Sodium Apostate

wishing peace to everyone spending these nights in confusion and fear over questioning their faith. you can get through this.

wishing love to everyone stuck spending this time with “family” whose support and acceptance is conditional. you can get through this.

wishing strength to everyone currently fighting with the thought processes that were ingrained in them. you can get through this.

i will be the challenge in my parent’s testimony. the thing that shook their faith but that they overcame in the end. they will talk about how my transness, my sexuality, and my abandoning the faith was a mountain they had to climb. a bump in the road successfully overcome with god’s help.

i will be sold to bright-eyed christians who just want to find comfort in their religion, and they will never hear my side of the story. they won’t hear about how i cried myself to sleep and begged god to take my queerness away. they won’t hear how i made myself sick knowing that my parent’s unconditional love would become less unconditional when they found out i no longer believed in their god. they would never know how i laid in bed and dreamed about being adopted by a different couple, one that didn’t raise me to hate myself. they would never know how i choked back tears when my closest friends talked about how disgusting being trans was. they won’t know that i have never loved myself and more than when i accepted the reality of my gender and sexuality. they won’t know that i have never loved the world and people around me than when i left christianity. they won’t know that in all my years of life, i have never been happier than now, because now i’m free.

and even if they did believe me (because after all, there is no good without christianity!), they wouldn’t care. because i’m not a real person. i’m a character in a fairy tale being spoon fed to them. i’m the tragic victim that was misguided by the greatest antagonist in history. but my parents resisted the villain, and maintained their loyalty all along. they watched me be dragged away by the sin of the world but nevertheless, they persisted.

You don’t have to read the same book every day for the rest of your life

Sure treat others like you would want to be treated but it’s okay to treat others as they have treated you. It’s okay to treat assholes like assholes

You aren’t going to hell because you had a conversation with your friends about things you like and you didn’t try to persuade them to salvation. You can talk about books and movies and songs you like and it’s okay. You aren’t going to hell for talking about the weather and not eternity.

No person in power is put there by some divine being. It’s okay to hate them and to hold them accountable and especially to question them. (And you shouldn’t worship them either)

The meaning to life is what you make it. You get to decide. You don’t have people making the answer key anymore. There’s no flunking the test. And the meaning doesn’t have to stay the same the whole time. You’re here for a lot of minutes. Your goals can change

You don’t have to wake up on Sunday and, on the drive to church, rehearse rehearse and rehearse what you’re going to say. The right answers. So you don’t get cornered and asked a bunch of questions. You can sleep in, make pancakes and draw pictures, read poetry.

8. You can read whatever you want, books that were seen as evil or bad or wrong, by authors who were seen as evil or bad or wrong (I'm talking Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, even Phillip Pullman)

9. You can learn about those things you were not supposed to, things seen as heretical such as evolution and cosmology

10. You aren't going to hell for watching tv and movies rated higher than family friendly, same thing with video games

11. You aren't going to hell for swearing

12. You aren't going to hell for loving who you love

13. You aren't going to hell for being the gender you are

14. You aren't going to hell for being you