Making Deities

Sensitive Content Warning: Mentions of physical abuse and suicide

Are you there, God? It’s me. Again. Fourth time this week. I don’t know if you’ve checked recently but I’m still stuck in a body I shouldn’t be in a place I definitely shouldn’t be. I still have two chins and my parents still fight. I went to church on Sunday but I’m pretty sure you didn’t hear me last night. 

It just doesn’t seem fair. You hand us a crusty old book and expect us to follow it. Do you never check in down here? Because it doesn’t really apply anymore. When my mom lets my dad boss we end up hungry the month’s last week and when she doesn’t, that stupid tome makes him think he’s got permission to hit her. Do you give him permission, God? Do you give him permission to beat us when he thinks we’re wrong? I don’t really care if you do or not. I know it’s not right. I know it’s not fair. What I don’t know is why the Almighty Lord just doesn’t seem to care. 

Sometimes I feel like I’m putting in a whole lot more work than you. I know it isn’t much to get up early on Sunday, haul myself to church and try not to curse your name. But how can I not curse your name? How can I look those girls with lobbed off hair at my school in the face and tell them they shouldn’t love who they do? How can I hurt people when you don’t even give me a reason to? 

You’ve never done anything for me. I pray every single night and you change nothing. Mom pays her tithe every single week and you do nothing. Sometimes I wonder if you’re just up there laughing all the time. Do you think this is funny? Do you watch us like some sort of sick reality television, running around trying to jump through your stupid hoops and destroying humanity? 

I hope not. I really, really hope not. Because I’m not sure evolution is real – my mom says it isn’t and I don’t like my science teacher enough to take his word – but it makes me ill to think someone willingly created this disaster. It would be easier to think I was just out here talking to the sky, heard by nothing but the stars. At least then it wouldn’t be personal. I wouldn’t have to put up with your crap anymore. I could get on with my life. 

I’m scared of going to Hell. That’s pretty much the only reason I’ve held onto your stupid rules as long as I have. A threat of eternity in a place that according to almost all the smart people in the world isn’t even real. 

I’m not one of those smart people. And you’d know it if you actually took the time to take a peek inside my mind. Why? Why am I dumb, God? Why didn’t you take three seconds of your precious, unlimited time to make me smart? I’m humiliated when the teacher calls on me, God, because I don’t get it. Everyone says I’m just not listening but I am, I am listening. I am trying, I am on the verge of suicide because I can’t do a goddamn math problem. 

There I go again, cursing your name. Sorry. Except I’m not. Can you blame me? Sitting here under my popcorn ceiling – which has a leak in it, by the way, I had to move my bed so it wouldn’t get wet when it rains – listening to my parents scream at each other a floor away. 

Why did you do this? Why did you bother creating me? I’m an abomination, as the girl at youth group calls me. I’m dull as a rock and I’m not very pretty, my eyes are blurry and I can’t see without a pair of glasses which, oh yeah, humans made me. Not you. Not you, who could snap your fingers and give me x-ray vision. 

Did you see that? Me flinching? It’s because he’s hitting her downstairs, God. He’s hitting her. In your treasured freaking name. And I can’t go help her because then he’ll hit me too and I’ll get teased for the bruises and I’ll have to tell my teachers I walked into the doorframe again. I try to act like I’m clumsy but I don’t know how many more times they’ll buy it before I end up taken away. Then Mom’ll be here all by herself because thanks to your stupid, evil book she thinks getting a divorce will win her a first class ticket on the Hell train. 

That’s right. I said it. You’re evil, God. Not just apathetic, not cruel, evil. Because when someone with as much power as you sits by and does absolutely nothing while people are suffering, that’s worse than the devil. At least he does something. He has drive. Or she. Is the devil a she? Is that why you hate us ladies? 

You do hate us. That’s what I have to believe. And if you don’t, if this is what love looks like, forget it. I’m done. Hand me to Satan and I’ll take my crappy chances. Even Hell has to beat your court side.

It didn’t used to be like this. I used to believe you were good. I used to believe you were kind and wonderful and loved us like your very own. I believed my pastor when he said his wife was klutzy and that if we tried hard enough, things would work out right. But then I got bruises of my own and now I’m finally, finally starting to see the light. 

You aren’t there. I’m talking to nothing but air. Because there can’t be, there can’t be, a being full of that much hatred out there. But on the off chance there is, if you did create me just to stick me in this crap shoot life, thanks for nothing.

Goddamn. The kind of folk they’re making deities.