seeking atonement

It’s quiet for a minute. Me, searching for comfort in something I’ve spent my whole life rejecting. Him, searching for familiarity in a time of chaos.

“You’re doing good now, trying to find answers when you’re lost.” He says finally. I can see the way his hands shake when he talks. Parkinson's, huh?

“Good people don’t hurt the ones they love.” I choke out.

“No, good people cry when they do, though.” He replies easily.

I can feel the tears dripping down my cheeks. They follow their well-worn tracks, down the crease of my nose and over my lips. I fight the childish urge to catch them on my tongue.

“I’m not a good person.” It’s a confession, like I’m talking to my long-abandoned God. I can hear it echo off the walls, through the pews, over the alters. I feel the weight of my words lodge into the wood and drywall, holding onto it forever. A universal truth. I feel dirty at the admission.

I’m grateful he’s not looking at me, because I don’t think I could handle his judgmental stare. I feel the weight of the air around me, and in me, and it’s enough. I don’t need anymore looks, anymore presence, any more scrutiny. I have enough of it.

There’s stillness around us, the only evidence of movement being the occasional flicker of remembrance candles. I sniffle. The shadows dance from the flames. I look to God and see only sacrifice.

“In my experience, people are never just good or bad. Every single one of us has a past that shapes our current lives, not all of it good.” He rubs his hands together in front of him. “Honestly, most of it isn’t.”

He doesn’t understand. I know this. How do I explain my disconnect? Other people can be good, and bad, and human. There is no light without dark, no good without bad, no day without night. But he doesn’t understand that I’m outside of it. I can see the parts of myself that need fixing, and if I know of them then I can do something about them. I can make people comfortable. I can make people safe. I can make people want to stay. But I guess I can’t even do that.

I feel another tear escape my eye, and I move to wipe it away. Just as quick as it’s gone, another takes its place. I dab my nose with the handkerchief and let out a long exhale. I’ve been crying forever.

“You said you felt like you were being abandoned, so you lashed out. Have you done this before?” His question is loud in the silence that follows. I can only hear my stuttering breath.

He hangs his hands loosely in front of him, and I can feel his energy lift as he sits up straighter. I shrink forward into the pew in front of me in preparation. This is usually the part where someone tells me something I already know but wish I didn’t.

“I’m going to start talking, and if at any point what I’m saying isn’t true, you can tell me to shut it, okay?” He turns to me and asks this. All I can do is stare straight ahead. “Okay. So, you were close to someone, maybe closer than you’ve let yourself get in a long time, and they did something to make you feel scared.” I feel like it was more than that, but I keep my gaze fixed on the sanctuary ahead of me. “Maybe more than scared, maybe like they were going to leave you. Like you weren’t important. Or, like you were too much. Does that sound right?”

I can feel my lip quivering, like a baby about to scream. My throat is on fire from holding back whatever’s in me. If I answered him, I truly don’t know what would come out. I hope he sees this, and I hope he knows that if I were to grace him with an affirmative, because of course he’s right, he might be subject to the same fate of everyone I love. He must because he continues.

“So, you made up a story in your head, something that paints them as the bad guy, something to make you the victim of the circumstance, and reprimanded them for it. You seem like the kind of person who craves stability, and control. You like when things have a right and wrong answer, and this way you could justify all the hurt that you were feeling. Right?” A sob escapes before I can hold it back. I feel like I’m being flayed alive. “Don’t answer that. I’m just going off what I’ve picked up in the last half-hour. Of course, I could have a totally wrong read of it.”

If I wasn’t shaking in my seat, I would glare at him. If I wasn’t feeling myself be torn atom by atom, I’d tell him to fuck off too. But I’m doing both of those things, and slowly suffocating under the weight of my shortcomings and tears. Distantly, I can see myself watching from the dais, silently scolding me for crying over being wrong. What right do you have, she sneers, crying over hurting others?

My voice is broken, and raw, and heavy, when I cry asking, “How do I fix it?”

He sits silently for a moment, and part of me starts to panic that he won’t say anything. Maybe he was sent by God to teach me a lesson— this is your punishment: be read to filth on a Wednesday night in the church you used to frequent as a kid and sit with the knowledge that you’re destined to hurt the people you love forever. And honestly? He would have a right to.

But I suppose one of the first things you learn in Sunday School is God is Merciful, because the man clears his throat next to me.

“You apologize and try not to do it again.”

I start to laugh, but it gets caught somewhere between my chest and throat, and turns into a half-cough half-sob, instead. The simplest answer. The easiest answer.

“I have. I am. Of course, I am.” I breathe out.

For the first time in months, someone reaches their hand out and places it on my shoulder.

“Then you’ve done all you can.”

Jesus hangs from his cross in the stained-glass panel above the nave. His hands are silhouetted by a beautiful blue, the roses from his crown of thorns contrasting the blood dripping down the window. I am Judas, watching on.

“Listen to me, Trinity. You don’t have to walk on your knees for forty days and nights repenting. You don’t have to string yourself up on a cross as an act of sacrifice. He’s already done that.” He gestures to the window I’ve been admiring. “Needless atonement, lamenting, regret— all these things won’t bring you any closer to peace. Because at the end of the day, the only people who you want to forgive you are the ones you hurt.” One more tear falls at this. “And yourself.”

And what do you say to that? When all you do is spend your time thinking of how you’ve hurt someone, of how you failed them. You spend minutes and hours and days thinking of what you could have done differently, what you could have asked, gotten clarification on, or worked through to minimize the hurt, the pain that you were feeling anyways. And more importantly, what you could have done to shield them from the meanest parts of you.

“What if they don’t forgive me?” I ask. It’s a quiet question, like a child at a library. Like a dying mans last request.

He sits on this for a moment, and I don’t blame him. I’ve been sitting on It for weeks. His hand is warm where it’s resting on my shoulder. He squeezes it.

“Then you learn to forgive yourself for that, too.”

The tears are still coming. They probably will for a while. But I sit with an old man in a church pew, his hand on my shoulder, and my hands clasped in prayer. I turn my gaze from the glass-stained window and watch the shadows dance on the walls. I sniffle. The dais is occupied.