IT'S NOT ME, IT'S YOU

In fourth grade, I wrote a breakup letter to the Almighty

- Téa Mutonji

“ASK, AND IT SHALL BE GIVEN YOU,” Jesus says in the Gospel of Matthew. In 2004, at the age of 10 in Scarborough, Ont., all I did was ask. For starters, my then boyfriend had begun holding hands with other girls at recess, meaning marriage was nowhere in sight. There were other things, too: I wanted my adult relatives to stop fighting over land like the stars of African soap operas back home in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and I also wanted human braiding hair but my mother kept buying synthetic.

I kept praying for very specific wants, but none of them were coming true. I was anxious almost every day. One afternoon, I decided I was done waiting. So, I broke up with God. Coming from a religious family that believed in the power of the Trinity, this was a big deal.