This year, I want to find peace, and finally embrace the spirituality inside of me. I have been denying this spirituality even since ... Freshman year of High School? Wow. My parent's half-way Christianity wasn't cutting it for me, so I did what a lot of kids that age do, I started looking into Paganism. Secretly. My parents were very, very against it (my best interest in mind, but blinded by their own ignorance).

I bought a book with a friend, and put a cover on it and hid it under my mattress. This was actually in middle school, when I first started reading up on Wicca and Paganism. My parents found out, threw a fit, and I threw a fit back at them. I remember the catalyst being that they locked my access on AOL to Kids Only (they found out I had been going to Wicca chat rooms). I was so, so mad. The irrational kind of anger that you can only really feel when you are a young teenager faced with the unfairness of the world. I don't remember how I convinced them, but maybe I so rarely threw such tantrums that they understood what it meant to me. We had some candid talks about what Wicca is, how it isn't about the Devil, or self mutilation, or anything like that. I was finally able to do my studies in the open. I bought another book (Wicca: The Solitary Practitioner) and devoured it.

At this time, I didn't call myself Wiccan or a Witch. I was researching. Trying this on to see if it fit. I spent my allowance at a store called Isis buying a tiny cauldron, mortar and pestle, colored candles, and other things for my circle. I remember my first purification ritual I did with a friend after bringing home all of these new goodies. It was like we were children playing house. I remember my first real ritual, for Yule. I went through the motions just like the book taught me, but that was all it was. Motions. I didn't feel it. This wasn't ringing with me.

I took a lot away from my Wicca experience, however. It was my first dive into a religion so different from what I was brought up with. The new viewpoint got the wheels in my head turning, and parts of it DID make sense. Parts of it did ring true to me, and still do today. I took what I liked from Wicca. I took "Do no Harm", and most of all, the idea that the power, whatever it is, higher, other, that power that exists in this world resides within each person. Every person has a power, and we all just have different ways of viewing them. A spell to a Wiccan is the same as a prayer to a Christian. Thoughts, words, and power, channeled through a ritual to enact change in this world we reside in. These things made sense to me.

I poured so much of me into Wicca, and I didn't want to endure the same thing all over again just to find it didn't work. That and, not many other religions are so interesting on the surface to an under-achieving High Schooler. I gave up. I took those things I liked from Wicca, reformed them into my own, and have since referred to that as my spirituality. I have always told myself someday I will research religions, and either find one that works for me, or take more bits to continue to make one my own. Someday, someday, someday. I have a great dislike for that word. So non-specific. It means good intentions but no action. Maybe someday is today, or maybe even this whole year ... further if necessary.

Since about my Senior year in high school I have had a vague interest in Buddhism. I haven't done anything about it except to listen intently anytime someone around me started discussing it (which was very rare). I knew that Buddhism was the next thing that I wanted to look into.

But I never did, I haven't. Why? I think I have still been so scared to try a new, "weird", religion. That outbreak with my parents so long ago was awful. And both organized religion and general spirituality have such a bad connotation now-a-days. I spent enough of my life in controversy (being a vegetarian was a nightmare, deciding not to be Christian while still in school brought on terrible looks and judgments from my peers, I became increasingly interested in anime for a long time and that was socially difficult outside of that circle, I came out as gay and had to put that to my family, always so different) and decided long ago that I was going to stop making things hard for myself. Picking a new religion, at random, just to try on ... that makes things complicated and difficult. And what if I pick the wrong one? Again? And again? How much extra drama is that? Especially if you are treated like an outcast by the religious "in-group" (don't deny it, you know this happens)... what if I really do become a "poser" ... trying to fit in somewhere that I don't know works for me yet? As much as I would value the information that each research would bring me, all of these things have kept me from diving in.

It stops now. I have to get over these childish fears and respect the fact that I deserve the divine. I deserve a power to believe in. More than anything else, I deserve the freedom to explore where the divine will speak to me. It wasn't in Christianity, it wasn't in Paganism. Both of these are fine, beautiful religions, but they just didn't speak to me. It may or may not be in the next place I look, but I will never know until I lift the sheet to find out.

So I am starting in the obvious, looking into Buddhism, and Hindu as well. If I ever make it to India, who knows, maybe all my questions about religion will be answered as easy as pie. Maybe I will find even more questions about what may be right for me. It is a path I have wanted to follow for years, and today I am taking my first step.