Young Writers Society

*This is my real life story, and I do not know what to do with it. Can you help me pleeeasse?*

I’m black and I don’t believe in God.

But I do believe in values.

I know that I will get a lot of slack for this.

I remember being the anxious twelve year old that I was; always wondering if the entire class was staring at me and judging my existence. Wondering what my future would be like. Fantacizing about existing in realities that would never intersect my own—such as Narnia, rooming at Griffyndor, and even developing super powers.

I was the stereotypical nerd; whipping out a few Spiderman comics in my backpack at the library was I needed to do to have a fulfilling day. Action figures were my Barbie Dolls, and X-Men’s Rogue, was my idol.

Though my thoughts about the world and it’s possibilities were expansive, I started to become aware of the nature of life. Death hadn’t encompassed my thoughts so much as it does now—back then, rather, I was more concerned with the reality religion, more specifically, Christianity.

My father is obsessed with Marvel. DC, not so much, but Marvel. His favorite characters to talk about were Apocalypse and Professor X. I remember never getting tired of his stories.

Something you should also know about my father is that he is a practicing Muslim. I think he aligns with the zen tradition more than anything, seeing that he hasn’t converted the entire family (not that Muslims convert without choice) and I nor my mother have never worn Hijab in my life. In fact, I know very little about his practices, other than the fact that he carries a Qu’ran everywhere he goes.

Sometimes he compares himself to God; calling his alter-ego names like Elohim, and YHWH. According Judaism, these are the sacred names of the man who brought the religion to them, otherwise known by Christians as Jesus Christ.

I’m not sure when he was diagnosed, but I know that the symptoms were present in my childhood. He exhibited the classic behaviors of a schizophrenic; delusions of reality, a God complex, speaking to himself in all spaces, paranoia, accusing my family of being against him etc. Every meeting with him was heartbreaking because I knew how hard he was trying to keep it together. He wanted to be their for us, but unfortunately, his illness prevented him from being the father that he once was.

Each time I met with my father, he’d lecture me on the different aspects of all three beliefs, and whenever I’d mistakenly pronounce the names of, say, Abraham, or speak of the Torah, he’d be quick to quip me, and correct me for being so absurd.

But what got lost in translation was the purpose of these conversations. Even at the young age of eight years old, when my father was much less manic than he is now, I’d have trouble believing him, and taking him for his word, simply because his mental illness often clouded his judgement. Conversations with my father were never mutual, and never straightforward. In fact, he’d often go off into tangents about God speaking to him through what I called “inanimate objects” and “typical human subconsciouses”. Anything was due cause for direct communication between my father and the omnipotent.

So after much marinating over the subject when I was twelve years old, about a year after I had eagerly told the story of the One Thousand Angels descending to Earth for the rapture

But does all of this dogmatic certainty mean that I don’t believe in miracles? That I do not believe in superpowers? Of course not. I believe that human beings were never meant to know much more than we know now. That there will always be a missing piece in the puzzle, and this is simply because we were not built to know. Evolutionary mutations gave us the ability to become more aware of our surroundings, and as we add more to human civilization, we may come closer and closer to finding out the truth about ourselves, but for now, we are to live.

Cherishing the time you spend with family is...