Reconcile No More

To reconcile:

1. to cause (a person) to accept or be resigned to something not desired: He was reconciled to his fate.
2. to win over to friendliness; cause to become amicable: to reconcile hostile persons.
3. to compose or settle (a quarrel, dispute, etc.).
4. to bring into agreement or harmony; make compatible or consistent: to reconcile differing statements; to reconcile accounts.
5. to reconsecrate (a desecrated church, cemetery, etc.).
6. to restore (an excommunicate or penitent) to communion in a church.

I feel that I have spent my life trying to reconcile.
As a young girl, I was always trying to make my life match what I heard in church on Sunday or the expectations that were on me. Life wasn’t anything like what it was supposed to be by the standards communicated to me daily in church, in school and even at home. It seemed like the world I lived in most of the time could not relate to the “real” world. But I was torn between these two worlds because there were people I cared about in each. Being who I am I tried to make it match. I tried to be what was expected even when it didn’t fit. Perhaps it is just a middle child characteristic.
Then in high school I tried to reconcile real relationships I had built to the world that I was convinced was the only world I could and should ever live in. I tried to understand how the ones that I loved (and still do) could be cast aside and forgotten. I tried to understand both sides and I tried to make everything right.
When I was 19, I began to learn. Not just the normal learning from going to college but an insatiable desire for truth and justice that I have never been able to quench. I remember feeling so overwhelmed because not only did I have to keep up with all the reading and assignments but I would do much additional research to be able to reconcile my old belief system and my faith with everything I was learning. What do I believe? What don’t I believe? Why do I believe it? Why doesn’t that make sense? Why would they teach me that if it isn’t true?
I have genuinely spent my life feeling like I was a bridge that was trying to hold two worlds together but my arms have been hurting for years from the pressure on each side. A girl can really only take so much. I guess eventually I just have to chose a side.