Apostate
At sixteen, the spirit moves you. Your parents — howling atheists, each — would levitate if they found out; but once in the world, you can finally, publicly, reveal yourself. Your mother cries. Your father threatens violence. But you’re resolved.
Wherever you go, battle lines have been drawn. Discrimination is rote — and while your rights are plucked and tweezed like so many errant hairs, you won’t apologize when strangers accost you on the street. You’re buffeted by snide media and blistering rhetoric; and yet — despite it all, and after a decade has passed — you remain more resolved than ever.
Your parents never overcome their hysterics: they can’t understand that you suffer their resentment, their regret. Still … this is who you are. Of all the composite pieces of you, arranged from smallest to very large, this trait would rank among the pillars. It bears the weight of the heavens: it cannot be shaken.
Until one day — shortly before turning thirty — you stop.
Stop believing.
Which fucks absolutely everyone up.
At first, you tell a sympathetic few — but they just throw their hands in the air and go, “Pffft.” Next, you deliver the news to your parents, and experience a deep resentment as they hoot and preen. Finally, you must inform the flock, whose contempt will burn hotter and brighter than any molten slur. Because, really, why endure 13-years’ worth of recrimination if you didn’t mean it? And if you did mean it, what happened to your integrity? You’re a snake. Worse yet: you’re a liar.
Suppose you underwent a spiritual conversion. Suppose you had a change of heart. Who — if anyone — should care?
Anyhow, that’s the tale of the apostate — the tale you’ll someday tell, given the necessary perspective. And when your audience grows restless, like an over-tired child (was it Islam? Jesus freaks? was it a cult?), you’ll smile and say, “Nope — Marlboros.”
Because, funny how brand loyalty is the last to go.
