I grew up believing that I was not of this world and that Jesus was soon coming to take me to my home. The feeling of being an outsider runs much deeper than being classed as one of the unpopular kids or perhaps the bigger ideology of religious brain washing, but this feeling is more intrinsic and of great importance to human experiences on earth. It feels as if there is a big party going on and we’re standing outside on our tiptoes looking through the window, wondering how everyone is having such a good time.

As I grew older I started to realise that there are somethings only I could show myself. As I developed my ego I started to reason differently and stopped believing at all. It was a rather tragic shift for me, because all my peers still believed in what we were taught in our childhood. I was not suddenly different because I believed I was not born with an awakened soul, but I developed it as I grew older.

I realised this one day at church when I was sitting at the back. I was bored and gazed at a big picture that portrayed Jesus and I started to have different thoughts than any other person. I had a feeling of derealisation – my thoughts, body and experiences at that moment felt like they were not my own. Everyone was clapping their hands and it sounded like a soft rain falling down on a shack, their voices were disoriented like those of protesters and I heard a fly buzz near my ear.

My friend David came back from the bathroom with a drowsy scent of primrose and lily of the valley in the middle of autumn. I could smell the dry earthy fragrance of lavender and red roses with a mixture of an angels trumpet and ostrich eggs.

He asked me what the pastor was saying that had caught my attention so much, to which I replied, “It is not what the pastor said, but what the society has accepted as truth.”

I knew there was no absolute truth and that every word was deferred to an endless chain of synonyms, something is only true if the majority believes in it.

With much curiosity he asked me, “What does society accept as truth?”

I told him about the picture of a white man on the wall. He replied confidently ,“Oh that’s the son of God”.

“You mean Michelangelo’s uncle?”, I replied sarcastically.

My croaky voice and his brittle voice caught peoples’ attention and everyone looked at us as if we were David and Goliath. I was regarded as Goliath from the looks on their eyes. They were so big and powerful that they looked like they had outgrown their eye sockets and were frozen in place. To their knowledge, I was testing the veracity of the faith of Christians against their Jesus. It made me feel like Goliath because what was just a thought had turned out to feel like I was mocking Jesus because I did not believe in him. Suddenly everyone looked at me differently.

It was hard to understand what I was going through because I was inundated with feelings of being strange and weird. I was longing for a home I have never even experienced. A place where I would feel completely understood, loved and cherished. This place could not be heaven, as it’s my soul. It is the true me that always seeks to experience itself again and I realised that I was not lost, but deep down what I was really seeking was the truth.