losing God at the beginning of the world

october 2021

content warnings: religious trauma, implied physical abuse

There is a girl, and there is a father, and there is not much time. He has a brief case packed for another trip and it is five in the morning and his foot is already out of the door before she says it. 

Dad. 

No answer. He keeps walking, expects her to shut the door when he does not, expects her to understand that absolute ignorance is the best he can do. She is nine years old. She only understands one thing, and it is this:

I don’t want to believe in God anymore. 

He stops. There is triumph, and fear, and the calm before catastrophe. His hand tightens its grip on the briefcase, and she knows its contents. Three white shirts, two pairs of trousers, underwear and a Bible. It bulges out towards the side: it bulges out, and she hates it. Hates the corners. Feels the right-angle bruise throb at her temple.

It’s not about want, is all he says, and she knows enough to know not to keep going. She continues. 

Then what is it about? 

His jaw clenches, and the little girl watches as he tears the shred of God from his own chest and forces it down her neck. This is not a man who is holy; such good men do not sharpen divinity into blades like this. Her whole life, she has been taking this knife in the name of—

God, says the father. It is about God.  

It cannot be, she returns. Holds her hands out face up and whispers you are not Him. It cannot be. 

A rule: never try to tell a man that he is not a god. She does not know this. She is nine years old, and he far older, and he has been convinced of his kingship since the day of her birth. 

She is nine years old, and he will put her in a hospital for this, and she will not remember how, or why. 

She is nine years old, and God could not save her. Structure feeds logic, at nine. Either God is not good, or God is not real, and she is too soft a soul to put faith in the former.

There is a cross-shaped stain on her back and a Bible-shaped bruise on her forehead and a God-shaped scar which stretches across the expanse of her ribcage. The father gets into the car, and he cannot look at her, and this is for the best. She is smiling. He would kill her, if he saw. 

There is a girl, and there is a father, and there is the corpse of a god strung heavy between them. 

There is a weight to bear — and it is his, now. He will burn her for it. Never again will she have to take it on her knees.