“I say I have sloughed off religion like a diseased limb, like it is no longer of use to me, but that’s not entirely true. Without it I am unsteady, vulnerable in a way I couldn’t be when I was not of this world. The thing about religion is that when you have it it feels good, and, like any opiate, the withdrawals are painful. I do not feel cured or free. Instead I hang in the disquiet of remission. Sometimes, if I visit my hometown and find myself in a room of people singing or praying, I can still feel something, a phantom limb of faith. I wait to see if I am out of the woods, or if my body will again light up the scan with that most feared diagnosis - a malignancy formed in and of oneself, spreading and reclaiming control.”
Sara Nović, Remission.
