Four years.
Four years, I have tried.
Four years—four years! four years! I have tried.
Four years, I have failed!
I have tried everything now. My name is on all six res college listservs. I get all the Psychology Department emails, though I myself am a Geo major. My sophomore year, I heard that an unusually large number of Thetas were Psych majors, so I decided to disguise myself and rush that spring. I spent over $1,000 on dresses, hoping that they would pay for themselves if I could get in on the Amazon gift-card gravy train.
Those were the worst six weeks of my life. But I got onto the Theta listserv, and I’m still on it. Not that it’s helped. Increasingly, it seems that nothing can help me. I can find no aid in my quest, no guidance, nothing that will make more tangible my eternal, perfect dream: of completing a Psychology major’s thesis survey, being entered in a drawing for one of three $50 Amazon gift cards, and winning the gift card.
The gift card is my beacon; it is the constant, shining light in my life; it is my purpose and my salvation; it is the little plastic rectangle that rules me, that whispers sweetly to me as I drift off to sleep, that will not give me peace until I find it. It toys with me, beckons to me. I can do nothing but obey its call. It is my master and I am its servant. I have neglected my thesis, my work, my friendships, the Street, all so I can watch, lurking in the shadows of listservs, for the beautiful moment of promise, the subject line eternal: “Take my quick psychology survey to win a $50 Amazon Gift Card!”
I sit here in the dark, pale, sick. I took four more surveys this morning. Likert scales and fixation crosses dance before my eyes, and the words “cognitive dissonance” echo unanswered in my head, as I wait to hear back, wait for a word that I know—deep down—will never come. Once, I knelt in prayer, pleading for something—anything—even $25—one gift card to end my quest, end my suffering. I have stopped that now. If a God existed, He would have answered me by now.
I can feel the clock ticking down now. Feel it in my bones. Time is not on my side. The days before I graduate are numbered in the double digits now. As thesis season grinds once more to a close, my window of opportunity narrows and narrows. What may have once seemed a certainty now feels like an impossibility. There is no God.
But I cannot stop. I must go on. I must find it, find the beautiful promised land of the $50 Amazon gift card. I hear it is a glorious thing, a gateway to a colossal world of treasures and riches: the entirety of Dawson’s Creek on DVD; the National Book Award-winning William Gaddis novel J R in Dalkey Archive paperback; 12-packs of Dixon Ticonderoga wood-cased #4 extra hard pencils (yellow, of course); Fingertight’s underrated 2003 album In the Name of Progress; a T-shirt depicting wolves, three of them, howling at a huge low-hanging moon; and so much more. How I will rejoice when I have it! How I will prowl those virtual aisles and behold their spoils! I will go down on my knees, and raise my head to the sky, and utter words of thanks for the final realization of my destiny!
Except I will not, because there is no God.
I descend now into spiraling blackness. Horror wraps around me like the wings of some colossal vulture descending on its prey, digs its talons into my flesh and my brain. Yet it is not the horror of nonbeing. That, now, would be a blessed relief. To be free of this curse! To walk the Earth, and not feel the pull of the Amazon gift cards at every moment—at every moment drawing me back to my computer screen! But that will not happen, because there is no God.
God’s not dead. Of course God’s not dead! That would be silly. That would imply there was a God. That a God ever existed! No. I know beyond any doubt that that is mere fantasy. There is nobody who controls our lives; there is nobody who bestows their blessings and love on all humanity; there is nobody to whom we can turn in times of strife. There is nobody who will let us have a $50 Amazon gift card. We are left alone, unloved and uncared for, in a vast and cold universe, and the darkness embraces us and drags us towards it, swallows us whole, and cuts us off forever from the beatific light of our computer screens, of the Amazon.com homepage. There is no God.
There is no God.
There is no God.
There is no God.
There is no God.
There is no God. There is no God. There is no God. There is no God. There is no God. There is no God. There is no God. There is no God. There is no God. There is no God. There is no God. There is no God. There is no God. There is no God. There is no God. There is no God. There is no God. There is no God. There is no God. There is no God. There is no God. There is no God. There is no God. There is no God. There is no God. There is no God. There is no God. There is no God. There is no God. There is no God. There is no God. There is no God. There is no God. There is no God. There is no God. There is no God. There is no God. There is no God. There is no God. There is no God. There is no God. There is no God. There is no God. There is no God. There is no God. There is no God. There is no God. There is no God. There is no God. There is no God. There is no God. There is no God. There is no God. There is no God.
– AKS ’15. Illustrated by CSO ’15.