Only Love!

In many ways, the church was the incubator for my self-hate. Consequently, the person's charged with stewarding my type, often reinforced my already diminished measurement of self-worth. Their preoccupation with disguising their own inadequacies made me a repellant to their "Holier than thou" type. I don’t believe it was always intentional, yet their actions were integral.

Sadly, I was more often than not made to feel as though my tears were not pure enough, my reaching was not desperate enough and that I was not enough. True enough, there was fixing that needed to take place however, it was never my person, rather it was the perverted view of love that was forced upon me. Trauma named me and in my naivety, I took ownership of the identity. It would take years before I could see beyond trauma's smoke screen.

You see, the boogeyman often mentioned his love for me right before tickling me between my legs, and the overwhelm of sexual attention my prepubescent body often received was gestured by older male relatives who claimed to love me. And the silencing… the silencing I’d learned happened as a consequence of not being believed when I dared to tell the truth about the ongoing molestation my dear friend was experiencing at the hands of her uncle who thought it was okay to barter with me an exchange of my innocence for lunch money dollars and cents.

So, you see, it was the idea of love that crippled me.

The stubbornness of love dressed deceit was persuasive. For a long while, I was hooked on the crumbs of people-pleasing which fast tracked me to rock bottom. Thus naturally, I turned to the church as my remedy after all, that’s what grandma said!

Consequently, I was more often than not made to feel the excess of pouring blood from an unhealed people who were simply using the church as their ballroom to masquerade wholeness. Many of them rejected me because the staunch stink of my pain resurrected the dormancy for their own. Most of those who were close enough to hurt me were the very ones whose claim to fame in my life was love.

So, it was my interpretation of love that needed fixing. And only love could fix it.