mindfuck turned mission

taso the last post was the beginning of an important realization that is slowly but surely becoming a personal mission for me. i realized, after much thought and many long conversations, that i am missing something big in my life, that something being religion. yes im jewish, but judaism to me is much more a culture and history of my family than an actual religion. because of this i realize that i have been living without religion for practically my whole life (well, techinically since i was about 9, when i realized sitting in the synogague during a wednesday hebrew school class that i didnt think god rested on the exterior, but rather inside each and every one of us), and consequentially have adopted my american cultural upbringing as my religion instead...

...and its just not working anymore (not that it ever worked in the first place). our culture is almost solely concentrated on what lies on the surface. we judge people by how they look, whether consciously or unconsciously. we judge OURSELVES based on how we think we are perceived. we can never SHOW weakness, no matter how weak we do in fact feel. we think we can tell everything about a person based on how they appear and try and manipulate other people's opinions of us by manipulating how we appear. our self esteem rises and falls depending on our weight or muscle tone or new hair style. whenever we hear an ex or crush or someone we're interested in is mackin it with someone else, instinctively our FIRST question is how we LOOK compared to that person. (how many times have your friends told you, "its ok...shes way fatter than you/shes got a big nose/she wears a moomoo/etc" to try and make you feel better?) whether we realize it or not we ALL judge based on the surface, whether it be other people or ourselves.

and i dont want it anymore. its been driving me nuts for almost my entire life, since the first time jared knee told my 7th grade boyfriend that he was dumb to be going out with me because i was fat (and of course the boyfriend told me, thinking i would find it funny...oh you silly silly boy). i never EVER saw myself as fat before that comment, and that was the beginning of the end for me. my mom would constantly tell me "if you lost 10 pounds youd feel better," but why? so that other people would stop judging me or so that i would start valuing myself higher despite other people? why did happiness (or rather, DOES happiness) revolve around our physical condition and whether or not we have a significant other? think for a second about this...whats the FIRST question you ask your friends who you havent seen for a while besides the colloquial "how you doin?"? you ask them about their love life, don't you?

im victim to it to, but ive gotten to a point where the surface has become obsolete. ive trimmed down and started relationships these past few months, but those didnt make me happy. when im happy im happy for reasons that exist in a different realm from those things, and ive decided i want to explore those. this next chapter of my life is going to focus on finding my religion (its probably better put spirituality, but i really do mean religion) rather than trying to find myself apart from my cultural religion that i have so unconsciously adopted.

so here i go.