i am not numb

I don't read the Bible. I lie a lot, tell people I've read Genesis--can one even read Genesis? The beginning of things, written--but I've really just perused it. I'm of the age and generation where, if you're on social media and you adhere to a certain religion, people will know about it. Verses--supposedly favorite or most impactful ones--are toted around like currency, like tickets to an exclusive, guy-with-a-beard based club the rest of us plebes don't (and will never) have access to. And there's the thinly veiled animosity, too--"You need Jesus" was never a joke or a tease. The phrase is simply informal. You missed the meaning because this particular grouping of words allows for some tonal liberties. 

That being said, at least some people are granted a bit of solace when the face of reality curls, curdles, and sours. I, with my books and my Suicide Hotline poster and my brand-new department store notebook, have next to nothing. Reality is the point, in a story. It doesn't slip away just because some people endeavor to make their own. 

Religion is an allowance, a safe word, a security blanket--cherry picking doesn't sound so bad when the sweet berry juice tastes of surety. And I get it, I do--belief in my wrists tied with an invisible ribbon to an omnipotent being would make every twist of the knife a paper cut.

But Psalm 34:18 sounds like a fucked up military-grade lip balm, to me. 

"The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit."

Is he?

Does he?

How the shit would I know? Why is this girl I know dead at all? Was it in God's plan for her to die? No amount of divine intervention kept her here, despite her friends and her faith and her family. Isn't God supposed to be kind? Merciful? Because this, this. This feels cruel. Beyond cruel. 

I remember how I felt, three months into eighteen. Lost. Confused. Frightened with where my life was going to go and terrified of getting there. People I knew were chasing things I couldn't fathom. Escapism was a hot commodity, and for me, that looked like giving into the feeling. What better way to ignore pain than to feel it so deeply your own heart numbs you?

But I made it through. I got out. I made it to the other side. I turned nineteen and now I'm suffering again, but at least I am here, alive, and know what to do.

Absolutely none of that was by the grace of God. Not even Dancing After Hours, The Awakening, Wide Sargasso Sea, or Jane Eyre constituted as anything close to a Holy Book. But they helped. Where was God when my legs were cut out from under me when my friends left me to rot? Where was God when my cousin cried into my shoulder and cursed her own luck? Where was God last week, when I missed my family so much I wanted to die? Where is God now? 

Nowhere. Absolutely nowhere. 

But I guess there's something to be said about necessary evil. 

By some logic, God created that, too.