I

’m not religious — but I like to pretend I am.

Sometimes, when I’m alone, I like to watch “It’s A 

Wonderful Life” or “What Dreams May Come” and 

believe, if only for a few hours, that someday my reality 
will suddenly melt away and an angel will come visit me 
and show me all the mistakes I could make, or maybe 
I’ll be hit by a car and I’ll wake up in a painting and soar 
around the sky with Robin Williams and I’ll meet every-
one I love again.

All my family and 

their friends and my 
ex-girlfriends 
and 

their boyfriends will 
be there and we’ll 
all love each other 
without 
anger 
or 

sadness or jealousy, 
because it will just 
work. We’ll all fuck 
and dance and eat 
and drink and watch 
the stars in the sky 
and feel the water on 
our toes. Maybe we’ll 
all look like we’re 21, 
or maybe we’ll look 
however we damn 
well please and we 
won’t have to worry 
about that anymore.

Maybe 
we’ll 
be 

able to rewind time. 
Maybe all those for-
gotten 
memories, 

where I cuddled with 
a girl or danced in a 
puddle or put togeth-
er a puzzle with my 
grandma, will all be 
back and clear as day. 
Maybe it’ll all make 
sense: why there’s 
something instead of 
nothing, why I, back 
down on Earth, got 
to listen to Rubber 
Soul and be stung by 
a bee and do pretend-
karate and clean the 
dirt off of my kitchen 
floor.

I mean, I deserve 

that, 
I 
think. 
I 

haven’t 
been 
the 

most charitable per-
son and I haven’t 
always 
been 
the 

best friend to every-
one, but I did all 
my schoolwork and 
I never killed anybody. Maybe when I’m clutching the 
sheets of that hospital bed at age 79 or twitching under 
those truck tires at age 23 I won’t feel any pain. Because 
maybe I’ll already have left my body, and maybe it’ll be 
like sliding down a waterslide but going up, up, up.

Once, I read some article on VICE or somewhere 

about a group of people that made an atheist church. I 

remember in the pictures the speakers smiled, and the 
congregation danced and laughed. One of the speakers 
talked about how happy he was just to be alive and how 
he was happier not buying into anyone’s doctrine.

I wish I could be like those people. But I don’t think 

I can. I don’t think I could even be one of those smarmy 
“enlightened” atheists who people on Reddit like to 
make fun of. I think becoming an atheist was the worst 
thing that’s ever happened to me.

It’s not like I wanted to be a non-believer. I don’t want 

to think, like Brenda from “Six Feet Under” did, that 
death is just “dreamless sleep forever and ever.” It’s not 
like I wanted to picture myself rotting under the ground, 
maggots crawling from my arms and legs and my dick 
falling off. I don’t want my relatives who were slaugh-
tered in the Holocaust to have just died.

I didn’t decide to stop believing — it just happened. I 

can tell you exactly when it did: I was nearly passed out 
on the floor of my friend’s dorm room at Michigan State, 
high on dabs and drunk on Hams and Admiral Nelson, 
and something about the way the room swirled or my 
head throbbed or my stomach churned made me feel like 
I was there, I was inches from that eternal black void, 
that maybe I wasn’t that Young Adult novel protago-
nist after all, that maybe I was going to die right then 

and there, sprawled out in 
fucking East Lansing next 
to expired condoms and a 
DVD copy of “Pirates of 
the Caribbean.”

For me, being an atheist 

isn’t fun or rewarding or 
enlightening in any way. 
It sucks. It’s definitely not 
“freeing,” like some people 
say. Sure, I guess I don’t 
have to wake up early on 
Sunday. I can masturbate 
without thinking about 
the moral implications of 
doing so. OK — not hav-
ing to worry about Hell is 
pretty nice.

But for the most part, 

not believing just feels 
claustrophobic. I’m in a 
mental prison of my own 
making, and I’m holding 
the key, but I just can’t fit 
it in the lock. It makes me 
hate the sack of bones and 
brains and fatty tissue in 
which my consciousness 
is stuck.

As an atheist, all I can 

see are little asterisks 
everywhere. These things 
I’m experiencing, these 
conversations and sunsets 
and bugs and birds and 
burritos, they matter to 
me, but they don’t really 
matter. Not to the sun or 
the stars or the universe 
slowly dying a heat death. 
You can tell because of the 
asterisks, those black Ann 
Arbor crows that dot those 
sunsets, those little stains 
of piss on your underwear, 
that homeless guy, sitting 
in front of NYPD, who 
you might eventually give 
some of your PlayStation 
money.

If you’re reading this 

and you believe in something, hold onto that heaven or 
reincarnation or subjective reality or whatever it is for as 
long as you can. Losing your religion is like losing every-
thing. I would trade my doubt for your belief any day of 
the week if I could.

So, believe. Believe as hard as you can. Trust me — I 

would if I could.

Wednesday, January 6, 2016 // The Statement
6C

Personal Statement: The Reluctant Atheist

by Jacob Rich, Senior Arts Editor

ILLUSTRATION BY EMILIE FARRUGIA

