It's strange, the course of my life. If I think about it, which I have been recently - thinking about it. Ignoring those years before I was with Emily, not that I do, or that one should, but I'll start with the God years. Three years of my life were spent thinking deeply, oh so deeply, about God, Jesus, Christianity, and the interaction my actions and thoughts had with them. And church. Two times a week. And always talking about it, and reading about it. Bible studies. Morning devotionals.

Now I don't want to undermine people by saying I'm over all of that, as if I've come to a more enlightened place. Because I truly do not think I have. Nor do I think it is for the worse. I just don't think of it, or really know what I think of it. But this period was sort of early in my life. The God years. And for years after those God years, or god years - don't want to offend atheistic grammarists - I was very reclusive. Relationships I had had before died. I simply shut myself off. And to a degree I still have those moments.

I don't have a name for what I'm going through now, but it's more social. That I will say. But I'm not going to call it the Social years, though if I were it would be capitalized. I would never have danced in public during the god years or the years following. Now I'm a maniac on the dance floor.

I have a friend who is currently having her own god years. When I met her, I feel that she was in the period I am now. And I was, at the time I met her, transitioning from the god years into that reclusive period. Not that I went into the woods and read Thoreau, or even read anything about reclusion - for good reason since it's not a word. But I was very depressed. Didn't know it then but the amount of sleep I had was a real red flag. So now every email I get from her is about God, and I can only think back on those three years I had - and that's the extent of it. She's in this place where God is real and everything around her is a piece of the puzzle and its fitting together and yet it's all so mysterious and she's helping people, giving herself up to doing good and living day by day. See, she went through those years where she danced late into the night. But I never did.

I just wish we could talk about this. Without it being, "Oh yeah, God, I used to be into that." I mean if it were anything else we could talk. She can relate to me. I can relate to her. But how would I come across saying I've been through all that God stuff now I'm into dancing?

And Jesus wept.