happiness was about as unappealing as the mayonnaise-white Heaven all the evangelicals advertise. Paul was right. I was a flagellant. I wanted my knees to pop. I wanted to wake up tired, with my back as stiff as Joan of Arc’s pole. I needed to keep Paul as a cilice around my heart. I knew he’d forgive me, and probably had done so already, but that wasn’t really the point. I didn’t want forgiveness and the forgetting that comes with it. I wanted endless penance.
