Written by Ashten Vassar-Cain, with support from the DAC Team
Religion tried to “cure” me. I tried to let it.
I mean it’s hard to not want it. To ascend a glittering
staircase and enter into a world unlike anything you’d ever know in your mortal life. How could you not want that? They told me all kinds of things about what this unimaginable place MIGHT be like.
Then they told me the pain would stop. Which seemed funny to me. In hindsight I don’t think I asked to make it stop. It’s really all I’ve ever known. How much of myself would I give up if I got to go? Where was the compassion for a pain I never assigned morality to?
When I was ten years old, I went to the confessional.
I don’t remember what I told the priest.
But I remember him commenting on the red pillow I had propped behind my back, the clumsy way I walked in, the way the velcro sounded when I adjusted my braces.
I barely remember the hasty explanation I gave him when he asked about it.
But I don’t think that I’ll ever forget his response.
I didn’t have to do penance that day.
God was “punishing me enough.”
I got anointed.
They brought the clergy to my bedside.
They told me they could save me.
I was never asked if I wanted to be “saved.”
They told me that if I tried not to look sick, I would have more of a chance
I never want to pretend again.
I will not abandon myself
to gain entry to an afterlife.
If they wanted me that bad,
They’d build a fucking ramp.
Is that so outside the imagination of the all powerful?
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