breaking up with god
a Joan of Arcadia story
They were in love. At times it felt like the most amazing thing in the world to her, the fact that she had even found someone like him. He was incredible. He was beautiful and talented and...the embodiment of perfection. But other times she felt like the relationship was a burden. It was wrong. Terribly wrong, and she didn't know what could be done to fix it. She knew someday she would have to pay a price.
See, Joan was in love with God. No, she didn't just worship him. She didn't just go to church and pray to him. She had romantic feelings for him. She felt butterflies in her stomach whenever she saw him and whenever she heard his voice. She desired and cared for him like a lover.
God knew this, and at first he was patient. He had appeared to her in different forms, as different people. It was the only way he could prolong what he knew was a possible outcome of working with her. This continued for a year. But events had occurred in such away that there just was no stopping it from happening. Plans had been set in motion so long ago that God wasn't even sure he could stop it if he wanted to. And he didn't want to. Because God was in love with Joan too.
Joan often replayed that night over in her head. It began with denial. In a crisis of faith, Joan had believed the entire previous year with God had been a hallucination. She had been sick with Lyme disease, and it was possible she had been sick for a very long time. Finally, she had gotten healthy again, and she had been letting go of the delusions. In a moment of panic and desperation, she had denied him. Over and over again, she had refused to listen and to see. She refused to believe.
And then he had said those seven words, and nothing was ever the same again.
"I like what's written at the beginning here," God had said, holding a book he had taken from the bookstore she worked at. "Would you read it for me?" He offered it to her.
Joan had taken the book and read the sentence. "Only connect." Joan had looked into his eyes, tears forming in her own. "You hurt me. Really bad. Why should I trust you again?"
"Why did you ever?"
"Look, we had some good times. And I'm fine with you being, you know, the divine 'it.' But I don't want to see you anymore. It's not you. It's me. I-I'm just-I'm not the girl for you. I-I had...a taste of normal, and...I really liked it, you know? I really enjoyed being optimistic and...making my lamps."
The look on God's face had been full of sorrow. "Don't you miss me a little?" His eyes had started to tear up. She had never seen God cry before. There was something unsettling about that.
Joan had sniffled. She had looked away and struggled with the words she was about to say. "No." She couldn't look at him. "Please go," she had whispered.
And then he had said the words that Joan later would never be able to get out of her head. "Do you miss yourself? Because I do." He had stared into her eyes for several seconds. And then he had leaned closer. Time seemed to stop everywhere else but with them. Where they were, time moved in slow motion, and his lips moved closer and closer, and it seemed to take forever. It felt unreal to her, and she had been sure she was dreaming. Even still, she had closed her eyes and waited for it to happen.
She could feel the soft tenderness of his lips as they had brushed hers. She had felt his mouth opening, his tongue attempting to part her mouth. She had opened her lips, allowing him inside. Her tongue had met his. At that moment, Joan was no longer the same.
Images had flashed through her mind. She saw herself as a child, and her mother was holding her. She was very young, too young to form long-term memories. She was warm and safe, and her mother was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. Her mother was singing to her, and that song was the only thing she ever wanted to hear.
Then she saw herself growing up, playing with friends, spending time with her family, going to school, going shopping, and going on family vacations. Finally she saw herself on the bus, and she turned...and there he was. The first time she had seen God.
Joan had let go of God's lips. She had looked up at him, breathless. The look in his eyes had told her he knew exactly what she was thinking. Of course he did. He was God. And then something had occurred to her. Her eyes had widened in horror. "Oh my god, you've seen me naked!"
God had laughed, taking her hands in his. "I've seen everybody naked. I invented naked."
She crinkled her nose. "Pervert," she had teased, kissing him again.
God just shook his head. "Never." He took her in his arms again, and they had continued to kiss.
Kissing God was like floating in space and seeing everything. Everything at once, all the people, all the birds and the trees and the insects...every single cell in existence, it all fit together in a perfect round ball. She could see it – Earth, the universe. It was the collective everything. The image and wonder of it flashed in her mind, but it was too big to comprehend. She only knew it was beautiful.
Kissing God was also like opening up every pore, every cell, and every nerve-ending to sensation. She could have kissed him for hours, and it was possible that she actually did. She had forgotten that they were still standing on the street corner, that cars might be driving by, that her parents were expecting her home for dinner, and that she was actually kissing God – the REAL God, the one everyone prays to and wishes would make their lives better. She was making out with that God, and she probably shouldn't be.
But Joan couldn't stop. She was in love.
A year later everything had changed. She still went to school, and she studied and got good grades. She still ran the "errands" for God, changing people's lives, watching the strings that connect everyone being woven into a perfect tapestry. She still worked at the bookstore, and she still went home for dinner with her family every night.
What was different was her. She had become a woman that night, with that first kiss with God. She had lost a kind of innocence that she could never recover. She knew this, but she couldn't mourn the loss. Once a person becomes what they are supposed to be, they leave the rest behind them. A butterfly doesn't miss its cocoon, and neither did Joan. But she still wondered if it was really meant to happen. She could not shake the feeling that it wasn't really happening, or that this wasn't really her. It was like reality had been distorted in such a way that she couldn't believe that she had ever perceived it differently.
And at times Joan questioned her new perception. Sometimes she felt like a god or The Virgin Mary. Or some kind of saint. She was special. Chosen. By God. And now he was with her almost all the time, in the same form as he was when they had met and when they kissed for the first time.
And they still kissed. A lot. It was a kind of spiritual trance for Joan. She imagined it was like what an orgasm must feel like, only 100 times more powerful. In the afternoons, Joan and God would meet in empty rooms of vacant houses. She would lose herself in his arms for hours. They would talk and tell jokes and plan ways to save the world. They would hold each other, and they would make out for hours on end. Joan didn't actually know how long they made out. In God's arms, time moved differently. And it had been months since she had looked at her watch.
Technically, Joan stayed a virgin. She had no desire for sex. It didn't even cross her mind. God never mentioned it, and she knew that he wouldn't do anything she didn't want him to, but sex was something so far removed from their relationship or even of anything God was capable of. Sure, in this form, God had all the necessary parts, but the idea of having sex with God would have been disturbing to Joan – if she had ever thought of it. Which she hadn't. She didn't need anything other than what she was already getting from him.
There was one other day that Joan would never forget. It was a Friday, and she was going to meet God in the park to talk. She had an ominous feeling that something was going to happen and that it wouldn't be something good. Something was very wrong. She could feel it in her bones. Her body seemed to know what it was even if her brain didn't. She walked to the park and sat on a bench and waited.
She watched children playing on the grass. She saw a couple holding hands and laughing. She saw a mother and son reading a book together. She saw a squirrel run up the nearest tree. She stared at it, and it looked back at her. For a moment she wondered if the squirrel was God when she heard someone walk up behind her.
"I wouldn't be able to talk to you if I were a squirrel. It would defeat the purpose." She turned, seeing God smiling at her, but there was a sadness in his eyes that Joan recognized. It reminded her of the night about year before when she had tried to break up with him, the night they had shared their first kiss.
"What's up?" Joan moved over to let him sit beside her.
God sat down and looked into her eyes. His were so full of sorrow that she thought she might break. He put his hands in the pockets of his brown corduroy jacket. "We can't be together anymore, Joan."
She was stunned. "Why?"
He only looked at her, and by this time, she knew his expressions so well that she knew what his eyes were telling her. That she already knew the answer.
She started to cry. She grabbed at his arms and clutched them. She tried to kiss him, but he turned his head and put his arms around her, holding her as close as he could. Joan sobbed.
"Because I'm God."
"But God deserves to be happy. God shouldn't be deprived of a relationship just because he's...God."
"Shhh," he whispered, stroking her hair. "It's going to be okay. I promise you."
Tears fell from her eyes as she sat with him on the park bench. She allowed him to hold her. There was nothing like being hugged by God. It felt like...it felt like nothing she knew how to describe. It was like when you take a walk in the snow and you fall down in it and you are so cold and wet and then you go home and take a hot shower and put on your pajamas and sit by the fire drinking hot cocoa, and you feel so warm and cozy like you will always be safe in that shower, in those pajamas, in that house. It felt like family.
She cried harder. God let her. He continued to hold her and comfort her for as long as she needed. Joan thought about Adam, the boy she used to love and how hurt he had been when she broke up with him. She couldn't even tell him why. He had moved out of town a few months later.
And she thought of her brothers and Grace and her mom and dad and how disconnected from them she had become. Only connect. That is what God had told her that long ago night when she was still a little girl. The only thing she had connected to since then was God. And keeping their secret had cost her too much. She understood that now.
Joan disentangled herself from God's arms. She looked into his eyes and he smiled reassuringly.
She put her hands in her jacket pockets and hunched her shoulders. "So...what happens now?" she said worriedly.
He stood up. "We start over. You will not know me in the same way any longer. You will never see this face again. But you still have your nature to fulfill, Joan, and I want you to do that. It just won't be in the way you are accustomed to." He touched her cheek. "We will meet again, Joan. Just not like this."
Joan's breath caught in her throat. This was it. God started to back away. Her eyes filled with more tears, and she began to panic. How could she do it all on her own? How could she live without seeing God everyday and talking to him and doing all the things that he asked of her?
"I am always with you, Joan." And he slowly turned and walked away, his hand raised in the familiar wave that she had come to adore but now realized she would never see again.
Joan watched him disappear. She raised her own hand to wave back, tears streaming down her cheeks. "Bye." She wiped the tears from her face, leaned back against the bench, and noticed the squirrel from earlier appear at the bottom of the tree. It twitched its tail and looked at her. Joan stared back, thinking only about how beautiful the creature was.
Joan and the squirrel stared at each other for hours. Three hours, to be exact. Joan knew this because she checked her watch.