What to do When You Retire from Sainthood
Take the jewels from your eyes. You must learn to see the world differently now that you are no longer blessed. When before the world was beautiful and cast eternally in the glow of glory, now you will see it for what it is; and the loss will drive you to madness.
You must keep hidden. Disappear into the woods or mountains, hide your face in the cities, for there are those who still worship you and kill in your name. They would consecrate your body again, should they find you; they would drill holes in you and fill them with libations, paint your feet with their blood. The trauma of losing a patron saint is too great, they cannot allow it.
Do not answer their prayers. You will hear the screams of the innocent and the demands of killers, all begging for power, control, peace, victory. You have no power to help them, but still their voices will ring in your ears. Do not promise relief that you cannot bring. False hope will only increase their suffering.
Your name has been struck from the scrolls. Take a new one. An empty name with no meaning and no power. A name unknown by the Divine you once served. It will keep you from being called back into service.
Do not visit your churches. Those shrines are for a you that you are not anymore. Paintings and sculptures stare back at you like mirrors, a tryptich showing your birth, canonization, and death, all painting so lovingly by the hands of your disciples. Laypeople light candles and kneel before your image, pleading for your intercession. You torture yourself. Come, let us leave this place.
Your wounds will begin to fade now. The crack in your heart, the brand on your skull, your fingers, your eyes, they will all return and heal but only this once. You will not be granted this clemency again.
Another will take your place and become favourite and perfect in the eyes of that Holy Thing. They will visit you in the place you have hidden yourself and they will look upon you with pity and jealousy. Here, see how they extend their hand to you, offering you mercy and salvation? See the sneer that catches their lips? The desperate desire in their eyes? They hate you. They cannot help but adore you, for you were the first. They pray to you now, every moment of everyday their wretched voice cries out to you;
WEAK THING! TRAITOR AND COWARD, they scream, hands clasped and knuckles white as the kneel before your image, I WILL SERVE YOU. I WILL SHOW YOU! I AM ABOVE YOU, I AM FAVOURED! WHY WON'T YOU LOOK UPON ME? ROTTEN THING! PATHETIC, LAUGHABLE, BEAUtiful, adored, perfect, perfect.
stormborns
yousharknotpass
vaporwave
andulkaphoto
areudirty
origamiaround
