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i don’t believe in god but i would lead myself into theism if only to pray for my boyfriend’s happiness. i would dismantle and restructure my whole belief system if only for the opportunity to beg for him to be unafraid of being happy. i try to pray for that now, but i know nobody is listening. if there is a god, they surely don’t like me. i have been hateful, doubtful, ungrateful all my life. i have never given any god reason enough to love me, much less to grant my prayers. i have considered that they have been answered, but with “no”.

i hope the next time i pray into the void that the universe or the powers that be remember that i’m praying not for myself, but for someone who does believe in god. i’m asking his god, through tears and with gritted teeth, to love him. because as much as i love him, it may never be enough. my love will not alleviate his fear of being happy. he is a prisoner to his adversaries and maybe only divine love can set him free. what is divine love for, if not to liberate those who have it?

a bedroom is such a sacred space. your whole life happens there. your deepest and most intimate feelings happen there. all your internal experiences that you couldn’t bear to share with the outside world happen there. you’re at your most vulnerable there. you’re safe there.

Bullies don’t respond to a turned cheek by transforming into kind people. Bullies are bullies because of something internal.

Nothing I do can transform her from a bully. She needs to be the one to change, and all change requires a push to be put into action. Change doesn’t happen in a stagnant life. So I want to be the push. I want to break the silence. I want to ripple the water. I want to fight back.

I can only absorb so many of the blows. How long do I have to go on pretending she doesn’t affect me? Why did I have to grow up that way? Why were my formative years spent tip-toeing around my words, doing an intricate dance, the choreography to which I know too well? I’ve played this part before. This is my starring role. I’ve been the stone-cold mirror that reflects her deflated power-play. I realize now that I’m no mirror, but a door.

I am a wide open door, allowing her words in. I am a wide open door giving her words a place to stay. To fight curtness with kindness is to put a roof over her head and give her the life she should’ve given me. I’m slamming shut, and instead choosing myself. I evict her from my heart, my mind, and my soul, and I refuse to give her words a home.

I’ve been only a girl for nineteen long years. I embrace my inner child every day because that inner child longs for the life that was taken from her by a mother who can’t love. I have to be the mother my inner child never had; I have to raise myself time and time again. I owe nothing to my mother but the ailments I’ve grown into. My inner child cries for a mother that doesn’t exist. She cries for a mother who will hold her and nourish her and love her, but the mother she has is a bully.

I’m infuriated. I’m livid. There’s a fire burning in me that yearns to fight the fire burning in her. I have a fire that yearns to burn down the home in me that put up her words for so long. I have a fire that can’t be put out anymore. I want my fire to burn. I want to be angry. I want to feel rage simmering in the back of my mind every day to remind me of what I deserve.