Feeling and no longer feeling.

As a Christian, I used to feel pretty sure that unless I was "on fire" I was falling short of God's glory.
"On fire" was a mentality that filled me with exuberance; high, happy emotions relating to God's literal presence in my life. These periods were short and irregular, but we were taught that this was the desired mentality to have.
When I wasn't on fire, in some cases, I was just regular me, with my guard down. Cussing, smoking, the occasional beers with my pals. And I would always, after times like this, feel that I had been sinning, because the reality was that while  I was being just a regular guy, I was being deceitful to my real source of joy, my faith.
There were times when, feeling down about myself for falling short, I was painfully aware of how far God seemed from me.
I struggled deeply with this. And it was in these times of pain that the doubts would begin to creep into my consciousness.
Was I really feeling God in my life? Was he really communicating with me? Did we really know for certain that we were doing this right?
These doubts plunged me even farther from my jovial self, because there was no relief from them and certainly, there was no way to discuss them with anyone. Doubts are not a viable thing in Christianity.
Over the years, though, I avoided trying to feel the On Fire joy. I tried to cleave a path of reality in the turbulent waters of life. I strove to be more honest with myself. I allowed the doubts to take root and grow.
But doubts are like tulips: they spend a long time growing, burst open in a vivid color and then fall away.
The more doubts I allowed into my life, the more I had to face the fact that, once the doubt came to fruition, what was left was an irrationality that I clinged to blindly.
The first to go was the belief that I had to maintain some florid exuberance and stay on fire.
I began to realize that suddenly, the way I was everyday, with all of my struggles and flaws and emotions was an okay way for me to be. I didn't feel any longer that I had to somehow keep up a fake and false feeling of spiritual excitement.
Also, I began to realize that, instead of sinning, and falling short of the glory, I was simply dealing with the things that humans deal with in their lives. Disappointments and dreary days and bad choices were all mine; they were all my own and no other had a say in them.
One by one my doubts flourished and left me with the realization that I had been scammed into trying to be someone else's version of who they thought I should be instead of being who I really was.
When I cottoned to that, I felt very resentful -- I was totally dismayed -- that there are others who, even in the face of evident truth, continued to persist in blind attempts to reach that emotional high, like junkies, rather than face facts.
For years, I grieved. I tried different versions of the faith, adjusting here and there, trying to maintain a personal tradition of being a Christian.
Eventually, though, it all fell away. No ritual, no precedent, not even tradition could hold me to what was basically a self perpetuated lie. I knew that, no matter what, the reality was, it was all a lie I allowed myself to believe.
When I came free of it, I was no longer seeking the painful impetus of religiosity, but was calmly and quietly mesmerized with life.
Do I still call myself a Christian? No. I do not and refuse to label where I am. There is no mysticism in it, except a willingness to find and revere the majesty of nature, of love and of truth. There's no need to wave your arms in the air to feel the spirit. You can actually feel genuine awe without convincing yourself you are.