My Fight With Religion by Abby

The devil made you think that

The devil put those thoughts in your mind

Something so evil could not possibly be real

God would not have let that happen to you, for you follow him

You must have faith, and these dreams will go away

The devil will stop mid-slither into your bed and disintegrate before his pitchfork reaches the hem of your panties.

Except it never worked out that way, did it?

Maybe because I was gay or maybe because I was a woman or maybe because my body didn’t entirely hate it

But for some reason no matter how much begging and crying and stifled groans of horror I let out

The nightmare or, to use a technical term,

“Devil induced hallucination”

Never did seem to end

It became so constant that I would lie in bed at night, waiting for him to come

With his spiky brown hair and his white eyes glowing in the dark and his muscles that had the ability to raise hell from the center of the earth into my best friend’s bedroom.

He would keep that disguise, he would, because the devil was a clever man

And I would pray, and ask god to fight off the devil, and apologize for those few times I didn’t quite pray at church and for the fact that my mother was agnostic and I only thanked for my food five times a week

I wished that I had thanked god for every single pea at that moment, and I wished for time to stop—no, fast forward—so that I could thank each pea and grain of wheat that had ever entered my body

So that this one thing, finally, would not.

Trust me, I wasn’t always under the delusion

Thoughts crossed my six year old mind like “how could I imagine something that I didn’t know existed?”

I knew that there was something real there, something terribly wrong

Because my momma didn’t raise no fool

My best tears were made from pain and anger and fear

Soon they became the acid of self hatred, staining my skin with words like weak and helpless and not loud enough

They burrowed deep into my flesh

Some lodged their way into my heart, where they sizzled each time a boy would look me in the eye

Others made their way into my hands, which would clench at even the slightest startling movement

A speck broke the part of me he hadn’t quite succeeded at destroying yet

Most of it crept into my brain where it began to slowly degrade the memories, alter them even, and cover my eyes until the world was not the same as it once was

Droplets would pool at my lips and I would drink them.  Those words of self-loathing were loaded onto my tongue.

I tried to neutralize them, I tried to build of dam of positivity, I surrounded myself with buckets so that the acid would not hit anybody else straight in the— well, everywhere

But they came out when somebody tried to get through.  A simple question was enough for me to part my lips and for that sea that had accumulated over the years to wash over everyone else.

They, at least, were equipped with goggles and an eye bath

Their vision was a little bleary for a few days, but it went back to normal.

However, the devil had seared the image into my mind

So excuse me for not believing in religion

And bowing down at the name of god

I’m sorry that I find it sinful to believe that the devil could punish anyone at all

Because I was told that I was being punished and I believed that for so long

I let that take away the truth—the small control I had left

Religion took my will and my regulation and it replaced it with doubt and fear

Panic became my go-to and I’m sure a lot of you know the rest

I don’t mean to step on any toes or tell you that your religion is wrong

But I will tell you that it is a sin to tell a child that they could think anything other than their own thoughts, or see anything horrible that wasn’t reality, that they could EVER go to a place less beautiful than the magical lands they created within the realms of their imagination

So, please, if your children ask where they go when they die, tell them their favourite place.  Let them make it up.

If they ask who’s in charge, tell them “it’s you.”

Sin is not real but it is a real sin to lie to a child before their lives can even begin.