Escaped religion.
this post was submitted on 27 Dec 2023
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Same, what a challenging but worthwhile journey.
Growing up in the clutches of devout religious thinking had such a profoundly negative impact on my mental health and view of the world in general that relinquishing it was one of the most refreshing and revitalizing experiences of my life.
Religion teaches you that this life is only important as a stepping stone to eternity, that leads to some incredibly short sighted and unhealthy living. Accepting that this life is actually important for its own sake instead of as some sort of twisted game from some random deity helped me begin to make choices that objectively did more for humanity and myself.
Religion teaches you that evidence and logic are not routes to "truth" but feelings, faith, and obedience are. Untangling that mess was tough, as a result for decades now every single thought and belief has been in question. The pain of being so wrong but so convinced I was right has led to a bit of an issue allowing myself to believe anything
Religion is one of the largest stains on our species. I don't blame religious people, they're victims, but by george do I hate that we have perpetuated such tragic belief systems.
Religion is the worst thing to happen to humanity.
Learned a trade that I love as a career (industrial electrician), fell in love with my boyfriend, bought and renovated a home from 1890 together, plan to get married eventually!
Congrats!
More female electricians please!
My daughter is in her 2nd year, of 5, election school - she’s Union and loving being an electrician.
She just attended the Washington DC female electrician convention.
It’s completely changed her life.
Who said anything about me being a woman lol
I'm a gay guy, although it's not exactly something I bring up around my coworkers. The exception being the shop I worked in for 7 years because those fellas were like family.
That's cool about your daughter though, the trades are a very straight male dominated field
Getting sober
It allowed me to actually sort through all of my mental health problems and confront myself on who I was and who I wanted to be
Not to mention how much my physical health has improved
It was honestly the hardest thing I've done as well given that I started drinking when I was 12.
I've been sober now for 6 years
Edit: In 6 years it will go from "the longest I've been sober since I started drinking" to "The longest stretch of time I've been sober in my whole life"
Hell yeah, I'm at 5 and a half myself. Really helps me keep my priorities straight.
being born in a place where i am not genocided for being myself (yet)
Meeting my wife. She’s the best and I’m better off because of her.
Hey fucker you took my answer! She's the best tho isn't she? Mine is the best. I'm sure yours is the best. They're the best.
My son was born healthy. Became a father I guess would be more "to me"...
Met my partner who shares the same mental disorder, the only person I know who could teach me to cope and become a functional adult when I had almost lost all hope.
Falling in love
Meeting my girlfriend!
Got blitzed out of my mind on ecstasy and mushrooms and wrote some passionate emails which got me a full scholarship
Psychedelics, wife, kid, finding a fun job, realising my parents are kind of assholes and I wasn't such a bad kid.
Cutting ties with my dad, he was a giant angry child who would verbally and mentally abuse me and my mother and other family members.
Haven't spoken to him in over 5 years and I've gotten overall happier and healthier both physically and mentally.
stares blankly at screen
Being diagnosed with extreme MTHFR, getting on a high dose of methylfolate and the correct meds.
Went from having daily, very heavy brain fog to zero. Thought for years I was just lazy and stupid. Doing simple things left me more mentally exhausted than others, and I just thought everyone felt like I did, but were better at pushing through it.
Turns out, not lazy or stupid at all.
Went back to school, got my AA and into a field desperate to hire. Doubled my salary.
Well, I can’t kill myself until my cat dies because he doesn’t like other people and I don’t want him to have a sad life. Some people would consider that a good thing.
Hey, man, if it works.
Glad you're still here with us. Hug your cat for me. Or just slow-blink if the cat doesn't like hugs.
Working from home full time.
I got a steam deck recently. I can't decide if this is one of the best or one of the worst decisions I've ever made. I love it to death and I've been playing stuff with retrodeck almost non-stop since I got it, however, I've been playing stuff with retrodeck almost non-stop since I got it.
I know this is going to sound strange.
I killed myself. Or rather, I tried to kill myself. I mean, I did kill myself, but then I was still alive, in a new universe. My memories from the previous universe survived when I woke up here.
It made me realize that I literally cannot escape. Even through death.
That has given me a sort of “burned my ships” commitment to life that has made me truly alive. I also realized that all other humans are also trapped in a quantum immortality situation that will last for eternity as far as I can tell, so my level of caring and compassion for others has also increased.
I know it sounds totally fucked, but by realizing that I literally cannot die, it made me realize how important every moment is. Because every choice is a seed of eternity. The value of doing things right just went infinite for me, and I’ve never been happier, more productive, more generous, more committed to doing things right.
What happened? We need more info. I like your outlook and it reminds me of a poem I saw posted recently.
A series of experiences that I will not relate as I have zero evidence for has convinced me with visceral certainty that we are all immortal.
The thing I fear is the fact that death does exist, but only objectively. This means that for each of us who is going to live forever, that doesn’t mean everyone around us will.
I mean, it doesn’t mean they’re guaranteed to. Hopefully whatever narrative the universe produces that leads to the indefinite extension of our consciousness, will involve things that also make others around us able to extend their lives alongside us.
So we don’t have to be alone, for eternity.
Eventually, each of us will be alone. It’s just statistics. Infinite time, and eventually the improbable will happen. The narrative will continue to evolve into eventually being a narrative which produces the survival of one person, or one conscious entity of whatever kind it needs to be to survive for billions of years.
My guess is at that point, the narrative will have evolved into that entity being a god. Then that god will create a multitude of new people and try its best to let them be free.
Just thinking out loud here. This is all new to me.
So basically in order to not be alone, the eternally-surviving consciousness spawns new separate consciousnesses. And the cycle repeats. Crazy.
Bought a house for $18,000 during the mid 90's in a run down neighborhood. Now the neighborhood is the most desirable in an urban city. After the 2007 real estate crash I was able to move to suburbs and I rent out my original house. It was more luck than anything plus a willingness to live in a rough part of town. I'm always playing a game in my head now. What neighborhood is next?
Got lucky as an early investor in crypto which has allowed me to feel more secure in taking on debt to purchase a home
Meeting my kid's mother
I stayed at a community college instead of going to the shit 4 year universities that accepted me. Saved me time and gave me more opportunities to grow and meet new friends
By luck: meeting my husband online in a random forum. Self explanatory.
By choice: getting top surgery (a double mastectomy). What a literal and figurative weight off my chest! Being able to just walk outside without wrestling into a binder or being worried about if people noticed my chest was such a game changer. You don’t realize what a gift it is to be able to get up and go outside on a whim until you can’t do it.
We moved from a 16m2 room to a 55m2 appartment.
It's still way smaller and actually too small for us to keep our hobby income going, compared to our old 120m house that had a lower rent.
But hey, it's something i guess.
Bro just just bootstrap yourself and sell one of your vacation homes. Everyone's been there before.