My first offering to a pagan god was a blue-raspberry macaron from the Lebanese bakery up the street and the 24-year-old port wine that was supposed to be shared with my husband on our tenth wedding anniversary. We made it to the second. I hadn’t been seriously pagan for long, but it had certainly grown on me as my life grew more chaotic over those two years. I had watched it grow on me (and it made me feel silly). It started with reading horoscopes from multiple sources and sussing out which ones were the most “credible” based on whether they were written for magazines or if the person had actually spent time looking at the charts and conducting analyses from there. Around the winter holidays, I secretly and silently stirred spells and intentions into my baking. Slowly, it evolved into practicing basic tarot. As the second extramarital affair was revealed to me, the basic three-card spreads were overtaken by five-card life transition spreads with “spooky accurate” readings. Turning up again and again were the King-of-Cups, Two-of-Swords, reversed Chariot, and Wheel of Fortune, but the card I’d grown closest to over the transition out of my marriage was the Five-of-Cups. The “yes, you’ve experienced loss and grief and abandonment, but don’t be so blinded by grief that you forget to salvage what you still can and move on” card. By the end, I was sneakily setting my cards out to charge under the full moon on my office chair facing the window, not wanting to have my spiritual crutch discovered by skeptical eyes. I was ashamed to be spiritual. I hadn’t been spiritual for a long time after coming out as an atheist at the ripe age of 13 and it would have made sense if I’d “found God” – the Christian God – again. But I didn’t. I found the witchy folk magic with a dash of Hellenism that somehow crossed with Buddhism and tapped into the holographic universe to bring thoughts and intentions into reality by way of quantum mechanics. Some crutch.
I woke up that morning with my eyes heavy from my battle with insomnia and my hair damp and tangled from tossing and turning like a spin cycle with hot and cold flashes every thirty minutes. In short, I didn’t sleep worth a shit. He was moving out the next day and that was the second to last night in the bed I’d known since we moved here on our own. He was taking the bedframe and mattress, I was taking the dresser, nightstand, and pull-out couch. As much as I hated that mattress, I was very reluctant to sleep without it until I absolutely had to. It was awful at regulating temperature fluctuations and there was a massive sciatica-fueling butt bowl that my hips had carved into it. It was also familiar and soft enough, and that made it workable. Soon it would be gone, just like everything else I had sacrificed to save my personal peace.
In the previous three weeks with the property already divided, separate leases signed, and the moving process started, we had gone through a cancer scare, an HIV scare, and I went no-contact overnight with my best friend after our friendship spectacularly imploded once I gained enough courage to tell her “no.” It was during a flight to my hometown during the last week of back-to-back crises, desperately trying to hold in shakes and sobs in the middle airline seat while writing in my journal to make sense of it all that I had an epiphany. It was my God “calling” to me. Or, at least, it was me realizing that he had been waiting for me to put the pieces together. Who knows which it was. I thanked him for his patience regardless. The feeling of finally connecting the dots is profound—something welled warm inside my heart similar to the courage I found not long before. I felt reverence and awe as pieces of my life, my identity, and my values fell into place. I hadn’t imagined myself following or worshipping or “working with” a God (as the pagan internet forums call it), but the timing of the epiphany couldn’t have been better, and I was in the proper headspace for embracing and enhancing the connection. I immediately started researching my God and how to work with him. When I returned home, I planned to learn the language of the ancients who worshipped him before me, and I dreamed of building an elaborate altar decorated with a statue and artwork. In homemade clay vessels, I would offer the finest wine and foods to give thanks for the connection we shared.
This morning on this day, however, I felt distant. Now just over a week from my epiphany, the same feeling of silliness that led me to charge the tarot cards with full moon energy in secret nested back in my heart like my ass in that damn mattress bowl. Worldly matters held me in a vice. I could only snooze the alarm clock so many times before that also became a problem grounded here in reality. My soon-to-be-ex-husband and I still needed to hammer out a timeline for when to move the money out of the joint bank account and who needed different car insurance and if the phone bill was actually separate from the internet bill and who would get which cats.
“How does one build an altar, let alone a relationship with a god, under the stress of knowing half your savings is imminently disappearing?” I thought. Shame wrapped me like my favorite comforter. There’s no way my God would want some cheap resin statue made overseas. My mind countered, “Relationships with gods aren’t supposed to be material anyway and altars don’t need to be elaborate. It’s the intention that counts.” Doubt suffocated me with the weight of my memory foam pillow. “Did I really feel a connection with my God? Or am I grasping for something, anything, to make my world make sense or to make me feel less alone or just to get me through this one last day before…before what? Before freedom? Before loneliness? Both? Neither?” The logical part of my brain took the baton and ran – “Why do people read horoscopes? Because they find meaning in them, even when it’s just their brains picking up on patterns because that’s what human brains do. Look at all those suckers in the paganism subreddits that think they’re seeing signs from ancient pantheon gods every single day. I wonder how much they wasted on their altars…” The same part of my mind that released unrelenting criticism made me count 5-4-3-2-1 as unease and a deep anxiety haunted the routine tasks that also should have helped ground me. The pull to socially isolate from the world, my work, my friends, and even myself, to gain some peace and quiet, grew stronger.
Frustrated and desperate to calm the noise, I spent the next hour building a plan for scheduling a reiki session ASAP and a weekend yoga retreat for a month from then (although I definitely would have dropped everything and left for the retreat right then and there). I found a metaphysical shop offering reiki sessions that was shockingly close to my home and horribly under marketed. It had apparently been a local staple for 14 years offering the whole nine yards: minerals, reiki, tarot readings, candles, incense, herbs, and teas for holistic medicine. That afternoon, I paid a short visit to the shop. “I need to get these damn chakras unblocked and aligned and I need it now,” I thought. Walking in, I felt immediately crunchier. The place was obnoxiously busy for 3pm and all the customers turned to look at me when I entered. The overabundance of rainbows from chakra posters and the shine of overpriced polished crystals overstimulated the already-hyperactive part of my brain that was struggling to grapple with reality. Embarrassed for existing, I sheepishly strode a direction like I knew where I was going and finally slowed down to browse the left wall, full of statues of gods I didn’t recognize. “Are they angry I’m here and I don’t know who they are?” I thought. “Don’t be stupid,” I responded. “I feel like they’re watching me,” said my anxiety. “Don’t be stupid,” I told it again, “But manifest it and they just might!” That silenced the intrusive thoughts for a short while.
I strode over to the room of books and searched amongst the haphazardly organized shelves for something, anything, that could restore the strong connection I’d felt only a week before. Naturally, being one of the gods that was common in the daily life of the ancients but often overlooked in terms of mythological grandeur, he wasn’t listed in the books I found. I moved on to the next room loaded with enough incense and candles to smoke out a roach infestation and paused at the candle labeled “Grief.” The affirmation prayer on the front read,
“The burden on my heart is too heavy to hold. I allow my spirit to grieve the loss of this dream. I allow my tears to cleanse me, freeing me from these crippling emotions. I release my expectations of the future and embrace the gifts this challenge has given me.”
This should have been it. The “thing” I was looking for to make the discomfort of the liminal space of my life less bothersome *cough cough debilitating.* This was what my healing had been striving for up to this point—acknowledging that the loss of the future you thought you wanted is as real of a loss of a loved one, making space to admit that the grief is an incredible burden on its own, being okay with not being okay, releasing expectations for the future and letting things be as they are, honoring the stages of grief in whatever order they come however many times they come. I would hold a big cleansing ceremony after he’d left. I’d close all the windows and smoke up the house with this anti-grief candle and I’d feel the excitement of a new beginning…after he’d left. Which meant, no comfort until then. No comfort without shame. Or silliness. Or doubt. There was still one more night to survive on the mattress that knew my curves because we had shaped each other: the mattress with its butt bowl, my body with its sciatica and poor posture. I turned the candle over – a hand-scribbled sticker read “$24”—and I put the stupid thing back on the shelf. Not wanting to seem weird for coming into the shop on a weekday and not buying anything, I pulled a pack of frankincense out of the wall of roach-repellant, paid my $2, complimented the owner on the…volume…of stuff in the shop, made a swift and awkward exit, and shoved the box of frankincense in the glove compartment of my car where no one but me would know it existed. “At least I know my God likes frankincense on the altar.” A minute later… Fuck. I need an incense holder.
I spent the rest of the afternoon browsing online for incense holders. None of them looked right. None of them felt right. I wanted something that represented my God and still resonated with me. Web searches in “incognito mode” revealed nothing. Forfeiting my personal data to the God of Etsy—The Algorithm, bane of shoppers and searchers, overseer of that which targets advertisements at consumers—revealed even less. I found the most hope (and that’s saying a lot) with some pretty (and only pretty) sparkly resin holders. The further down the rabbit hole I searched, the more I found that looked the same. Sigh, mass-marketed, mass-produced, and still $20 for shipping. My logical brain was feeling bad for my heart at this point and said, “That’s okay, you don’t have to have it all figured out now. Maybe you’ll find one at an antique shop. You’ll know it when it feels right.” Yeah, I thought I knew that about love, too.
I desperately tried to keep defeat on the other side of the threshold from where I stood. I performed a quick tarot reading just to lighten the mood and see what the cards had to say about my evasive, anxious, uncomfortable feelings of the day. “What do I need to know about today?” I asked them. This deck was a newer one that was developing its own spicy personality with almost all its readings having been life transition readings from the last few months. Its response was basically, “Yes, you’re sad, but pull your head out of your ass.” Great. Correct, but a little too on the nose. I chose to continue wallowing in self-pity again by cleaning and going for a 15-minute walk instead of the usual 30.
That evening, my soon-to-be-ex-husband casually admitted he used my car (without permission, obviously) to move stuff to his new apartment while I’d been away the week before and scratched the pleather on the back seat. After two years of marriage and six months of living together but broken-up, I’d become an expert of rocketing through the rage, anger, pettiness, annoyance, and acceptance of my boundaries being violated. Sweets were my prize for when I jumped from rage to acceptance with Olympic athleticism. He was off doing hobbies instead of packing and I was going to the bakery for a snack without him. This is how things were between us now. He did what he wanted like he always did, and I did what I needed to do whether he was along for the ride or not. Today, I needed pastries. The pettiness was certainly child-like, but what was one more day of pettiness? After the weekend, it would be done and going out to get pastries wouldn’t be linked to any amount of pettiness. Pastries make me happy.
My heart pinged the slightest glimmer of hope like the glint off a diamond earring that had fallen in the shag carpet—I had read that pastries were a good offering for my God as well. Sure, I read it off the internet from a stranger who follows the same God, but there wasn’t much else to go on and I took the opportunity to finally feel like I could do something right.
☽☾ ☽☾ ☽☾
It consumed my mind on the drive to the bakery. What would I choose to offer? The patisserie section boasted a wide selection of traditional hoity-toity European pastries—opera cakes, cannoli, mille-feuille—but their real successes were the massive selection of French macarons and the trays after trays of ma’moul and baklava with every combination of nuts imaginable shaped into bird nests and rolls and bite-size cups. I could spend an hour reviewing the day’s offerings and carefully curating a selection of new flavors and old favorites with which I would naughtily spoil my dinner. The treats didn’t come cheap, however. They were truly a once-in-a-full-moon experience. “Maybe regular offerings would give me a good excuse to try making my own macarons again!” I thought. My first few attempts were fool’s journeys that turned out okay in the end with pure dumb luck. Over the last six months, I was reluctant to add another test of my luck to the schedule, but maybe that could change now.
I entered the bakery 45 minutes before they closed for the night and I had to make my choices quickly, sticking only with macarons this time. Normally, this involved complex negotiations and back-and-forth with my husband on assessing which macaron flavors were must-haves, meticulously ensuring there were no repeat flavors, and compromising on which flavors we wanted to try under the condition that the other would get one bite as a taste. I dare say these negotiations prepared us well for dividing the property during the departure from our marriage. It became a game of maximizing our own gains while not pissing off the other. Communication and compromise—the secrets to a lasting marriage. However, lurking under the game-like atmosphere of property negotiations was the anxiety of knowing the objective of this game was to lose as little as possible rather than win it all. The last thing either of us wanted was for the negotiations to turn into a trade deal from a game of Settlers of Catan when the resources had run out.
Several months before when this marriage mess was just beginning, we played one such game of Catan. My rage was a caged dragon, hot and burning, thrashing in my heart. Our marital woes were still a secret between my soon-to-be-ex-husband and myself at the time and it quickly became difficult to keep the dragon caged while everyone asked, “How’s married life?” and your only response is “Oh, ya know…” While playing the game, the dragon poked his head out and I punished my soon-to-be-ex-husband for the hurt he had caused me by placing the robber on his main resource tile. He lost the game. Later, I felt stupid for my display of passive aggression. Later still, I felt stupider for showing my cards: in rage and in times of stress, I was capable of ruthlessness, and I should be approached with caution. I popped the dragon on the head like a cat that stole my food, forced it back into its cage with radical acceptance, and shoved the cage deep into the recesses of my heart. The embers still burn and occasionally flare up if I’m not careful. Over the months that passed since the game, it took more and more energy to maintain the roles of the dragon’s keeper and the sleepless strategist.
Now, not being obligated to negotiate or share, the dragon howled and rattled its cage, and I greedily culled new flavors and favorites into a six-pack—lemon-lime, Skittles, mocha, lemon cheesecake, orange creamsicle, and blue-raspberry. Thrilled with my haul and content with my choice to consume sweets for dinner because I was an adult, I half-strolled, half-danced back to the car. Once inside, I stopped in my tracks and reluctantly stared down at my curated selection in the passenger’s seat beside me. “If this is an offering,” I wondered, “does that mean I’ll have to…sacrifice…one of these?” The opinions on the neopagan internet forums for eating offerings after they were made were mixed (with the information from the interwebs being dubious at best to begin with). Different ancient cultures did different things. Some offerings were burned while others were consumed in feasts. In ancient Greece, it was both/and: most of the edible parts were eaten and then the inedible parts were burned. Modern interpretations vary greatly with some viewing the offering like dining with a guest with their own portion alongside the offering. Some bury the offering if their god is chthonic, and others give the offering to the land (a cup of wine in the rose bush out front, for example). I sighed. I really didn’t want to give a macaron to the bushes.
There was such great debate on whether improperly giving an offering or consuming an offering would piss off the god you’re offering to. If you did piss them off, what kind of sign might you receive that you did it wrong? How would you apologize? How would you know if they accepted your apology? Another offering? In general, the consensus was “ask the god and see what they want,” which was as annoying as it was unhelpful. Communication with the gods was never my strong suit. For example, I grew up with the Christian God. Once in Sunday school, I asked the pastor, “When we die and go to heaven, are we the same age as when we died, or can we choose what age to be?” And he said, “That’s a good question. I would pray to God and ask him that.” I distinctly remember feeling deflated by his response and embarrassed by the tone that adults use when children ask them unanswerable questions. No Christian God had ever answered me before. To this day, he was as unresponsive as an employer “hiring” in the 2023 job market. The Christian God was also a little too ride-or-die for my taste with “tests” of loyalty to see how far you’d be willing to go to prove your faith. My ex-best friend had tried that on me, too, and I’d noped out of there for the sake of my mental health. Sure, it’s nice to think that someone is up there ready and willing to forgive your every mistake as long as you keep coming back, but don’t forget about the possibility of ending up in hell even if you did everything right. Does that really make them a benevolent god? Or does it make them a codependent, covert narcissist? I’d rather know I’m damned than play mind games.
The circumstances of one’s upbringing and cultural influences of one’s time heavily shape the relationship, for better or for worse. No religious frame of mind is exempt from these confounding factors. I was surrounded by those that claimed to have a personal relationship with this Christian God, but it was easy to see when faith had become a part of the routine instead of a relationship. They clung to their God out of familiarity, even if their God wasn’t the best fit for them or they had suffered at the hands of humans in the name of God. Often, it was simply out of convenience. Easter Sunday is a good excuse to get the family together in the springtime and Christmas is—ya know—Christmas. Most of them grew up with this one God and unless they considered other aspects of their identity like gender and sexuality, they often didn’t entertain the thought of exploring other gods. It was either “God” or “not.” The monotheistic supremacy runs deep through generations as the opening line of the Nicene Creed exercises squatter’s rights in their hippocampus – “I believe in one God.” Creeping in right behind it is the memory of starting every morning in kindergarten with a pledge of loyalty to the country that God had supposedly promised to protect. The lines and threads blurred and twisted around my sense of self with my dubious consent and no safe word.
Out from under the overwhelming weight of mainstream monotheism and no ancient folks standing around enforcing tradition, there’s a bit more breathing room. The expectations are clearer. There is space to remember that while the cultural influences of these pagan gods in daily life have lessened significantly, there’s not a single soul[1] who knows whether a god truly “dies.” And maybe, just maybe, there’s still one (or two, or a hundred) out there who could provide some help where you need it without your immortal soul being on the line. The appeal for me was the balance of the tangible tit-for-tat relationship that could operate here and now instead of pining for salvation at the very end. Even if your offerings and prayers end up going to the void, at least you got a snack out of the deal that wasn’t a communion wafer. With everything I knew and understood, the majority opinion was the safer option. I should have asked my God what he wanted me to do with the offering and assumed the more modest option of not consuming it and throwing it away until I’d heard otherwise because I’m a mere mortal and I wouldn’t dare assume what a god wants. The irony of the chicken-and-the-egg non-believer-waiting-to-be-spoken-to problem was not lost on me one bit.
…What did I want my relationship with my God to be like? I looked up and sighed with the familiar disappointment of catching one’s own unhealthy behavior patterns in action again. I glanced back down at the stupid, plastic cookie box that would make an illegal amount of noise when opened. As usual, I was so willing to throw everything into the relationship at first thought without setting clear expectations or boundaries for myself. I wanted a communal experience—giving and (possibly) receiving while finding comfort in company. I wanted something personal, but I also wanted my own space on things outside of my God’s domain. Drawing boundaries with a god is much easier when they specialize in something. I don’t mind omniscience within a domain. I know my God is omniscient. It’s one of his core characteristics. I do, however, mind omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent with compelling modern cultural and political influence and Eckleburg eyes that know (and care) about my porn selection because my entire being, my life, my afterlife, and all other things fall under his domain. It’s the difference between “personal” and “invasive.” Whatever communion we shared—information, advice, offerings, communication—would be driven by mutual understanding, respect, and appreciation. What we shared, we chose to share, and today I considered giving up this surf-blue macaron as an expression of my gratitude and petition for support. Still, hesitation from my awareness of my past behaviors obstructed my commitment.
“Acts of Service” as a love language could go a long way with a god, especially if the follow-through was consistent. However, I learned the hard way that love through service, if carelessly applied without boundaries to everything and everyone in the human world, can be a short trip to disappointment-ville at the expense of one’s own energy and sense of self. I had already lost far too much of myself in the service of others. I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. Was one little macaron really so much a part of myself that I couldn’t bear the thought of letting it go? Shit, the whole reason I started this whole spirit quest was to walk with a god who specializes in recovering that sense of self through times of transition. At the same time, that’s no small request. Gotta give some to get some. After a long while of looking like a nutter staring at a box of macarons in the passenger seat, I came to a conclusion: I would decide what to do with the offerings. Fear of punishment, miscommunication, and retaliation would not. And I would stand firmly with that decision.
☽☾ ☽☾ ☽☾
My “altar” was set up on a small three-legged corner table with a wobble that sat out in the hallway near my office space. When not a neglected space for witchy things, it doubled as a makeshift shrine to my long-deceased childhood cat with her dusty framed photo from years ago surrounded by candles that I never lit and a little cauldron I never used. Tonight, I removed the photo and moved the table into the office to operate in as much peace as I could muster in the middle of my husband’s papers, moving boxes, and knick-knacks strewn about the room. Running back downstairs, I opened the bottle of wine and grabbed a Bic lighter, a small plate, and a tall travel mug that had lost its lid ages ago. The travel mug was no incense holder, but it was good enough for the growing urgency in my heart.
I set the box of frankincense on the corner table next to the tired beeswax candles housed in hand-me-down wedding-venue votives. The lone azure macaron slid around on the vintage, Corelle ware saucer detailed with lead-based paint as I slid it onto the table with the small glass of port. I may have stolen a sip, but I figured my God would be okay with it given the circumstances. I sat cross-legged in front of the pull-out couch and grew annoyed with the several tries it took to light both candles and the incense. My altar looked sad even as a witchy altar, and now as an altar for a god, it looked positively depressing. There were no symbols or pictures of anything that could really indicate it was an altar to my God at all. “What did you expect?” I thought, “It’s only been a week. Of course you haven’t built an altar yet.” I sighed. “Because I haven’t had the freedom to.”
A heavy weight landed on my locked-up shoulders and sunk through my chest where my heart had been, through my hips and back misshapen from years of forcing them to be comfortable on a mattress that just wasn’t a good fit, through my knees that were starting to pop in all the wrong ways far too soon from far too much stress, and through the floor that hadn’t been swept because we’d agreed my husband could take the vacuum with him. The freedom I longed for ran deeper than the freedom to practice silly religions without judgement or shame. It encompassed the freedom to properly feel the wrath, rage, and grief I shoved deep to keep our split as amicable as possible. The dragon of rage peeked out more frequently around sharp corners over small disputes, especially now that things were almost in the clear. The freedom I wanted included being able to care for my needs and my needs alone without having to switch to “us” mode (or worse, “him” mode) after work every night. Most importantly, the freedom would be the unhindered opportunity to explore, grow, love, and change who I am in ways that fit me. I’d waited so long to feel this freedom in my grasp and in the moment on the precipice it just felt like…air. It’s the air held between the inhale and the exhale, the space between the fingers in the grip that both holds tight and lets go. It’s endless possibilities of space that can be filled with anything, but also the space that takes years to fill well with intention and purpose and practice. Embracing this freedom meant letting the old ways go just as much as it meant exploring the new. I sat now in the heart of the liminal space between the two. The “twilight zone” I’d later call it. I smirked at the irony as the memory of my bitterness toward my husband after the second affair shone a spotlight on my hypocrisy – “you can’t have both,” I’d told him.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath to meditate and push away the overwhelming thoughts of what was to come the next day. The frankincense filled the room with its hypnotic aroma and the wine mellowed the tension in my face. CRASH-CLATTERRR thud CLANK SCRITCHSCRITCH brrrrr! I startled to my senses to see the most troublesome of the cats zooming out of the room. Curiosity got the best of him, and the tabletop was not, in fact, as empty as he’d assumed it would be when he leapt to the surface. The wineglass overturned onto the macaron and completely soaked it, the incense nearly fell out of its makeshift holder, and one candle toppled and spilled beeswax onto the table. “SHIT!” I scrambled to right the capsized candle, burning my fingers on the votive, and I missed catching the wineglass by a millisecond and the red wine splattered on the landlord’s white carpet. Helplessness overtook my shoulders.
Out of all the things, this was the shove to the brink. Out of the same lot of events, this was also one of the most manageable cleanup jobs I could have encountered, and it should have been the easiest brink to breathe through and back down from. Spritz-spritz some Oxy-Clean and bam! Problem solved. Not this time. I’d tried so hard throughout the entire day to distract myself from the heartache and the anxiety and for fuck’s sake, even the last step, the simplest offering, went wrong. I’d managed it all so well up until this point—the affairs, the choice to leave, the split, the HIV scare, the cancer scare, people leaving my support network, my own emotions. I’d demonstrated to myself that I was capable of incredible strength, resilience, and adaptability. I was capable of learning and practicing boundaries and letting go of that which no longer served me. My head stayed as firmly and as squarely on my shoulders as possible. I leaned on my intuition, the extent of the spirituality that I knew, my therapist, my family, my friends, gratitude, and daily affirmations. I was going to make it through in a better place than where I started. I would set the example of how to properly leave a young marriage and not give in to the sunk cost fallacy that has stolen the opportunities of so many before me. I was going to let logic, not emotion, dictate the course of my actions.
Yet, it’s that same cruel logic that generates the guilt and shame, calling my spells and moon water “coping mechanisms” and “pareidolia” and “demonic” with a sneer. It tries to convince me that tarot cards and antidepressants are bullshit and suckers will do whatever it takes and say whatever they need to say to themselves to feel better. I should be terrified of how gullible I am and even more terrified of being duped. Never mind what spirituality means to anyone else now or anytime over the last fifty-thousand years or its broader role in the human condition! Condemn it for not making one bit of fuckin’ sense and damn me for my naivete. “It’s a ploy for your money and your attention. You’re better than that,” it says. Logic firmly in control, I refused to lose my head. I refused to let my spirit break and have new age mysticism catch the pieces.
I leaned on all the institutions available to me and took the highest roads. Still, each choice, as curated as my macaron selection, propagated the fractal cracks in my resolve until one spilled glass of wine threatened to shatter it like the finest tempered safety glass. One last critique slipped through the cracks, groping the ether on its way through, “While we’re at it, how dare you impose the desire for the caring relationship you wish had with your Christian God onto a god you don’t even know,” the critiques sliced deep through my soul, “…or is it the caring relationship you wish you’d had with your husband?” I shuddered with embarrassment and my hands shook in disbelief and resignation. “One more thing to add to the pile,” I thought with crushing heaviness. “Everything I build comes crashing down—the altar, my posture, the divorce, the gods, the goddamn sugar in my body! How many times a day do I need to repeat an affirmation for it to fill the hole in my soul where a dream used to be? I’d like to think my marriage failed for some good reason that will benefit me in the future. I’d like to hope that I’m not drowning in this horrible emotional soup because that’s how the cards fell—that the choices I’ve made in pursuit of my personal peace are the right choices. I need to hope that boundaries protect me and don’t just isolate me. I need to hope that even though I’m full of contradictions and hypocrisy and ignorance, I’m still worthy of love. Real love. Even just for today, I need to believe that my ancient God is real and blue-raspberry is one of his favorite flavors, too, and that this wine stain will come out of the fucking carpet.” I angrily snatched the soggy macaron from the saucer and stole a bite with promethean defiance, the sourness tingling in my salivary glands and the stuffy sweetness triggering flashbacks of ICEEs from roller skating rinks and baseball games, back when God was God and that was that.
My intention was to be selfish—to take back what I had given freely and prove I could still take the pain of cutting another loss because I was resilient. In fact, consuming the corporeal portion of the offering—my half—drew it to completion. “Let it break,” a voice reached through my being. “Let your spirit break so it can be reformed anew.”
So, I stuffed the remainder of the macaron in my mouth, swallowed hard against the lump in my throat, and sobbed.
And I prayed.
[1] except Sir Terry Pratchett