Lost

Hey ReducedToAtoms! Sorry for not replying for a long time, but I have tendencies to throw myself into my duties and forget about other corners of the world. Thank You for Your reply to my worries and the subject of COVID and introvertism. Wish You ALL the best in Your life and in Your journey towards rationalism among spiritual struggles and doubts. And wish You lots of JOY during Christmas time wherever it means to You. Greetings from POLAND

Thank You freshstart for Your advice With the whole respect towards ReducedToAtoms who created this thread, I am going to answer. I guess I have no choice and I need to accept that my doubts are part of my daily living. Sometimes I wonder, why my life has to be so complicated. In some places like work and in public, I have to be stable as much as I can, but luckily at home I can be as lazy and not caring as it is possible. I am often jealous that other people create relationships so easily and have parents, this whole support and become pregnant so quickly, when at the same time I stand around them as a product of my life's struggles, stuck in my doubts. I hope that in the future I will meet my soulmates, who can teach me much more than people around me and have deeper understanding of people' nature. Soulmates who experienced enough pain to gain extraordinary wisdom. When it comes to NURSING I am truly impressed freshstart that You achieved such level as a professor That what I don't regret in my life are definitely Nursing Studies Although my mind was in clouds at that time and my grades were on basic level and not that great I am satisfied that I could help many patients and nurses during Nursing practices in hospitals in my hometown. I finished 3 years of Nursing School as Licensed Nurse in July 2016, but I was too undecided to go straightaway to work. In between I spent 2 years studying Public Health and 2 years studying higher level of Nursing (Masters - that's how it is called in the US), but neither of them were finished to the end. So I've got time only till July 2021 to start work as a NURSE (after 5 years of final diploma), otherwise my qualifications must be renew after 5 years. Hope that in February I will be enough motivated to start my Nursing Career, despite they whole mess in my head. For some time I was thinking to start working as Psychiatric Nurse, but I got to conclusion that it would make me even more miserable, because of my personality disorder (my psychologist from the near past diagnosed me with this condition). Now I think much more about General Nursing, Outpatient or Surgical Nursing. For now I am an ordinary worker who try their best at McDonald's. I work there since June 2018. The pace of work at McDonald's and the whole pressure of time is exhausting there

Thank You Castiel233. All the best for You too and in your work at the hospital

Yes, I also think that it is real. I'm going to start my new job as a nurse in February.

Hey ReducedtoAtoms! My last time, when I was sitting in Evangelical Church with my fellows was the 1st July 2018. More than 2 years passed and I still sometimes feel observed by them. I decided to let one Christian friend stay in my life, but she says to me from time to time that people from church still ask about me and miss me and all that stuff. Personally I am an introvert and work for most of my life to be less shy and more confident or brave. If someone believe in zodiac signs I am a Cancer. So I am emotional and sensitive inside, but when I am with people that I am comfortable with I am much more open and I am able to laugh and even scream and shout or curse sometimes. My personality traits and my quiet way of living among people makes everything much more difficult in life and even FAITH than it is for confident and loud extroverts. I am somewhere in the middle od Richard Dawkins Atheism Scale and I am not fully convinced whether God exists or not. But I know that mostly because of my introvertism and lack of stability in faith I am not able to live in community of Christian people in church, although such community gives lots of security and You make believers feel save. Personally I would prefer to be a person who truly believes in God for 100% and be comfortable with conservative ways of living or being a person who is 100% convinced that God does not exist and is a fairy tale and being liberal activist for human rights. But I am in the MIDDLE, torn between conservatism and liberalism, not really knowing what to do about it. I just try to work hard everyday and being nice for people as much as I can, although sometimes I should say out loud my opinion in front of a BOSS at work, but my fear and introvertism stops me. I lost a lot in life, my grandparents, my mum, my boyfriend and when I visit their tombstones in cementary I still pray in my own personal way to Jesus and I still FEAR what is really after death and I feel sad about how many people never can find happiness in life and many are even dead alive. I lost my insanity, when I started realizing that there is probably NO God and still my crisis of faith and losing God makes me incredibly unstable. I even developed a shopaholic addiction and I have a HUGE debt. Lawyers who specialize in debt try to help me with all of that and maybe next year I will be able to file for bankruptcy. My 68 year old dad started drinking 10 beers a day, because of my troubles with debts and I worry everyday will he be still alive, when I come back from work? I'm 27 years old and my 30's are closer than ever before and I feel like my youth disappeared among doubts about right ways of living in this world I wish I would be a good Christian girl who has good morals and never losing faith in GOD, but it just happened and his whole protection over my life in gone. BUT I try my best everyday to stay alive and hope for the better in the future. My next fear is whether COVID- 19 is real or not or maybe there are going to be MICROCHIPS in vaccines and I will go to HELL for that so...yeah LIFE is crazy. Wish You all the best ReducedtoAtoms and I hope that You will learn to live with Your doubts as I did and still DO. Wish there was a real CLARITY in this world, whether GOD exist or not

Well, more than 1 month has passed since HIS death and I can say that grief has plenty of colours as many people say. And LIFE with time becomes not easier, just DIFFERENT as many people write this on grief websites. During grieving process of my boyfriend's death I witnessed some kind of flashbacks and coming back of feelings from my childhood's grief after my mum's death in 2002. Which was kind of weird and odd. I just realized that my mum will always be part of me as I was hers, so longing for her will never disappear. Some time ago I discovered the book 'Motherless daughters' of American writer Hope Edelman and even I have had an opportunity to talk with her on Facebook. She created group on Facebook for 'Motherless daughters', where I can read different stories of women, who lost their mothers at different ages or they were abandoned by mothers who are still alive. And when I think about the fact that his body was cremated and all is left after him are just ashes and he doesn't exist as a whole - I feel sick to the stomach. Recently in general I wake up with physical pain as a result of my grief. His sister told me through the phone that before cremation he was put into three separated cold storages and it painted in my mind a drastic picture of his body being cut into three pieces. I had no idea that it is legal to cut dead body into pieces if someone is big or overweight and put it into 3 different cold storages. That was the most surprising thing I have ever heard! Many times when I think about the whole process of him from talking to me, laying with me to bed to go to sleep, talking again and hug to shortness of breath, weird moves of his body and weird sounds, which led to his death...I analyze it over and over again and I realized that I should start CPR rightaway when I have noticed that his body becomes purple. Instead I run to the next room to wake up my dad and call an ambulance. I feel quilty that I started CPR around after 5 minutes, since his lack of response. I feel that everything went wrong and maybe I could save him, if I would react quickly, especially because I gratuated from Nursing School. I also experienced some urges to pray and I felt desire to hold on to something spiritual and talk to God and to my dead boyfriend. I have to admit that I even started to wonder if I will see him after death although his body was cremated or if his body will be resurrected from the dead despite of cremation. I guess I would like an afterlife to exist just to hug my mum and my boyfriend and ask them, if they are OK ? SO, this is how craziness of grief really looks like.

Thank You guys for Your responses I truly missed Ex-Christian Forum, but throughout my relationship with this man (that now is dead) I was kind of afraid to come here, cause I guess he would not understand my need for connection with others, who lost their faith in God. He wanted me to sort of come back to 'normal' Christian Faith as he was talking about Catholicism, but not neccessary practice it. The relationship with Him would be really difficult, because of His problems with alcoholism and with another family that He had. I guess, that what mattered the most in our relationship was love and caring for each other. But I don't know, if that would be enough to build stable life with Him. I was always sceptical, when it comes to relationships and for my whole life I experienced company of my own and somehow I went through life like that. Sometimes I wondered if it' s possible for me to have normal life like others with beloved one and kids, but I guess not everybody's character is suitable for relationship or not everybody is created for relationship. Glad to visit Ex-Christian again

I came back to this site as I do from time to time. Hello again to old and new fellows! In December, 1 one man, 11 years older than me told me that he fell in love with me. He had 2 kids and wife, with whom he had divorce, but they still were living together at one home. I was always anti-relationship type of a person and I thought that I will never engage into any kind of relationship, especially with someone, who has children with someone else. But I decided to give it a try, although I knew that it has no sense, because he was an alcoholic and I had difficult past, when it comes to religious and spiritual practices that I totally gave up on, when I lost my faith in God. From the beginning I knew that it will be difficult for him to understand my spiritual past and he even said that he loves me and he will bring me back to my past Catholic faith that we both were raised in as kids as it is in my country- Poland. He was thinking about baptising our kids if we would have them and not take everything that seriously, when it comes to Catholic faith, rather staying traditional. He seem to treat my 7 years old adventure with Protestant church quite weird. And wanted me to come back to 'normal' Christian faith. I have never had boyfriend and all of the sudden he gave me love and support and he was hugging me a lot. He also loved my dad as his own father. He was a sweetheart who loved as both like no one before, but had problems with alcoholism as I have with shopaholism. Recently, I even thought about leaving him or just telling him goodbye, because of feeling quilty of the whole relationship and feeling worried that he won't fully understand or accept my religious past and current viewsbon life without God. But life supriesed me and set me free from my doubts in a tragic way. Yesterday he died all of the sudden and became stiff and purple very quickly. I guess it was related to heart failure, but no one is 100% sure. Thanks for reading! I am glad that I am here again! Any advice how to cope with it all?

Hi ! I would like to make a little update in this thread. Well, in August 2019 I have had an opportunity to visit my older niece and her boyfriend in Bath, Somerset in the UK for 5 days. I traveled by plane with my younger niece (sister of my older niece). Also, I have visited London for the first time in my life. For me the most exciting place was Trafalgar Square and China Town. Unfortunately Big Ben is now covered, because of renovation. To sum up, in 2017 I was able to be in the North part of England and in 2019 I traveled to South England. Cool! My niece tried to convince me to come to work in Bath, because I have lots of debts in Poland (caused by my shopaholic addiction as I mentioned before). But it's weird that as much as I fantasize about moving to England for many years, when I was there only for 5 days I actually panicked and even cried once. I guess, I was homesick and I was afraid, that something is going to happen to my 67 years old dad, when I leave him alone in Poland. I felt anxiety when I imagined living and working in the UK alone and paying rent and additional costs of living on my own. I don't know, if there would be that much left for my debts in Poland after paying all the bills. And also there is the whole Brexit thing. I found myself afraid of liberal society as England is, I guess because I am not completely get over my loss of faith in God. I am stupid, because on one hand I would like to at least try to live in the UK for a while, but in the same time it causes in me irrational fear of being completely left behind abroad. Maybe it's because I am a shy introvert and I depend on my dad, who raised me as a single father and I am afraid to lose the only person, who truly loves me. I don't know, how will I survive without both parents one day, although I am 26 years old. Further family don't care that much about me like my dad. I would like to repair my mistake related to debts and support him financially, but with my anxiety it would be hard to collect 50 000 pounds to end nightmare with my debts in Poland. My future seems to be too overwhelming. Sigh. In 2016 I graduated from Medical University with a title of Licensed Nurse. I should be much more brave, than I am. From July 2018, I work in McDonald's, but I think about quitting that job. Finally, I should start working as a nurse. Recently, I have called to two work agencies in Warsaw, that help to apply for a job in the UK as care assistant or nurse's assistant in Nursing Home. Costs of living are cheaper, when You rent a single room inside Nursing Home or near it, but I don't believe in it that much. Anyway, I'm going to give it a try and challenge my homesickness and anxiety and try to apply for that job with a help of UK employer, maybe in Somerset, near to my niece. As I have heard from people from work agencies, European care assistants and nurses are going to be accepted in the UK to work, to take care of elderly people, even after Brexit. But who knows it for 100 %, if there will be no-deal. I would like to ask someone here, who lives in the UK: 'How much money does a single person really need to have per month to survive in the UK?' and 'For what You have to pay additionally in the UK except rent and food and how much?' Thanks for reading

Hey RealityCheck! I want to send You words of compassion from me to You in those hard moments of your life! I don't know how it is to witness death of the father (rather I know how it is to witness dad's struggle with alcoholism), but I know what it's like to lose a mother. Stick to Your wisdom that comes from Your personal experience and be healthy and strong in Your ways of life, whether they are happy or tragic. Lots of peace Lost

I'm sort of depressed guys. Recently I got to conclusion that it will be really difficult for me to move to England in the future, because of some consequences related to my debts. I have them 90 % in 'non-bank' companies (loans that You can take through the Internet, getting money directly on Your bank account with out need of a traditional bank). For now, I got calls from debt collectors, because I don't pay to these companies any money from February 2019. I'm afraid that one day a bailiff will knock my home's doors. Luckily, as I found out, debts are the part of a civil law, but unfortunately if a particular loan will accuse me of extortion of a loan or money, that is a part of criminal law. In medical fields, like in my case Nursing, when someone goes abroad employers want a potential candidate for a worker to show certificate of no criminal record. I guess my shopaholism addiction (that caused my debts) fucked up my future forever. Maybe there will be no accusations related to extortion of a loan, but just a bailiff. But a man or a woman who is the one takes 50% of an income from a bank account and it makes anything harder to save the money for personal goals, but to just live on a minimum scale So that's how Brexit ruined my dreams to move to England and most of ALL- me, myself, because of my stupid addiction. Do You have some friends from abroad that came to work to Your country despite problems with debts and bailiff? And if You have, how it all ended up for them?

I guess, I would pray to a God that I have always known- Jesus. And if I was in a lot of pain and lonely, before death probably I would imagine the figure with open hands (ready to hug me) in light and try to imagine warmth and love that people who experience near death experience see and feel. And I would think in my mind or said "You know my whole life and deepest thoughts, emotions and doubts and I'm sorry that I wasn't able to live a life in Your godly ways, but if this is Your will, please accept me into Your kingdom, although I am very messed up and confused person". I am a person with personality disorder and anxiety-type person, full of emotions that are out of control, so it's hard for me to decide, whether it's better to live in a conservative world or in liberal world...so I just live in a kind of mixed my own world with elements of liberal and conservative world. Unfortunately I can't make myself a good, full of faith, a 100% convinced Christian or an Atheist Activist that is 100% convinced that there is no God. I am a number 5 on Richard Dawkins' Spectrum of theistic probability: 5. "Leaning towards atheism. Lower than 50% but not very low. "I do not know whether God exists but I'm inclined to be skeptical." That makes things really difficult, cause Christians and Atheists are much more into 100% sure people, than doubters and skeptics. I hope that somwhere in the world there are support groups for people who are not 100%.

Personally, I would be afraid to ask God for a sign again, cause I'm dread that I could actually receive a sign and then I would have to come back again to this whole Christian lifestyle and make sense of it all again. Honestly, I like the secular world too much to come back again to conservative ways of life. Well, I see lots of disadvantages in both worlds, whether it's liberal or conservative world. I just stick to rationality, love, kindness, hope and as much as I can the understanding and help for others. Although I have also lots of anger, dark emotions and pessimism inside of me I try to make my daily life to work somehow without God and church friendships. Unfortunatelly, in my personal reflection I think that if I would have a terminal disease, terrifying accident in a car or on a plane or if someone would kidnap me, probably I would say my personal prayer to God, although I have a chaos in my mind related to faith in general. I don't know, if I could die as a strong, unshakable Atheist, especially if I was conscious before death.

Thank You All for Your advices and Your perspective on this subject And thank You for Your time to reply to my thread Future will show if I will ever go abroad. But yeah, I am jealous that for other people moving abroad or traveling abroad is so easy. In many cases they have someone to support them and help in that process. I had only an opportunity to travel once to my cousin and her family to Northallerton (North Yorkshire in the UK) for 2 weeks during summer in 2017. To be honest, If my dad wouldn't ask my aunt ( my cousin's mother) to take me there, I don't know if they would ever welcome me in their house on their own. They took me to Whitby (I saw a Dracula's castle, which in reality was a monk's church or something like that...but those graves and the whole atmosphere there gave me special emotions). I had to take some photos, although there was a suggestion to respect people who rest there in graves and their family. And I saw a North Sea and big white birds. My aunt and my cousin were complaning about me being sad and serious on the face and that I don't have a boyfriend although I am in my 20's, but yeah my whole identity is broken and my spiritual values are gone, so for now I don't really give much of a though to relationships. I don't know if I could live with a person all the time forever and ever. I said to them that I'm going to be in a relationship and having babies in my 40's and that really pissed them off. So I would say that my first journey abroad wasn't with right people, but I am glad that I had a opportunity to travel to England before Brexit and I tried to talk to people using an English accent during my walks alone on the streets of a small Northallerton, but people seemed to be bored or were saying "Sorry" if accidently they touched my shoulder and I kind of smiled laudly when one guy in the shop said to me "Madam", cause I am not used to to this special treatment. Ladies in bank, post or travel agency were nice though. But when someone goes to England it's not surprising to not to think about great London. I'm thinking about one day trip to London before Brexit, but I don't know how to plan it and come back home safe without problems. Me and my dad, since my mum's death in 2002 tend to separate and isolate from the rest of the family. That's why we didn't have an opportunity to build a strong bond with most of the family. Sometimes we are just like: 'Fuck You all, you haven't been there when we were in a grief and in a need, so fuck You'. My mum was the one that had a gift to unite the family and had a spirit that spread a warmth to everyone's soul. Me and my dad we like to work on our own, we like to be independent and we like to loners. But it doesn't mean that we don't yearn for love that we once felt more in life. Cities in my country like Cracow or Warsaw (or even more that I haven't seen before) are also great and have lots of tourists and English-speaking people there, so maybe it will be an alternative option to move there if my dream about US or UK won't come true. Thank You for Your suggestions about Ireland and Canada, I will think about that But, yeah...I forgot. It's difficult for me to move out anywhere, even to bigger city in my country, because of my huge debts, caused by shopping addiction (as a coping mechanism during the process of deconversion or rather as a bad side of my personality and spoilt attitude towards life). No excuses. I need to pay for my addiction and fix it. No one will do this instead of me.