Church.
Before I start, let me preface by saying that, this is in no way supposed to offend or upset anybody in anyway. Just like the rest of my blog, this is simply a statement of my personal opinion and is not meant to be malicious, disrespectful, harmful, hurtful, etc. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion and I am not writing this to change yours, this is simply my very own Internet Space and you have the ability to close the tab/page at any moment without having to continue reading. If you do decide to continue reading, it's somewhat of an unwritten contract that you're not going to judge my opinions or criticise them - so no nasty emails about how my beliefs/opinions/perspectives are wrong!!!



This post definitely won't be going up when I write it - in fact, it may/will take months of editing and adding to before it gets uploaded. I'm writing this on March 28 2016; on Easter Sunday (March 2016) I went to church for the first time in my entire life. I'm going to keep this quite anonymous, but one of my dearest, closest and best friends took me along with her. She goes to church quite regularly and had been encouraging me to join her for a few months prior. As most of you would be aware, March 2016 was a part of some of the worst months of my life (to date) and therefore I was up for trying anything. I had never really had an interest in religion; I grew up not really being influenced by religion, not really having an opinion of religion and being surrounded by people who if they were religious, didn't really talk about it too openly. This isn't necessarily a bad thing it's just that, however at the age of 18, I didn't necessarily have an opinion of religion or where it would stand in my life. I had always attended a somewhat religious school - preschool to grade 7 was a Catholic primary school, grade 8 to grade 10 was a Catholic high school and grade 11 and 12 were at an independent school where we taught about many world religions, but mainly focusing on Catholicism.

Over a weekend in May, I decided that I had suffered enough in my life and I needed to seriously take some time out for myself. I spent the weekend at my favourite small beach town about 4 hours drive from home - relaxing, reading, emotional eating and doing some longs walks and runs - and stayed pretty technology free throughout the weekend. It was full of tears, reflection, revision and remembrance as I spent one last weekend reflecting on my past before putting it completely in my past. I'm going to be honest in saying that this was one of the toughest weekends of my life. I didn't expect that when going technology free for the weekend I would feel as isolated as I did. I felt left out from the rest of the world, I felt completely alone and I really hated myself for what I had done. Since this particular weekend, I have promised myself to set Sunday's aside for myself to just think about my past week before entering the next one. I no longer want to bottle everything up, I want to have everything controlled (as possible as I can) before entering into a new week.

Sunday has now become a full day of reflection. I switch between the 3pm and 6pm Church services depending on my schedule for that day, etc. I now love and look forward to Sunday's! Usually, I let myself have a sleep in (which for me is around 8am), get up and have breakfast, climb a nearby mountain, sit at the top and just stop thinking - I let myself appreciate the sounds of wind and any passing birds and zone out from any shit that happened that previous week, or whatever is to come in the following week - once I'm back home I usually make plans to see Anemice, the drive to her is usually accompanied by an audiobook or piano music so that I can again, think. As mentioned, I either attend the 3pm or 6pm Church service where I like to think that it is all about reflecting, renewing and refreshing for the week ahead. When I get home from this, I usually sit in my bed with candles lit, a hot cup of tea or glass of wine (depending on the week) and finish whatever book I was reading that week.