I’m still an atheist but a friend of mine, a real bright guy from the university brought me to a local church’s young adults group a couple times. They’re nice good people and they seem so good natured, but I totally don’t believe in God and yeah Jesus was cool but I think of him as a historic figure like Siddhartha Gautama. I just wish these people didn’t get together under the whole religion thing, they seem so cool.
Anyways the church also has a NAMI chapter which I’ve been to and my mom goes to their caregiver workshop (my sister is bipolar and struggling, I’m fine).
Really a contrast to the Catholicism I was force fed as a kid.
I might just keep going and pretend to be Christian.
In other news I think I know which school and which professor I have the best chance with for a PhD- this guy at Illinois Institute of Technology emailed me back in like an hour and said he’s accepting PhD students, that and I read his work, he’s obsessed with stigma. I am doing my undergrad thesis on stigma. Looks promising.
Maybe you can meet a new gf there. The older guys i used to work with always said that it was easier to pickup women at church than a bar!
If nothing else perhaps you can meet some new friends there. Just be cautious if they start asking you to do things that make you feel uncomfortable, it’s possible they’re a cult.
What are you planning majoring in for grad school? Psychology I assume? Initially when I saw “stigma” I thought of statistics!
I’m going to either get in a clinical psychology PhD program or I am going to throw a fit. Like a grown dangerous man fit.
Joking. Not going to throw a fit. Going to get into a program. I have lots of ■■■■ backing me up. You would be surprised. I’m in a study and also going to part of a textbook, well a video supplement to a textbook chapter on schizophrenia. All saying “wow look at how well he functions”. He’s even smart!
Hi Mortimermouse,
I don’t know if it’s okay for me to write in this section, as it is my mother (age 85) who has schizophrenia. Interestingly enough, I was raised Catholic, though an over negative version of Catholicism that was more a product of my mother’s negativity, than true Catholicism. As a child, I was always afraid I would fall, accidentally, into hell.
As a middle aged adult, I weeded out all of what was my mother’s false interpretations of Catholicism, the force feeding of it, being told I was a “bad person”, and embraced Catholicism because I reasoned it to be true. I abide by the belief that whenever one accepts truth, that is; reality, however much suffering it brings, it ultimately brings peace and joy. Ironically, it is this very Catholicism that taught me not to hate my mother for the things she has done to me (and she has done some horrible things.) I recognize that her mental illness is not really her, just something she suffers from, and it is her mental illness that has done things to me, not my mother, who I love very, very much.
It goes something like this: Behind every dark and scary secret, is a deeper, more beautiful, and important truth. My mother is a beautiful person, a loving person, whose actions are based only on what she can’t help thinking is true.
I like the Christians, yes. But I also like sex. And these two things clash. But I can just have sex with myself. I had sex with nine people in one year. A little less than a year.
That’s like eternity in hell right?
Wait having sex with myself is not Christian either. I forgot. Dude that part eh I can’t comply with that but I like them I’ll keep hanging out with them they’re good people.
**