on spirituality or its lack

perhaps i feel compelled to write this because i have been reading the works of st augustine all summer or perhaps it is because my significant other is contemplating the episcopal priesthood. among other things, perhaps it is all just arbitrary or maybe not. maybe this is a combination of things…i am trying to finish a phd program…i am trying to keep my patience…i am trying to deal with the expectations of others…i am trying to keep my feelings safe…i am trying not be angry, disappointed, or hurt. i am also negotiating my 40s…something that no one seems to understand (or they just can’t understand). i am one half of an orphan and i can not help but worry or fret over the day i will become complete in my orphan-ness. i have just completed the last half of my life (assuming, of course that i make it to my 75th year) and i stand here looking across a chasm. this is not where i would have thought my life would be or become. trying to create something new or something else…can i really call my life after grad school a career? i will not be “professional” about this. furthermore i cannot anticipate the needs of others in relation to my own journey in this life. it has been and will continue to be a struggle between keeping myself “here” or turning inward. this is, i think, a spiritual crisis (not one of a particularly “christian” type but definitely related). i thought that when i started writing this post i would narrate my coming to terms with a spirituality that intersects with my relationship to my s.o. who is very spiritual. rather, these words have turned into something else…or maybe not…maybe this is what it is…a spiritual crisis…nothing more…nothing less and what i am going through other people have gone through for a millennia. nothing special…nothing here to really see…just a whole lot of emptiness and disappointment, self pity, and betrayal. but i just can’t fix it and i just can’t ‘get on that’ because if i did i would be doing it for something other than myself. the inside voice is calling me back while the outside voice is chiding me to keep going. it’s all very confusing and frustrating. and the words of others won’t help because it boils down to my own complicity and “what i want” which is probably nothing and i certainly don’t wish to be reminded that this is all my own fault because i really detest being reminded of the obvious. and besides, whenever i am reminded it’s just to solidify an other voice’s distancing of what is most obviously my own mess. i think i will re-read katherine anne porter’s “the jilting of granny weatherall” or maybe i will clean my room.