My dog and I were born on the same day. He was one of the first faces I saw
when my parents brought me home from the hospital. Their neighbors didn’t
realize that the dog they adopted was pregnant, so they needed people to
take in the pups. Frankenstein and I grew up together. There are tons of
photographs of the two of us snuggling together in a shared crib. Back then,
there wasn’t anything you could do with the photos you took except put them
in a physical album in case company came by, and asked—or agreed—to look at
them. I was really attached to Frankenstein. I always considered him to be
my brother, and I didn’t really have friends beyond him. It probably didn’t
occur to me that we weren’t actually related until I was much older. I think
I recall asking why we didn’t look alike. My older human brother just
laughed, because he thought I was a dummy. He confirmed that I didn’t make
up this story once we were well into adulthood, and expressed regret at
laughing at me, and just in general mocking my relationship with
Frankenstein. As you can imagine, I didn’t take it very well when he died.
It’s the cruelest thing God did, making humans live so long, and our pets
live so short. That didn’t make any sense to me, and I struggled with my
faith a lot after it happened. My parents were concerned, but they didn’t
want to be overbearing, so they let me tread my own spiritual path, knowing
that it could lead me into atheism. That’s precisely what it did. I decided
that it was the only explanation for my pain, and for the pain of so many
others. Either God exists, and he’s evil, or he doesn’t. I would much rather it be the latter. The former is such a horrifying prospect. I can’t believe people live their lives under such obvious oppression. My family didn’t disown me, but we did drift apart.
I had to forge a new family with the people that I met along the way. I sort
of collected them from the various groups that I was a part of. One guy was
on the football team with me. We were drawn to each other, because we both
enjoyed the sport, but we weren’t passionate about it. We taught each other
that that was okay. I met a girl in one of my classes that I got along with
real well. She didn’t know the footballer, in case you’re wondering. Lots of
people play sports for their schools, but for us, it was a separate thing. I
had a part time job at the grocery store, where I hung out with another guy.
I met a cool girl in college. It was about two hours from home, so it was
hard to stay in contact with the others. Once I graduated, and started
working full time, I strengthened my connection to my old friends, and built
some new ones, but eventually realized that after all this time, they still
didn’t know each other. That had to be remedied. I decided to organize my
own birthday party, even though I hadn’t really celebrated it before. It was
just an excuse for them to finally meet. These were the most important
people in my life; it was ridiculous that they weren’t friends with each
other. It didn’t go well. Politics, religion, general personalities;
everything clashed. They tried, they really tried. None of them went into
that dinner with the intention of hating the others, but things just kept
getting worse. If two of them agreed on something, another disagreed so
adamantly that it overshadowed that whole part of the conversation. For the
next few months, we continued to try finding some common ground, but never
could. I then tried going back to just keeping them separate, but that no
longer worked. I drifted from them too, and I haven’t had a friend in
decades. Isn’t that just the saddest story you’ve ever heard?
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