#and vice versa...

It took me all of high-school to learn some things that others knew from day one of their 13th year, but that's ok, because that's what that time is for.

growing up christian. in an attempt to reconcile your suffering with the fact that you’ve barely been around on this earth for long enough to commit sins vile enough to deserve this pain, you start looking for sin in everything you do. when i say i left the faith, i want you to picture me at reconciliation in the first grade, sobbing to the priest about how if i beg god's forgiveness for the sin of coveting my friend’s plastic squeaky lion when i was five, then maybe He will have the mercy to spare my sister. jesus died for our sins. in comparison, this is nothing. close the door before you cry. if you repent you will be saved. you hear this again and again, even at the hospital, where you go once god forgets your name. if you get a better attitude, i will stop making you do this. the same idea, disguised in language that omits the divine. not that the divine ever did you much good. i wanted to die younger than joan of arc. i thought that if i could not atone i could at least die and become a martyr. i was maybe seven. 

i love how "don't steal already existing representation" is somehow a controversial statement