or messaging him. A while later he posted on his livejournal that he did some research and decided I was a Narcissistic Sociopath. He even joined a support group.

I felt like life was not worth living. Not because I could not be with #3, but because life was not getting any better. I didn't want to play the game anymore.

I spent a lot of time traveling after that. Town to town. No relationships. I spent six months alone in my thoughts. In the first month I became an atheist. I decided magic was getting me nowhere, and I needed to learn more about myself and how I can stop making these mistakes. I needed to self-actualize, and let no man get in my way. My photography changed and I started capturing pictures with crazy facial expressions. I started making a lot more money. I started feeling lonely. I wanted to make more friends that I thought were smarter than me so that I could continue to be challenged and gain some much needed wisdom. That's when I remembered Mark.