Toxic Shit...

I got out of toxic shit. Destructive shit. Shit that felt so good in the beginning, but hollowed me out by the end.

It took vulnerable people, young hopeful people, sick desperate people, and turned us into robots, or shells.

When I said I’d give everything to god, I guess that meant my sanity too. I didn’t see it for what it was because I saw god as something he was not. Because I’d been trained as a child not to see the goodness and strength in myself.

Then I let myself see the lies, that the words of the prophet were not true. I realized how much of my life’s core values were made up by power-hungry old men. I could no longer believe what they wanted me to. Could not participate in obvious self-harm. I loved Jesus enough to die for him, not enough to kill myself to please his followers.

Now I know it was not real in the way I thought it was. That nothing I experienced in the churches and the cults was any kind of healthy love. If it’s not at least mostly healthy, is it even love?

I chose not to be a robot.

Now I fill up the shell that was left of me when I left them. I get something out of remembering what it was like- determination to suck everything out of the life they couldn’t touch.

My fire for Christ has evolved into a fire to fight for people still there. They think I’m lost. If they find a way out, I will be there. 

I used to want to forget, to not talk about it. But it’s the same silence as before, and they want me to forget. My testimony is proof their god does not save. I will testify all the things they taught me not to say. Acknowledge their scarcity of grace. The overabundance of pain.

I no longer submit to living that way.
I got out of toxic shit.
They could not keep me in it.

~Kathryn Culpepper