Hell.

My life is a slumber party, everyday.
There are brownies being baked, and girls laughing at the tops of their lungs, and art projects streamed across the kitchen table.
There are movies to be watched, and places to go, and boys to talk about.
Sometimes, there are games to be played.
We come into our house with a grand entrance, and we proclaim at the top of our lungs how alive we really are.
We work out, we stay out, we pass out, we laugh out, we do everything one can possibly imagine.
If there is ever a day when one of us stays home with a fever on the couch, the others pass along the ice packs.
If there is ever a time when the fridge breaks, then we scatter to pile everything onto the balcony where our food can rest easy at 29 degrees.
We clean pools of water, we take care of other people's dogs, we open packages in the mail, we tell stories, we cry.
We sit at our windows and look out over the city God handed us on a silver platter, over the lake he stopped 5 blocks from our house, and the snow he covered everything in for miles.
We make trips to Target, we take walks in the park across the street, we drive around frantically looking for IHOP, we smuggle new furniture in, we smuggle old christmas trees out.
But it's not reality.
People don't really live like this. Not forever, anyway.
And it's just begun to sink in that my long streaming slumber party that started in 2006 may come to an abrupt halt.
And I don't want to think about how much time I spent in my childhood sitting alone in my room, watching TV by myself because I lived in a house where closed doors were the expected norm, where introverts stared at me when I would walk into their rooms like I was some kind of a freak for wanting human interaction.
And so, I craved human interaction my entire life, human contact. I craved it so much that I hated Miami for all it was worth. I blamed my entire city for the one thing I seemed to be missing more than anything:
relationship.
And now, I've overdosed.
How can I turn back?
Yesterday some of my co-workers were joking that they'd rather go to hell and be with the fun sinners than go to heaven and be with the boring hypocrites.
And I thought:
What if heaven isn't a bunch of boring little angels playing harps and lyres and singing on the clouds all day long?
What if heaven is more like a culmination of every moment in your life where you knew real people, real relationships, real crying, real joy, and the real presence of an almighty God? What if heaven is the most real it will ever get? The most melded together patchwork of human beings smashing into each other in moments of sheer glory, doing things that are beyond their imaginations, and thanking God that he exists and created every single person NEVER to be alone?
And what if hell isn't a bunch of guys sitting on a couch and drinking beers among some small campfires?
What if hell is being totally and completely alone? No friends, no family, no God? Being isolate forever, with no chance of ever finding anyone or anything that could possibly bring a bit of relationship into your spirit?
What if that's hell?
Total isolation, apart from everything and anything, and completely hopeless of ever being found. No peace, no joy, no happiness.
I guess I don't think hell is funny, and although I can usually laugh at the things my friends who don't really know God might say (about other things). For some reason, yesterday, I felt a ball of fear grow in my neck and spread down into my chest when I thought about giving up my life now- and how much harder it would be to give up the hope of living a life even better than mine- in heaven.
It was terrifying.
And I didn't choose not to laugh on principle in order to "minister" to my co-workers and "show" them that hell isn't a "laughing matter".
No.
It was just the most terrifying thing I could ever imagine.
And I sat there, honestly afraid for them. And even, honestly afraid for myself.
And although some of you might say that I don't have to be afraid because I am saved, and try to comfort me with those "christianies"- I say:
To hell with it.
Let me be afraid of pure isolation from God and people.
It is the healthiest fear I could ever have.