Apostasy

By Kriti Arora

It is 10 pm and I am thinking about God again, which is to say I am thinking about how they have abandoned me. Maybe this is a futile attempt to avoid the ever-looming terror of tomorrow’s incoming storm. Or maybe this is a desperate cry for help to anyone who will listen. An older, wiser being that will guide me. 

But I feel too stained and unpure to ask for help. Beyond saving, beyond repair. The guilt and horror of existence, of being human consumes me completely and, these days, I let it. I let myself succumb to the rotting of flesh and hope that one day my body will be overgrown with moss and flowers, my soul a weary traveller long gone by. 

I feel certain I am going mad again. Is it the madness that is a part of life or is life simply the flickering, fleeting moments in the eternal vortex that being mad entails? 

It is November, soon to be December and I must remind myself that I am not 15 anymore. 13 and riddled with unbridled rage, 14 and forever ferocious, 15 and on the verge of ending it all. 16 and 17, and wounded by hasty decisions, shattered dreams, lost friends. 18 brought promises of being soft and gentler with myself, promises that I did not fulfil. And here I find myself back to where it all started: 8, alone and scared of the world, too young to be thinking of dying.

By Kriti Arora