CAUSAPSCAL, Quebec, September 13, 2023 – I know you drop by here occasionally to see what I’m up to, what I’ve made of myself, how I’ve changed or haven’t changed over the years. I know you’re partly curious and partly repulsed at what I’ve become, and you try to explain it by convincing yourself that I’ve gone a bit crazy, though I seem harmless enough.

And (strangely) happy enough.

Still, a religious nut is a religious nut, to be avoided at all costs.

I take your silence in stride and I don’t hold it against you. I would be far less charitable if the situation were reversed and you were writing these words and I were reading them. I would be downright and unapologetically nasty. I’m sure you remember how I used to bash religious nuts like me, though maybe you don’t remember because I didn’t really give them the time of day. To me, religious nuts weren’t worth thinking about let alone talking about. I dismissed them out of hand. They weren’t even worth a jeer.

And yet here I am today. I’ve become the thing I despised the most, and it turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me and continues to be the best thing that ever happened to me, 24 years later.

Twenty-four years is a long time to be functionally crazy, or rather crazy and still a functional member of society. You would think that if I were actually crazy, I wouldn’t have been able to be a functional member of society for so long. I still run my own business, still look after my own household, still travel more or less perpetually, dealing with all the issues that come with constant travel, and through it all I remain a believer with two feet firmly on the ground.

That’s the part of me you don’t recall ever seeing – a calm Charlotte, an unflappable Charlotte, a Charlotte in control. I always seemed to be in crisis mode as an atheist. Something was always crashing down around me, and I was responding with my usual histrionics. It was non-stop high drama, but not the good kind. Not the inspirational kind. It was the dark kind. The constant thoughts of suicide kind. The acting out in violence kind. The losing it kind.

In hindsight, I know exactly what was wrong with me, though at the time I couldn’t articulate it. I couldn’t articulate it because I was an atheist who scoffed at all things God. And so I blindly raged, and you got caught in my crossfire.

I apologize for that.

We all do stupid things when we’re young, but when we get older and keep on doing them, that indicates a much deeper problem. You can’t blame youthful folly when you’re no longer a youth. But I mostly got away with being crazy as an atheist because nearly everyone around me was likewise crazy (I’m not including you in that; I’m just saying), and so we didn’t see our craziness as craziness but as life as an adult. We attributed our depression and confusion and constant upheavals to being adults, just as we attributed our alcohol dependence to being adults. We were adults with adult problems who dealt with them the way adults do: by drinking. We drank every day and didn’t think anything of it. It was normal for us. We were adults, and adults drank their problems away.

That’s another thing you wouldn’t remember about me – a sober Charlotte. You wouldn’t remember because the Charlotte you knew was perpetually inebriated. I didn’t stop drinking because I “got religion”; I stopped drinking because alcohol wasn’t doing anything for me anymore. It wasn’t making me feel good and it wasn’t relaxing me, it was just giving me a headache and making me feel numb. So I stopped drinking and I haven’t had a drink in years.

I stopped smoking, too, in case you’re wondering, though if you recall, I never really smoked, just puffed. I stopped puffing cigarettes from one day to the next, so I guess I wasn’t really addicted to them.

I’m thinking that all these changes, all these True Confessions, are making me look pretty boring in your eyes – I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I read the Bible, I’m a religious nut. And yet in these words – in the very fact that I’m writing them to you in this very public way – you still see the Charlotte you once knew. That’s because I am the same Charlotte you once knew. My personality hasn’t changed. Everything that irked you about me is still there. I still laugh too loud and usually at inappropriate moments. I’m still argumentative. I’m still always right. I’m still at times fiercely private and at other times wildly exhibitionist. I’m still unpredictable and do my own thing. I’m still hard to control.

Yet amidst all those personality quirks, a few more have been added that that weren’t there when you knew me. Think of me as “Charlotte Plus” (or Charlotte+). For instance, there’s the conciliatory Charlotte, the one who chooses to forgive rather than to hold a grudge. Imagine not holding anything against anyone! Well, you don’t have to imagine it, because I’m living it. It’s my lived reality now, and it’s very freeing and calming. There’s also the live-and-let-live Charlotte who’s not neck-deep in everyone’s business like she used to be. My new mantra is “it’s not my business”, and I leave it alone. Like not holding a grudge against anyone, not getting into other people’s business is also very freeing and calming. It’s not that I’ve stopped caring about things or people, but that I’ve recognized that I don’t have the inalienable right to know everything about everyone all the time, or to dictate my terms and opinions to everyone (unless, of course, they ask or are voluntarily reading my blog). As much as I’m always right (and I still am! lol), I don’t push my rightness uninvited on everyone like I used to. It’s not my business to interfere and dictate. I let it be.

Some other character plusses have also been added to the Charlotte you used to know, but those are the main ones. I don’t think they make me crazy, but you may beg to differ and that’s your prerogative (see? conciliatory! :D). Part of you came here out of curiosity, maybe wanting to confirm what you suspected (terminal religious nut disease; presumably incurable), while part of you doesn’t really know why you’re here or even why you’ve read this far.

But I’m glad you came and I’m glad you’re still reading.

In any case, I don’t care if people think I’m crazy. They can think whatever they want, and they’re welcome to think it. We all have a right to hold and express our own opinion (there’s that newfangled conciliatory Charlotte again!), however arse-backwards it may be (and there’s the old Charlotte!). I used to hold the opinion that God didn’t exist and that anyone who believed in him was an idiot, and so I lived my life accordingly, and you know firsthand what a disaster that was. Now I believe that God exists and I live my life accordingly, and it’s a pretty good life. In fact, it’s awesome in the truest sense of the word. I’m not rich, but I always have enough. I never really know what I’ll be doing tomorrow or where I’ll lay my head at night, but I take each day in stride and look forward to the next. I say my prayers at bedtime and fall asleep happy and content. And I attribute all of these improvements (and you have to admit, they are improvements) to being born again.

I wrote an article a while back about how my personality didn’t change when I was born again. The core of who I was remained the same; what changed were my values, and they changed 180 degrees in an instant. That’s called a miracle. It can’t be explained by science. Maybe science would theorize that I went crazy, but the past 24 years of my being a functioning member of society would essentially prove that theory wrong.

I’m going to leave you with that. Again, I’m glad you dropped by. If you want to drop me a line, please do. If you don’t want to, that’s OK, too.

I wasn’t going to tell you, but you’re in my prayers, whether you want to be there or not.