what I ask of my god and my men (direction)

2:20

I asked this guy what our game plan was. We’d about finished our second drinks. Now, would we order another? Try a different place? Say goodnight? This guy says to me, I don’t know, what do you want to do? I’m like, pft, I don’t know, what do you want to do? He says, Well, what do you want? And since he insists, I scan my gut for the answer. I want…(I say to him)…some direction.

Which was funny because I had taken up prayer a few months before then, convinced by a Christian influencer I met at a pool party. I’d considered myself a spiritual person but the spirit part pulled a bit of a blank for me. Besides a vague personification of “the universe,” I didn’t know who to talk to out there in the ether, what they wanted, what the rules were for relationship or communication. “Spirituality” therefore was lonely—and a hustle. Manifestation, shadow work, journaling, Instagram reels on the positions of the planets. I liked the logic and the approach of prayer as the influencer spoke of it. Instead of asking myself over and over, what is my problem, trying to figure it out, I asked it as a whisper in the dark. Said I’d keep an eye out for an answer. Then went to sleep. I spoke to whomever was listening and had good intentions for me. For weeks in a row, I asked for direction.

I wondered if asking this guy for the same thing I prayed for was a Freudian slip, like I craved a relationship with a man who’s like a god to me, deciding what’s good for me, showing me mercy. Though, that was doubtful. It’s an easy jump to parallels between men and God as characterized by major religions. As I specifically told my Christian influencer, however, I don’t think I could pray to a man, especially not an authoritative one. (I’m not making a joke, it just doesn’t click for me.) The god I sensed out for myself through prayer, through what came to feel like divine alignment in my life, was if anything, a woman. The same way the moon is obviously a woman, and the ocean. And my god doesn’t decide what I need or whether something good or bad happens to me. She connects what’s already there. She reveals.

Prayer came to me (of course) when I needed it. Quarter-life crisis stuff, you know: What am I supposed to be doing? There are a lot of answers to that sort of question and maybe none of them are right. So you go with what works for you. Personally, I’ve tended to rely on pursuing what excites me. Though, as I got older and learned about Things Not Working Out, about spinning my tires to get nowhere but still needing to foot the bill, my faith in excitement, in inspiration, was wavering. I couldn’t tell if I even felt them anymore. And I didn’t know what to do—so I prayed for direction. Then I got good at catching replies to that prayer: project ideas in the middle of the night, something you hear in a podcast, a book your ex-boyfriend lends you even though you’re arguing a little. It’s subtle. Maybe you don’t fully buy in, reader, but it’s been the start of this newsletter, the gatherings I’m developing, my trip to Nepal to study yoga and meditation. And now I kind of won’t move without it, the soft suck of flow. Not even to make decisions I don’t feel called to make on a date.

I actually can’t say yet that my back-and-forth with direction will lead me anywhere all that good. But at least I like my life now, and the act of developing it. Really, reader, this is all to say that I’ve been having some exciting ideas about where to take my gatherings and how to use my yoga certification. I’ll keep you updated, as always. I’d love to hear from you and all about the direction in your life.

I love you, I love you, I love you.

Yours,

Z