To The Girl Who Believed

Content Warning: vague mention of religion (negative)

To the little girl who believed.

I want you to know.

I don’t blame you for hating me. A part of me hates me too. I don’t know if I’m better off. All I know if that I feel like I’ve chosen the right path, finally. I don’t have to search and wait and hope for my future to be worthwhile because I get to define it. I get to make it. And if God is real, then I am glad I am not a part of that. I am glad that I chose to walk away. I am glad that I am not under Their control, that I am not bound to Their rules and Their plan for me.

I want to be an individual. And there are more ways to get that feeling of total love and acceptance than seeking Them out.

You don’t have to understand. You don’t have to be happy about it.

I know you hate me. I know you prayed and prayed and prayed for this to never happen.

But I also know so many things you don’t know.

I know how much you’re struggling. I know how much you’ve been through. I know how it’s affected you. I know what’s going to happen to you and I know how you’re going to crumble underneath the weight of it all. And I know how you’re going to recover.

I’m not okay, baby, and neither are you. You don’t know it yet, but you’re the farthest from okay that you can get.

But one day. One day, darling, you and I, we will be okay. We will be happy. We will be loved, and we will feel it. One day, baby, one day we will have what we’ve always wanted. We will belong.

I hope this letter finds you. I know we can’t go back, and I know you’ll never read these words, but I hope you feel them. In another world, in another time, in another past, in another realm, I hope you hear this.

I want you to hate me, baby. Because that is how we got here. And here is where I want to be. It may not be where you wanted to be, but darling, it’s where I do. You are selfless, and I am selfish. You are caring, and I am careful. You are forgiving, and I am stuck in the past.

But baby, change is coming. For us both.

I love you. And I hate you.

Only this is just your beginning. This is your first chapter. This is your start. And I? I am our second chapter. Our book has barely begun. We still have so far to go. So, hate me, darling. And love me. Because I am your strengths. And you are mine.

We need each other, baby. Remember that.

Sincerely, the young woman who remembered.

Right now, I am sitting on my bed, lit up by lamplight, with my curtains open, showering me in the shadows of the forest outside. I have my sad playlist on and I’m barely holding it together. I knew I had to write something, but I didn’t know what. I knew I had to let it out, but I didn’t know how. And what ‘it’ was? I had no idea.

But then I sat down, and I wrote this. I wrote a letter to the child I used to be. I wrote a letter that will never reach her, but that I wish so badly could. I write to her to write to me. We are not the same, by a long shot, but we are here, and we were there, and in every way, we are together. I am not alone because I have her. And she is not alone because she has me.

I remember one night, when I sat in the dark, the curtains open, staring at the moonlight. I didn’t know who I was or where I was going, and I was afraid. I feared what would become of me. I feared I wouldn’t make it. And I wish, god, I wish that I could go back in time, take her soft hands in mine, look into her big brown eyes swimming with tears, and tell her, “Baby, you are going to make it. You are going to get there. You are going to live.” And I wish more than ever that future me could come back here, take my hands, brush my curls out of my broken eyes, and tell me that I’m going to make it too.

But all I can do is ask you to believe me when I tell you,

You are going to make it.

Because you will.