divorce

And I'm sitting outside High Cross Church in Camberley, leaning against a brick pillar to keep out of the wind, writing on the A4 pad that's now my diary, clutching carrier bags of stationery, waiting for my phone to ring, my lift to arrive.

The doors to the caretaker's cupboard are swinging open, bang, bang, smacking against the wall, making me jump. When's somone gonna come on out and close it? I won't.

I'm writing, funny how I still feel safer near a church. Now the mystery isn't enough to draw me in, just to keep me sitting in the doorway.

And the vicar's leaving through the sliding doors, leather jacket, book in hand, and as he walks past I'm rolling out from behind the pillar like an agnostic ninja and - is it the drama of the thing or just that desperation? - asking him for a minute of his time.

He's on his way to a funeral, in a hurry.

All I want is thirty seconds. Give me one good reason why I should still believe in God.

He shrugs, opens and closes his mouth, looks at his watch, we pause and listen to the wind beating through the carrier bags at my feet, the struggling pages of my diary.

"Love." he says, eventually, definitely.

I smile. Good answer.

"What other answer is there? In the end, when you take away all this stuff about control, all this crap about dos and don'ts and people thinking they know God's will, all that's left is love, and honesty. Either you see love as an emotion between humans or you see it as something divine, something underpinning everything. You make a call and that's it. I made the call and -" he tweaks the dog collar "-that's just what happens."

That's the best thirty second answer I could have hoped for. Thank you.

I roll back behind my pillar, find my page again and starting write down what he said before I forget it.

*****

And I'm reading Romans 7:7-13, about the law and sin, and how sin corrupted the law which was good and pure and turned it to something that brings death. And she's telling me how all you can really be sure of is Christ, and if you have Christ, the rest will somehow fall into place but without Christ, it's just a law. And laws don't make you right with God. Or yourself.

*****

And I'm telling him a secret, the new secret, which isn't that I'm depressed but that, ever since I've been getting treatment for the depression, I don't believe in God anymore.

And I've said it, and he's sorry, we both are.

And I think about marriage. How there's lust, and infatuation, and if you get married on nothing but that your marriage will fail because you'll only be following the laws of marriage, and not the love behind it.

And how if you get saved for what you can get, if what you want is someone to love you because you can't love yourself, if you're not in love with God but merely infatuated with the mystery and comfort of it all.

Someday you'll learn to love yourself, and wonder why you're following this law that only brings death to those who have no love for Christ at the heart of it.

*****

And I'm sitting in the church and I'm supposed to be praying. I'm looking at the instructions I wrote out for people to pray with, the theology I typed out and how I don't believe any of it and there's people with heads bowed at each prayer station and I have never felt so insincere.

I put the stone I've been carrying at the foot of the cross. It's a mute gesture, because I don't know what it means. It's the way you hug an old friend to silence the awkwardness, the way you kiss your wife on the cheek before you leave to cheat on her, the way you stroke someone's face when you've argued and neither of you know what will happen but what's important now is not words but a gesture.

It says, I think I love you, but I don't know if I can be with you, so right now this stupid sentimental token is all I can give you. It says sorry, but I have to be myself and... I'll call you.

*****

I walk out an hour and a half before I'm supposed to finish praying, walk for 40 minutes in the dark to a field where I light up a cigarette, listen to Evanescence and drink an alcopop. Not because I want to, you understand, just because I can.

If that was a break-up then this is the pull. Changing my degree and writing and drinking and smoking and partying and volunteering and kissing and thinking and listening and changing and growing and talking and learning to love myself is me eating chocolate with my girl mates and watching chick flicks.

This is me being single.