I’m clawing at the edges of the universe for something to believe in because it can’t be me
The concept of belief has always fascinated me; the idea of something more than the self is transfixing, comforting even, and I find myself chasing it, a little girl clinging to the hand of God, even if I don’t believe. At school, I chose religious studies, learning about practices, community, and beliefs. I was enthused by the power they can hold and the peace they can bring, but I was never able to find my own. Envy drips from my ribs and sinks into my stomach.
Maybe it’s vain of me to worry there’s nothing more than me, that I’m the one with the power, standing alone in the empty sky. It’s a worry I’d do anything to be unburdened from. Pieces of belief cling to me in their conviction as much as I cling to them, with such a force that my knuckle bones burst through the taught skin. I’m desperate for something, anything, whatever it looks like. I see nothing.
I wish I were humble. I wish I knew of my own insignificance in this grand existence. I wish I could go to bed cradled in the arms of a greater power. Instead, I lie awake with my dreams on the floor.
Maybe it’s the anxiety in my personality that needs to believe that there’s something more. Something else that has control of my life when I feel it slipping from my own grip and spinning out. I’m still searching for something more than me, some voice of reason, some power of safety that I can fall into when my knees buckle.
“I need a father. I need a mother. I need some older, wiser being to cry to. I talk to God, but the sky is empty.”
―Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
When the 2020 lockdown began, the concept of spirituality flooded Tiktok and, along with everyone else in search of something, I was definitely influenced. I wrote letters to the universe, charged my crystals, and learned to read tarot, hoping the cards I lay would give me the knowledge I was devoid of. I was filled with a desperation to claw back my life as it fled from my grip, and the ink of my well-laid-out plans bled into unsureness that left me searching for something to hold onto, something to hide behind as I met a stranger named uncertainty.
My crystals reside in my bra, their jagged edges printing the soft flesh and reminding me of my malleability. I’ll be anything you want me to be if you shape me right.
I search for meaning in anything possible, a message from the universe, because if there isn’t a God for me there has to be something. The numbers on my microwave flash 11:11 and that’s my gospel.
As a child, the world was mine to spin with my little hands, flashing images of the people, places, and possibilities that blurred with the motion. As I got older, the spinning stopped and I was frozen in place, weighed down by the reality of myself and the unbearable weight of being.
Somewhere, there’s a little girl who still believes the world is hers. I long to talk to her. She can hold my hand in her tiny fingers and tell me who to be.
Maybe it’s the unrivalled burden of being the first-born, the pillar of belief for my siblings to cling onto in a storm, even when the pads of their fingers erode the stone face of my structure. I lay the foundations but my hands are shaking.
Maybe it’s the confrontation with my own inadequacy; I’m not qualified for any of this, and I’m waiting for people to notice. I don’t want to be the driver, I want to be the follower. Tell me who I am.
Whatever it is, I search for answers in every corner of being, for someone to tell me who to be or how to behave, because I can’t be the leader of this pack.
In this new-age influencer boom, I don’t think I’m the only one searching for something to believe in. Even if it doesn’t make sense, we instil our faith in strangers on the internet who go viral for any number of things, most importantly for not being us. Tell me what to buy and what to wear and show me who I am. I’ll look in every surface of the planet for guidance, but never in the mirror. A black lace of disillusionment shrouds the reflection on my vanity; I know her secrets, and I know she knows nothing.
I play Cat’s Cradle with the red string of fate, my fingers knotted so tightly in the twine that the blood is cut off and I can no longer feel. I need it tied around my wrist and pulled along by someone who knows better.
When desperation really gnaws at me, I look to literature. I spill myself over the pages like a painful confession and wait for them to talk back to me, for the ink on the paper to pour into me and point me north. I’m comforted by the uncertainty of those that came before me, their own confrontation with their loneliness in the world, their voices going unheard by an elusive God.
I turn to music for the hope of something more. Its immortality hides me from the lack of my own, the lyrics whispered on my tongue taste like the honey of the divine. It’s the closest I’ll get to God.
It’s a constant battle, the pendulum swinging between the hollow belief in nothing that rattles in my ribs in time with my heartbeat, and the thrumming of my blood that flutters like a hummingbird, an electric conviction that there has to be something more.
I look for something bigger than me, something to cradle my battered body in its calloused fingertips and place me on the chessboard.
i love this so much. i am christian but really struggling with it in the face of realising my self and my rational and intellectualising mind. the bible feels like a difficult and confusing piece of literature that i cannot approach any differently from any other book or piece of writing. it is so so hard to confront these things within oneself. thank you for the words, they are beautiful <3
I often feel like I keep allowing belief systems in, then throwing them out. I am desperate for a higher thing that I can relax into, just like you described. I often wish I was more like the people who accepted religion so easy, that used it as their root. I don't. I long for it.
You write so beautifully and conveyed feelings I feel so so often. Thank hou