Blaming the Swan
My statue of Apollon was broken last night, and I’m glad.

To explain why my primary icon of my primary deity getting broken was such a positive experience, I’m going to have to give you a little bit of context.
I almost got married to someone who wasn’t comfortable with my relationship with Apollon. I’m asexual and possibly somewhere in the realm of aromantic, but I’m in love with the deity I follow, and due to the intensity with which my life is focused on Him, my partner felt like he was playing second fiddle.
He was never mean or restrictive, but the silent, palpable anxiety surrounding my religion only grew as we spent more time together, and eventually we couldn’t tolerate having a romantic relationship anymore. We’re still close friends, even roommates, and our relationship has only improved since it ceased to be romantic.
However, before he worked up the nerve to break up with me, I was deeply determined to just make it work anyway. After all, the reason my ex and I had both escaped from our abusive households was because we’d gotten together. It had been a necessary and fundamental relationship for nearly three years, and it being my first serious romantic relationship with another human, I didn’t want to end it rashly.
To be perfectly honest, I don’t think I should have. I think the way things happened was ideal when I consider the other options, but nevertheless I’ve struggled with the guilt of knowing how close I was to committing myself to a relationship that would have gotten in the way of the most important part of my life. I felt unfaithful in a way; I felt untrustworthy and unclean — and I would only have continued to, had my queer adoptive parents’ cat (named Artemis, I shit you not) not knocked my statue of Apollon on the floor and broken off the head of the swan that’s carrying Him, half of its left wing, and a little, negligible piece of His bow.
My current boyfriend heard the crash from the other room and yelled to ask if I was okay.
“No,” I said, probably sounding like I’d broken my leg.
“Are you bleeding?”
“No, but…”
At the moment, I would rather have been bleeding. It felt like a bad omen, of course — I have anxiety, I’ve already detailed the guilt I struggle with, and who among us hasn’t been prone to assuming the worst when something goes wrong with our religious icons?
I did my best to brush it off after the initial shock — sometimes things just break, cats are going to be cats, I know Apollon isn’t mad at me — but I just couldn’t stop looking at and thinking about the damage. My ex-partner, now roommate, saw the mess and offered assistance in the form of a hot glue gun. It was a quick fix, and I’ll likely have to use something stronger at some point, but I desperately needed the statue to be whole again right then in order to keep functioning, even if it wasn’t perfect.
I had to go outside and have a talk with Apollon immediately, for obvious reasons. As I tried to convince myself it had had nothing to do with Him, I perceived an unmistakable message of: yes, it did.
“Why?” Was my obvious response.
He didn’t answer me directly, but rather asked:
“Would you blame the swan for what just happened?”
“Well, no…”
He reminded me, also, that He had not been broken, the swan had. I’d been framing it as “I broke Apollon by accident,” but that’s not what happened. What happened was that the cat was just being a cat, and knocked down Apollon’s statue, and the non-Apollon part of it had to be repaired. He then told me:
“I am Apollon, and you are the swan.”
There was much more carried within that sentence than the obvious explanation — that Apollon is Himself, and in this instance, I’m metaphorically connected with His swan. I’ve associated myself with swans for years, somewhat ironically because my ex-partner once complimented me by comparing me to one — but it’s become more of a religious identity than a mere compliment over time, growing, as all things around me tend to, toward Apollon regardless of its origins.
I realized then what He was trying to tell me, not just in reference to the broken statue — I, His devotee, who could also be said to carry Him through the world in a sense, had been broken by the living situation I’d been subjected to. I, not Apollon, had been put back together by my ex, and Apollon hadn’t been bothered, as an oracular deity who likely knew all along that I would never leave Him.
Watching my ex carefully glue the tiny shards of Apollon's bow back on, even as I told him he didn’t really have to bother with such ridiculously small pieces, I realized something else important: Apollon had been helped as a direct result of me being helped. My relationship with my ex got two trans people out of abusive homes; it was worthwhile. (Although getting trans people to safety is objectively positive, I’ve always associated Apollon in particular with trans masculinity, and so I feel that He’s specifically concerned with the well-being of trans men.)
Apollon’s goals, in the long run, were served more by me having that relationship than they would have been by me nobly refusing something I desperately needed at the time out of a sense of obligatory asceticism. He had known all along that my relationship was going to end, and supported me in it regardless, because rationality, fairness, and an uncanny level of comfort with and perspective about endings are all characteristics He’s expressed to me time and time again.
So, yes, my partner broke up with me because of my relationship with Apollon, among other reasons — and that’s okay. I have to stop blaming the swan for getting knocked over by a cat, and for the circumstances under which it was repaired. All that really matters is that it was repaired, and that I’m here now.
Polytheist Problems is a new publication focused on the struggle of finding one’s place in paganism, and finding a place for paganism in one’s life. We are looking for writers to expand our knowledge and share experiences — find out how to join us here!

