Purgatory

“Are you prepared?” they asked as I colored in bloody arms and legs.

“He will return at any moment, and you must be prepared.”

I scribbled up the wrists and reached the hands, veiny and sagging on the massive nails.

“If you don’t know what it means to be prepared, come find us after class.”

Whether I was too scared to approach the pastor or my six year old naivety convinced me that I really was prepared for the resurrection of Jesus Christ, I didn’t open my mouth.

I didn’t open my mouth for the entire car ride home, nor did I open my mouth as my mother tucked me in that night. It wasn’t until strange voices traveled down the hallway and spilled in through the cracks of my bedroom door that I couldn’t stand it anymore. I rose from my bed, swearing I could hear the dripping of blood on the wood floor. I gripped my stuffed lamb and charged the door, fully prepared to face Mr. Christ himself, only to run into four non-crucified adults sipping wine in the living room.

I never returned to Sunday school.

I grew taller and my face got slimmer. God gave me hair in my armpits, which I decided to keep, despite its unholiness. I was at the ripe age where one is tired of being a virgin and starts to believe they are a prophet. My journals were filled with channelings from the Big Man Upstairs telling me I was closer and closer to figuring Him out. My handwriting got messier and messier, and my doctor prescribed me little white pellets for under the tongue.

“To help with the anger,” she said.

That same year, I walked through the canyons of Wet Beaver until I reached a clearing next to the river. Despite it only being late August, the water was cold enough to knock the wind out of me. I dipped my head into the current, shaking in a moss-covered baptismal.

I walked along the confluence of the high and low desert, boots tied to my backpack in hopes that being barefoot would replicate something holy. When I reached a rock suitable enough for perching, I sat.

For three days and three nights I sat, eating nothing, sleeping only to bear the cold at night. I was not tempted by distractions—not even my stomach dared to growl. This stone would not turn to bread. If I became like Him, maybe I would understand Him. Maybe he would help me.

I waited until the branches of the trees looked like mouths. I waited until my throat began to swell from thirst. I waited until I got so delusional I started talking to the crows, yet all that happened in those three days was that August turned to September. No bloody man emerged from the shore, no images appeared in the sky—nothing. 

“What kind of bullshit is this, God?”

I thought that psychiatry was the devil’s work until my head unscrewed itself the rest of the way and I began to take a little white pill at night. If antipsychotics were created by Satan, I was prepared to be condemned. I didn’t find God. I didn’t find Yaweh. I didn’t find El Shaddai or Adonai. I stopped talking to crows and I started wearing shoes again. Perhaps the Big Man Upstairs created Lamotrigine 125 mg tablets so I’d leave him alone for once, or perhaps I’m destined to burn in the eternal fire with GlaxoSmithKline, Inc. But if Jesus ever does come knocking, I’ll throw him a couple Xanax.