They said drugs began my destructive path. I never shared my thoughts, because I used to think they were probably right. At the age of sixteen though, my parents ceased to exist, so no, it wasn’t the drugs.
She said God required of my parents in his heaven. I never recall a time where I enjoyed religion, so that is surely why I surmised he was a fake. My grandmother kept staring, and my grandpa had those wrinkles that only appeared with stress. I replied that if God wanted my parents, he would’ve been nicer and asked.
For a while I chose to believe in him; perhaps it would bring me the joy of being a kid again. That is why I prayed every single night, over my “Mary the Virgin” candle, a gift from my very catholic aunt Susan. Yes, when you are sixteen, your parents have just died, and you don’t believe in God, you pray with him. I prayed for silence most of all because even though the crickets outside the window were the only sound, I still heard my grandparents crying in the next room; that and it had been raining for the past couple of days. Two weeks I knelt down, next to my bed, with my scrawny sixteen year old hands. God didn’t bring them back, and I decided my family was a scam.
After the whole religious breakdown, the family visited more often. They said they came to see me but the empty cups of coffee, and the sound of laughter coming all the way from the living room differed. During one of the dreaded visits my uncle came, and he took me outside. A dust storm had just hit the area. The land was dry and I knew what it was, but something about being a boy in the middle of nowhere with religious issues made me ask all sorts of questions. Sometimes I wished I could believe in God because then, even when I knew he wasn’t the cause for a lot of things, I would’ve gotten answers. I inhaled a wisp of air, and asked
“Why is the soil eroding?”
He responded, and I will never forget the twitch in his eye when he said this,
“It’s your parents crawling out of hell.”
My uncle was a drunk.