Why don’t I believe in god? For the same reason, I don’t believe in love. I have spent many months, many years with a dustpan and a broom. I have picked the pieces of my life over and over again. I have spent days waiting for miracles, and in the end, I have realised only I brought them about. Nothing happened until I took things into my own hands. All the credit that there is belongs to these very hands. Neither god nor lover stopped to lend one.
And why don’t I believe in love? Same reason I don’t believe in god. Because they peddle it as selfless devotion, and some of us learn much about selflessness, of how it eats at you, how it destroys and how it corrupts. For every pious saint the world has to offer, there are twice as many fanatical zealots. For every heartfelt story of lovers, there are more tragedies than there are flowers.
Bold love leads to promises no one can feasibly keep, words used irresponsibly in the heat of the moment, and bold faith leads to helpless people who know only to rely on the crutch of their religion, who, for all talk of sin and penance suffer no consequences for their actions. They pray to their gods but barely manage to land their trash in a bin. It is the only thing one can say about religion and responsibility. They claim fealty but only till it smells of roses, but time passes, and flowers wilt out of negligence. It is the only thing one can say about love and affection.
I have never really had an agreement with god or religion, and I am an apostate of love—at least, the flavour of it with selflessness and sacrifice and patience and humility. It is an error made a bit too frequently to dehumanise the person you love, to make them into some infallible deity. It is an error in the human way. We know only to worship. The only question that remains is what.
I have known all too well that the gods, if they ever existed outside myths and stories, left long ago. And love? Well, love is just religion where you watch your gods leave.
I would rather build a monument of memory. I would instead worship my own tenacity.
There is not an ounce of selflessness left in me.