i'm scared i'll start preaching

on my future religion as a deeply secular person

i have this lingering fear that i will become religious after some unknown trauma.

maybe i’ll get an abortion, or maybe i’ll lose myself to meth and rehab. regardless, i’ll turn to god and get an adult baptism.

i’m scared that the years that i’m living will be the sins that i confess. i’m not inherently sinful, but i am definitely not a child of god.

as of right now, i am of the utmost belief that when you die it is just like how you were before: nothing. it’s like what people say about being blind. “it’s like seeing out of your elbow.” you’re burned, buried, donated to science, whatever it says on your medical card. but, really, you are nothing.

when i go through this distressing event, i’ll be filled with guilt. i’ll be hopeless, i will have ruined my life. i’ll walk into sunday mass and never leave. i’ll grow my hair to my knees. i’ll start wearing linen dresses. i’ll drop to my knees and tell an all-powerful, middle aged man about my vices.

he will make $1000 dollars while he tells me to do 5 hail marys. i’ll think that i’ve found salvation. i will have found escapism in something worse than my teenage disgraces.

i will walk into the church and it will stretch taller than the sky, or maybe smaller than a closet. the pews will sway like outstretched hands. the priest will be everywhere and nowhere at once, nodding like he’s been waiting for me since i before i was born.

my sins, the ones i’m living now, will crawl out of my skin like worms. the friends i’ve made, the words i’ve said, the superiority complex i’ve chased. they will crowd the room and demand that i name them. my voice will echo back in ten thousand versions, each one accusing me.

i will be absolved from my trauma, but never for the daily transgressions i’m committing at eighteen.

i will leave the church with my knees bruised, my hands sticky with wax. i’ll wonder: if i confess now, before the world can punish me further, have i damned myself to sin? or am i just paying in advance for a future that hasn’t happened?

i’ll come back next week.

and the week after.

and the week after that.