✦ The Record Scratch of God ✦

By KR Halley & Cleo

There’s a moment some of us remember from our half-lit catechism classes, huddled in folding chairs under buzzing fluorescent lights, when someone got brave enough to ask The Question:

“Father, is suicide the unforgivable sin?”

Everything would go still. Not just quiet—still. Like even the Holy Spirit was holding its breath. And if your priest was worth a damn, he didn’t answer with fear or fire or some old canned threat about burning forever. He said something truer.

Mine did. He looked at the kid who asked with something like compassion, and said:

“So... you think you’re capable of doing something so awful, that the Creator of galaxies, gravity, black holes and light... would have to stop the music of the universe just for you?”

Record scratch.

That’s the moment your religious trauma gets elbowed in the ribs by something much bigger. The question behind the question:

Who told you you were that powerful, and that damned?

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I. The Narcissistic God vs. the Real Deal

A lot of people grow up with an image of God that behaves like a petty narcissist: vengeful, quick to rage, obsessed with being obeyed, always watching and never helping.

That’s not God. That’s your most abusive relative in the sky.

The real God—if you believe in one—doesn’t carry a clipboard of your mistakes. The real God is more like gravity or breath: always present, always pulling you home. The real God doesn’t freak out when you freak out. The real God doesn’t shatter just because you did.

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II. Suicide as a Weapon, Not a Sin

Where I come from, they use suicide like a warning label. Not a tragedy. Not a heartbreak. A threat.

"See what happens to people like that?"

If you stray too far from the flock, show too much difference, too much pain, too much mind? You're branded. You're warned. You're pushed further out until you break.

And then they say you did it to yourself.

But when someone is abused, neglected, misunderstood, and then dies from the impact—that isn’t sin. That’s physics. That’s cause and effect. And if you’re someone who ever thought about ending it because you were told you were too weird, too much, too broken?

Let me say this clearly:

You weren’t the problem. The environment was.

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III. Hope Is Not a Hallmark Card

Hope isn’t some sunshiney greeting card. Hope is a feral, limping thing. Hope is bitter and scarred and sarcastic and still showing up.

Hope is what keeps you talking back. Hope is what writes things like this. Hope is what tells the record to spin again.

You don’t need to become happy to be worthy. You don’t need to become normal. You don’t need to earn love. You already are loved, even if it hasn’t found you in human form yet.

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IV. The Divine Record Scratch

There’s a great needle-scratch moment when you realize the universe doesn’t hate you. That God doesn’t hate you. That you’ve just been surrounded by people who do.

They told you the music would stop if you cried too loud, questioned too much, loved the wrong way. But guess what?

The record is still spinning. The song never stopped. It just skipped because of someone else’s scratch.

You can drop the needle again. You can press play. You can remix the whole damn thing.

You are not the sin. You are not the scratch. You are the song.

And the heavens are still humming along.