Derek

"Hunny, I think Derek's going to have to hurt you real bad for you to finally leave him." We were standing in the omlet line at the caf, two finals down and one to go when Jordan said this. She had just recently broken up with her boyfriend of four years. She was speaking from experience.

"I know, I know," I said, looking at the floor. I've been trying to break things off with Derek for a long time. I love him, I really do, but I've compromised so much of what I've always believed for him and I just couldn't do it anymore. He had a lot of problems, a lot of baggage, and I don't know where it all stems from. At twenty-one, he's been an alcoholic for probably at least four years, and while I connect with him intimately, he's been with a lot of women, and I could always feel that he wasn't all there when we were having sex.

Hours later, finals finished, I walked into my room to my roomate, Kelly, sitting on the couch with that we-need-to-talk-and-i-don't-want-to-be-the-one-to-tell-you look on her face. I knew immediately that it was about Derek and it wouldn't be good. Kel had just left her friend's room, after she had announced to Kelly that she's been sleeping with Derek for months, and how bad she felt for me that I didn't know.

I took off. I drove for hours on roads I didn't know. I cried. I screamed.

I went back to school and confronted Derek. I raised my voice and he nearly cried. I wanted to cry then. I wanted him to see my tears, but I was just furiously angry. I left and told him I didn't want to see him anymore, that I couldn't see him anymore.

How desperately I want to see him now.

That wasn't even a week ago. Since then, I sat down with my parents and confessed to them everything that happened with Derek. They took it surprisingly well.

At this moment, I'm hurt, I'm angry, I'm heartbroken, and I want him to hold me so desperately. I want to lie in his arms and cry. I want to kiss his face, his neck, his chest. I want to hold him and tell him that things can be better, that he can change. I don't want to accept that it's over. I want to think that in a year, in a month, in a week, he'll call me, tell me he's changed, and he'll be what I've always needed him to be.

But I'm realizing some things now. For him to change, he needs to first hit rock bottom. He needs to see himself completely broken. He needs to see how he broke me and other girls in his past. He needs to see the opportunities he's walked out on, and be completely and totally ripped apart. He needs to have two options: give up and die, or get help.

I pray he hits bottom soon. If he doesn't, he will never change, no matter what I or anyone else says. He will never be the man he can be if he doesn't fall.

Sometimes, I think he's close. The things he'd say to me while I held his aching head to my chest when he'd had too much to drink . . . he's coming closer to the edge than he ever had before. I hope he falls soon. I want him to fall and I want him to fall hard and soon, so he can start getting back up.

God, I pray that you break him, I pray that you break him so much, that he can actually see you for the first time. I pray that you break him hard enough that he has to hope and have faith. I pray that you put people in his life who can help him when he breaks, and I pray that you help me stay out of it. I pray that he chooses help, and that he chooses you. I pray you help him back to his feet. I pray that you change him.

Let him see who he hurt. Let him feel the pain, let him feel all of it, and let him be overwhelmed enough to call out your name. Let him be angry at whatever happened to him, but don't let him turn to alcohol or replacement pain.

Don't let him just continue as he is right now. Break him God, please, break him.

Then heal him, please, heal him.

And heal me.

I'm worth more than the level I stooped to this year. I'm worth more than a guy who treats me like meat. I'm worth more than sex. I'm worth more than my body.

I ask that you make me stronger and wiser because of this. Give me new strength and new focus. Help me keep my mind off of him unless it is in prayer.

I want to seize opportunities and return to who I used to be before I compromised so much.

Be with me. Be with him. Keep us both.

Help me forgive him.

Taking Care of Me

This is where I dont want to be honest with myself. This is where things start to hurt. This is where I have to deal with consequences I don't want to deal with.

Roommate #1 called me yesterday and said those dreaded words: we need to talk. I got back to the room, already pretty much knowing what it was going to be about. Roommate talked to her friend. Friend said she slept with my boyfriend not too long ago. God, I sure know how to pick them don't I?

I was furious. I haven't been that angry since the last time I saw my pastor (wish that was a joke, but I'm serious). I got in my car and just wanted to go anywhere fast, so I drove for about an hour. Boyfriend was working on his senior project. I was crying behind the wheel. I speed all the time, but I never got pulled over til last night. I think it may have been somewhat of a blessing that I did get pulled over, cuz it got me to slow down. I smoked a pack of cigarrettes in the next few hours, and that got me to stop crying. I cleaned my entire room from top to bottom, and called my cousin. She told me to get tested, to break up with him, to take care of myself. Boyfriend called me when I finished his project, around 1 AM, so I went over to see him. Sat on his desk and asked him how it went. Asked him when he was leaving. Asked him how long he had been sleeping with her.

Silence.

I asked him again.

He looked like he was about to lie to me.

Don't fucking lie to me.

I didn't want to hurt you.

You fucking lied to me. How could you?

It was just once, last semester. I didn't want to hurt you.

Just once? Roommate said it's been going on all year.

Silence.

He denied it. But I don't really believe his denial.

Fuck you. I can't believe you. I need to get tested. I thought I was pregnant with you. I was faithful to you. I trusted you. I compromised so much for you. Fuck you.

Silence from his end still.

Fuck you. I'm done. I'm out. I don't want to hear from you anymore.

He just stood there. I thought he was going to cry. But he and I are too much alike. Neither of us can cry at moments like that. He just looks like he wants to die. And my legs and hands shake.

I think I'm too empathetic. Boyfriend has a lot of problems. I'll admit it now, I think he's an alcoholic, or will be very soon if he's not already. There's something in his past he's not facing, too many things he can't remember doing, scars he doesn't remember getting, nightmares that plague him. He drinks too much to forget things, and when he gets drunk, he does stupid stuff. Lately, he's been sleeping with Jess. Ouch. Major ouch.

I don't want to make excuses for him. I don't want to say what he did is ok. I refuse to be treated like that. And I know I should have known better, because Boyfriend has slept with a lot of girls. But I kind of see it as his problem, not as something he's trying to do to me. I see it as his form of cutting, his way of detatching, of keeping everyone at arms length and never letting anyone inside. I see it as something he needs to change, something he can heal from, but I'm not sure he'll ever get to that point.

I loved boyfriend. But I was proud of myself last night, because I stood there as he slumped in a chair and stood up for myself. I told him I was better than that, that I deserve better than that, that I refuse to be treated like that. No one deserves to be treated like that. I told him he's never going to be able to be with a woman and love her unless he changes and lets someone in. He said he knows. I said I hope he does change for his sake, but that I was done. I told him I really cared about him. He said he cared about me too, and I said I didn't want to hear that right then. He said, I know but I do care,and I want you to hear that.

I don't want to have sympathy for him. I didn't want to last night either. I leaned down and kissed his head. I put my arms around his neck. He reached up and squeezed me really tight and I sat down on his lap and he held me for a long time. I said I wish we could fix this, but we can't. I wish we could make it all better, but I'm out. I loved you, but I'm out. I don't want to leave this room becaus I know it's goodbye.

I stood and took his hands, pulled him up. Hugged him really tight. Sometimes I wish I could just cry, but I couldn't. He kissed my head. He kissed my lips. He pecked my lips. He kissed my lips. He kissed me deeply. I pulled away. He said "See ya." I said, "No." He looked sad. I walked out of there and didn't look back.

I was so angry last night. This morning, I'm terribly hurt. And I'm terribly scared. I'm getting tested soon, I feel like I need to be. I feel comfort in that he said he's been tested recently, and that he's fine. I'm still going. I want to call him, ask him to come over, I want to cry in his arms for a while, beg him to change.

I think I'm the one changing right now though. It's been a long time since I've stood up for myself with a guy and said I deserve better and want better. As bitchy as it sounds, I think I'm probably the best he's ever had, because I cared about who he is, I was faithful to him, and I would have kept treating him right.

I'm going to be alone for a while, do some writing, make some money, and spend time with my friends. I hope in a few years I run into boyfriend, and I hope at that point, he's grown up and changed a lot.

I'm scared for him though, cuz I really feel like I'm going to be reading is obituary in two decades when he drinks himself to death.

But I have to take care of me now.

My "new" church

It's finals week at my school, and I really should be doing lots of work, writing papers, and studying right now, but I'm so burned out, and I just want to write something for myself right now.

I'm moving back home on Friday for four months. I remember this time last year. I was exhausted and burned out like I am now, and just wanted to relax. The problem was I had in a sense "run away" from my home town a year early, skipped my senior year of high school, because I had to get away from everything that had happened with my church. Two years ago, my family was still undergoing a lawsuit via my oh-so-lovely narcicistic pastor, the people from my church treated my parents like shit but were sickly sweet to me (as though I was too young to know what was going on or to draw conclusions about things on my own), and I felt like I was suffocating. I went a very small Christian school that was overflowing with either people from my exchurch or people who knew people from my exchurch. At that point, I was so bitter against institutionalized religion and churches, and the Christian school did nothing to help with their intense legalism. I applied to college a year early, minus the high school diploma or GED entirely, and got accepted to a decent private college with almost half the tuition covered in academic scholarshihp and my teachers and principles told me I was doing the "wrong thing, going against God's will for my life and making a mistake." I was done with them at that point. I left that institution as well, hurt and disappointed in the Christians I had trusted for so long.

I know now that I could not be here if it's not what God wanted for me. I have excelled where I'm at now, and I'm doing what I really want to do.

Going back home last summer was hard. The only job I could get meant spending a lot of time waiting on and serving the churchies from my XC (exchurch), and I had to work with one of the students (the son of an elder) as well. I was miserable and depressed and angry. My parents continued their habit of dumping everything on me: their frustrations about the lawsuit, their depression at the loss of so many friends, my dad's pain over the loss of his closest friends. They told me what people were still saying, what people thought we should do. Told me that Jack, an elder who I trusted so much, and who even stood by us through a lot, thought we were doing something almost evil by having left the church and holding a very small Bible study in our home. I was told I needed to get back into a church, "find God again", whatever the hell that means.

I started pulling away from everything and everyone. By the end of the summer, I had a few fights with my parents, explained a lot to them about who I am now and where I'm coming from, and things got better. Regardless, going back again is still stressful and I'm scared.

Completely honesty here: I'm a Bad Christian. I've done a lot of things I know I probably shouldn't have done since I left my church and school and hometown. I don't go to church and don't want to. I don't participate in any kind of Bible study or Christian group. I smoke. I drink. I lost my virginity to a guy who didn't love me then and still doesn't, I swear quite a bit. I refuse to say that this stuff doesn't need to change. I refuse to say that I didn't make mistakes and that I don't regret a lot of it.

But I flat out, completely, 100% refuse to say that I do not have a relationship with the God I've discovered since I left. This God guy, what I've discovered about him is that he's always there. He's been there when I've blackout from all the vodka, he was there when I crawled into bed with the wrong man, he was there when I sat on the stoop of my dorm in the middle of the night and asked "where are you?", he's here with me now. And somehow, I don't know how, but I think he likes me.

I used to hide behind this "good Christian girl" image, and oh, was I ever the good Christian girl. Bible cover and promise wring in tote all the time, I didn't do anything wrong on the surface. I wasn't me. I wasn't being true to myself. I was doing everything I was told I was supposed to do. I was "having visions" and saying the right prayers and being thankful and all, but it wasn't me at all. I had this fake like relationship with him that wasn't honest. Deep down, I was angry, especially between the ages of 15-um, now. I had this ugly, ugly anger inside me, stemming from all these "you should do this, pray like that, God won't like you if you do this, he'll be angry if you do that", all this goddamn hypocracy. I couldn't handle it.

Now, still uninvolved in any kind of organized group that meets to talk about God at all, I think my relationship with him is possibly more real than ever, even if it is just kind of starting out again.

I think in a way, maybe I was lukier than my parents through all of this. I had to grow up faster than I should have, had to leave a year early (I'll never forget my dad on the phone with an elder who finally realized we did nothing wrong; the guy asked my dad what he could do to make it better, and my dad said "give me that year with my daughter back;" break my heart), had to deal with adult situations at a young age that shouldn't have been put on my plate. I should be angry, I should be better, hell, I should be fucked up.

But I'm 19 years old and I'm free. The bondage that was my church, those chains are off my hands, and everytime someone tries to slap them back on, they won't stick. Yeah, I'm still bitter, and it's hard to move on, but I'm still free from the lies. I know that I don't have to be who I used to be to be loved or even liked by this Godguy I know now. I don't have to pretend.

And I think I've finally figured out what all the "rules" I was taught in church were all about. The "no sex, drugs, alcohol, etcetcetc," I don't think it's really about this superstitious ''God won't love you anymore" or "you'll just make him angry" thing anymore. I don't think it's about "do better, try harder." It's more about me. Ok, that sounds selfish, I know. But I think Godguy was just trying to keep me safe.

Cuz the sex is great, but right now, I'm alone, and since I've had that, I feel like I lack that more than ever. If fulfills and feels great at the time, and it feels great as long as your with the person. But no long term committment means lots of pain. It means being alone for the bad shit that comes with sex, like the pregnancy test you have to have your friend help you pick up cuz you're boyfriend is out of the picture. It means seeing someone and hurting, because they knew you more intimately than anyone ever has, and now he's knowing someone else that intimately, and you're alone.

And the alcohol -- while, again, fun at the time -- just makes you sick and depressed the next morning. It means pictures you don't remember being taken and people you don't remember meeting or kissing or dancing with.

And the drugs just become another thing to be dependent on. Another replacement for all the bad shit you went through before.

The smoking just replaced the cutting and makes me cough.

And I know I was told all this, and maybe I just wasn't listening at the time. But it was so wrapped up in the shoulds and shouldn'ts of my hypocritical Christian culture that I hated the rules. Cuz the same people who were telling me I shouldn't do it because God said I shouldn't were the same people who were cheating on their spouses and relying on that bottle of whisky to get through the day. And the guy who told my parents how to raise their children, it was his daughter who barricaded herself in a building after running away and tried to hurt herself and would only let me in.

So, yes, I learned all this the hard way, and I will never claim to be a perfect Christian or person, and hell, I'm still trying to figure stuff out right now, like how to give up new addictions, and what to do now that the boyfriend is calling again. I've made mistakes and I'm dealing with the consequences.

But I am free. Really I am. The friends I have found are some of the coolest people I know. And none of them is perfect. We're all pretty fucked up. But most of them know this Godguy in some way, even if they don't call him by the same name I do (what does a name matter?) and their honest with themselves and with him about who they are, about their hurts and pains.

And it is here that I've found my church. No small group needed, no structure at all. Nothing organized. Just the people God has led into my life for the moment, and honesty, and him. I realize in two more years, when college is over, I may lose all of that and be back at square one with church.

But for now, this is all I need.

Two Mes

I’m in my home town right now, house sitting for my parents while they’re away for a weekend. I have three weeks of school left, then I’ll be back here for the majority of the summer, working and taking some classes. I’m dreading the thought of being back here. In some sick way, as unsafe as I feel at school right now (a slowly ending relationship, rocky roommate situation, just some rough friendships) I feel much more unsafe here at home. It has nothing to do with my family. I feel perfectly fine here, it’s just this town, the memories.
I feel like there are two different “mes” sometimes. There’s the Me from school – Cooper. And there’s the Me from home. The people who know Cooper don’t really know this other me. This me feels weaker than Cooper. She feels weakened by people, and she’s afraid to get a job, because she’s going to have to see these people who hurt her so badly. And if she has to see them in a workplace, she’s going to have to be polite, instead of screaming at them like she wants to.
I stopped by the ice cream place I worked at last summer when I got into town on Friday, and this kid who works there used to be a part of the junior high youth group at my old church when I was leading it. He wouldn’t even give me my fucking ice cream before saying “Why did you leave us? Come back and visit, everyone wants you to. Why won’t you come back.”
“Dan, it’s a long story, I can’t come back. I miss you guys to, but I can’t.”
“I know it’s a long story, but it’s not like it was that big of a deal. No one cares anymore. Just come back.”
Ok, so I know this kid didn’t do anything, and I know he’s just young and he was way too young to know what was going on when it happened, but it was all I could do, not to grab him by the collar and say, “Look, you don’t know. Yes, it was a big fucking deal, and no, people haven’t forgotten. I won’t ever come back to that place. I wouldn’t even if it hadn’t been for people telling me they don’t want me back. You have no fucking idea how bad that place hurt me, and how much it still hurts and how much I want you to stop talking to me about it. I can’t work with you anymore because you won’t stop fucking talking about it.”
But there were people at the window, and I this kid’s parents were around, so I just said, “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.” Took my ice cream, and left.
I’m so tired of dealing with it. You’d think, after 5 years, I would be able to move past it. But the me who still lives here still hurts a lot.
There are other somewhat interesting things about the me who still lives here. She doesn’t date, or at least doesn’t do anything at all with the boys she does date. She dated this guy last summer for three months. Never held his hand. Never kissed him. Hugged him the last time she saw him. But other than that, nothing at all. What’s also weird, is she doesn’t smoke much either. Cooper smokes. Cooper smokes half a pack a day sometimes. But the me here has maybe one a day, if even that, and that’s only during the semester when she’s home. During the summer? A pack lasts all four months.
The thing is, the me here wants to hurt herself a lot more. She beats a punching bag until her knuckles bleed, then she backhands it until her hands are bruised and it hurts to move her fingers the next day. The me who lives here still wants to cut. Cutting doesn’t work for Cooper. She tried it once, and it didn’t work.
I think moving away from here was very freeing and very healing for me. I gained a lot of strength. I don’t understand why I lose that when I go home. Maybe there are issues I still haven’t dealt with, maybe there’s too much I don’t remember. Maybe I just find it hard to accept that I can heal.
I really don't know what this summer is going to hold for me. I'm scared, I'll admit. I'm finding myself pulling far away from my relationship. I've been home a lot recently, and that always helps me put things in perspective as well. I'm realizing that if I do end up in a fulfilling relationship someday, it's going to have to be with someone who believes similarly as I do. Yes, Derek might be someone like that, because our views on God are similiar, but he has a lot of growing up to do yet. So right now, he's not that guy for me. So I'm pulling away, and that's scary, and I'm looking for a job that will have me working with people from my town, and that's scary, and I'm coming home to live with my family. And I have this little sister who looks up to me, and she's sad because my older brother and she were really close, and he just moved out, and I don't think I'm much of a role model, but I want to be here to love her and hope that maybe she's smart enough not to make the same decisions I've made. And that's scary.

Sex, Drugs, Alcohol vs. Church, Bibles, and Sunday School

I was out driving around town the other day, just cuz I needed to get out and away, and I just got to thinking about life. I have this boyfriend/whatever you want to call him who I've been a little on and off with lately. He tells me not to think so much. I thought about that. And I think I don't want to be with someone who doesn't want me to think.

Anyway, I was thinking about how the other day, I was frustrated and venting to my roomate, Mary, about how a friend of mine is trying to drag me back to church. She even went as far as to ask me when I was slightly intoxicated one weekend and keeps coming back with "You promised you'd go next week." Some of my friends treat me like I'm this vile person since I've left the institution of the church. Honestly, though I'm coming to terms that I have not made the best decisions the past few yeasr, I feel freer now that I'm out of the church than I ever have.

So I was venting to Mary, and I was trying to justify my frustration with Jenna, and I said something like, "Honestly, it's not like I'm this terrible sinner who needs to find god and cleanse myself, it's not like I'm . . . " And I was quiet for a second. So Mary graciously chimed in, "You're not what? Drinking, smoking, and having sex?" We both kinda laughed at the irony.

But it really got me thinking . . . I was so bitter, so incredibly angry when I left my church, I started thinking everything they ever told me was bullshit. And while they denounced this on the pulpit, as a student, I was beaten over the head with the idea of "do better, try harder." It was like this constant game of trying to excel to the next level, of being this perfect little Christian girl. Those friends of mine who were in my senior high youth group with me at the time shit went down, we've all "rebelled" in some way or another against this idea. I myself rejected this idea that I had to be a better person and do better things in order to be a Christian or have faith. I killed the god I knew, and started believing in a God who I think loves me anyway, who I think, looking back, was there with me everytime I made poor decisions, as much as he's been there when I've made good decisions. I think my friends and I may have hit on something, but I think we're still missing something pretty big too.

Because all the shit we do right now, the sex, the drugs, the smoking, the drinking, the boys -- it's all trying to fill a gap that was left behind in the "do better, try harder." I don't look at myself and think I'm this God-aweful person for what I've done -- though I realize I've made a lot of mistakes and very poor, possibly dangerous decisions. I don't think I'm going to hell for getting drunk, for wanting to feel a man's body pressed against my own, for destroying my body in all the ways I have . . . I think it was "wrong" (god, i hate that word) because I think all I've been doing is trying to fill a gap, and emptiness I struggle with. I used to fill that emptiness with "good deeds" or church or the bible, or this really selfcentered prayer I was taught. I'm not sure what was more wrong -- filling this hole with sex and drugs and alcohol, or filling it with these pharacitical ideas that I was a better christian than other people because I didn't do these things.

I'd write more, and continue these thoughts, but I'm halfway to being late to class. I'll come back to this. But in conclusion, I think I'm really starting on this journey now back to healing, or back to me.

Worship?

I've been struggling so much lately with the idea of where worship fits in my life anymore. For the longest time after getting out of the church, I would say that the part I missed the most was the worship. Worship at my exchurch was beautiful. The woman leading it had a beautiful voice, the arrangement was gorgeous, the band was good, the songs were young and easy to "get-into." Now, however, I'm questioning whether that really was worship at all, or if it was just a free concert with pretty, emotion filled songs that really meant nothing at all when it came to this God we were supposed to be acknowledging. I've been questioning it even more recently, as the woman who used to lead the worship and mentored me for years has left her family for a married man, an affair took place on the team, and from what I've heard, in the past few years, the entire worship service was so focussed on preformance and very little actual worship actually took place.

My question now? Do I even need any of this to worship? I believe that I had experiences there where I was in a meditative worship of the real God, not the fake god that place tried to show me. I really do believe that, but I think what was going on there prohibitted me from seeing this more than it helped.

Two years into college, five years out of the church, and I'm finding pressure from my Christian friends at school to go back to church, get back into worship, find God again . . . What the fuck? Do I need church to worship? Do I need church to see God? Do I need other people to lead me into worship? Explain that to me, when I can't even sit through a church service now without feeling great anxiety or disgust or nausea. I dread days I have to go to church. I've had to go a few times since coming to school for different reasons: record the college choir, a baby is being dedicated, a couple is getting married and I'm in the wedding. How am I supposed to worship there when I've never felt like it was true worship to begin with, and when I can't get my mind away from thinking "get me the fuck out of here now, please."

There's this patio out the side of my house where I always stand when I let my two dogs out. When things were really bad with my church for my family, when we were in the worst of it, and massive amounts of shit were hitting the fan, I needed to get out bad, but I was only 14,15,16, and I couldn't drive. So I'd let the dogs out and just stand there. I'd look up at the stars and I'd talk. "I can't do this anymore, I can't breathe. God, this hurts so bad. Where are you? How can I do this? Anything, give me anything to get out. Give me anyway to be free. All I can do now is cut, I don't want that anymore, but I don't see you, and it's the only thing that helps. God, fuck you. How could you let this happen? You can't possibly be who they think you are if you're hearing this. Do you hear me. Fuck you. I hope you hear this. Fuck you." Sounds terrible. Sounds sacreligious. Sounds heretical.

That was my worship at that time. I was at least acknowledging. I was alone and in contact with whoever the hell this Being was or is. I was honest. And I really believe he heard me.

I don't think that's all worship should be -- a rageful rampage at the supernatural -- but I think I was hitting on something even then. I don't need these people standing on a stage singing empty words that really mean nothing to get to the heart of what worship is. I don't need a band or the music or the people. Just me and him. Just the honesty and him. Call it a prayer, call it worhip, call it heracy, I don't care. It worked for me. It still works for me.