CHAPTER 1: BECOMING ATHEIST‎‎I had just finished my morning exercise and I don't know if I should eat the food I was craving for or sleep hungry for a while so I could in my head loose a few more pounds or eat and feel guilty afterwards.‎‎It is 7:13am. I know because I am staring at my phone screen. The workout app is still open. "Great job, Agnes! You burned 165 calories!" with confetti. My shirt is wet. Not sexy wet. The kind of wet that makes the fabric stick to your stomach rolls and your back. I am breathing through my mouth because my nose is blocked. My thighs are shaking.‎‎From my room, I can smell what my mother is frying in the kitchen. Plantain. The sweet, soft kind that is almost black, the one that caramelizes. With Mtn rice. The smell is entering my room and sitting on my chest.‎‎And my brain is doing that thing it does every morning.‎‎If you eat now, you wasted the exercise.‎If you don't eat, you will be dizzy in class.‎If you eat, you will be fat forever.‎Maybe I should drink my chia seed soaked inside the fridge.‎Eat.‎Don't eat.‎Eat.‎Don't eat.‎‎I sit on my cold floor. My fan is making that krr krr noise it always makes on speed one. I am 22 years old and this is how I start almost every day. Negotiating with food like it is an enemy soldier.‎‎My name is Agnes Iboro. I am 22. I am from Southern Nigeria, Akwa Ibom, but we live in Cross River.‎I am in my third year in school. I am overweight, not curvy-overweight, just big. I am an introvert. I have social anxiety that makes my hands sweat when I have to say "good morning" to a group of people. I am scared of heights to the point that even climbing the staircase to the third floor of my department makes my heart beat like a drum. I am bisexual. I am sexually attracted to women and to gay men. I don't like straight men, or maybe I do a bit. But I do want to fall in love. And I used to be a Christian.‎‎ I was not a good Christian.‎‎People like to say "I was a good Christian before" when they want to tell their atheist story, like they were a pastor or something. ‎I was not, I was a bad Christian who was trying very hard to be good.‎‎I never felt that connection people talk about. You know that moment in church when everyone is crying and lifting their hands and saying "I feel the presence of God....‎I never felt it. I stood there, I lifted my hands because everyone else lifted their hands. I closed my eyes because my mother would pinch me if I opened them. I sang the loudest so that no one would know that inside, I was empty.‎‎