The lover who’s never left.

He refreshes my soul. He guides me along

the right paths for his name’s sake.

Luke 6:37-38

Dear Me,

You’ve lost the little girl you used to know and are flipping rocks and stones to find her coiled in the damp earth. You never do find her because there was always another thing to be.

Like when you moved to Houston in the sixth grade and decided your Southern accent didn’t suit you anymore. Everyone else was a child of parents who traveled and lived for a time overseas, their accents faintly intelligible like dirty dishwater. But yours is the sore thumb of accents, bringing you attention you decide you don’t need.

Teenagedom brings more breakthroughs, like being pretty enough is a journey your feet must walk. It’s painful, so many rough-edged pebbles beneath your soles, but you curl and swipe and pluck and suck and run away until your legs look a little less like your legs.

Nobody told you this would bring happiness, and that same nobody was right.

Instead, there’s a deeper change that goes beyond contentment into the dark recesses of never being content. You hold onto it, your anger and bitterness mewling kitten-small until the noise in your chest is a roaring lion. “Who put it there?” you wonder in your head because saying it out loud is an exercise in shame.

You’ve jumped into this cycle feet first and can no longer find the exit. You stay stuck in it, running, running, running, until everything hurts, and you won’t even think about sitting for a second. Instead, you bring others into your sick, twisted game, comparing yourself with women who are better than you, smarter, prettier. Will your husband leave? Will you be stuck all alone to know that everything was given to everyone else but you?

The questions build until you’re slick with sweat, morning and night, your stomach shredded and scarred from paranoia. How can a body go on? How can a mind not fold its hand?

You understand that there’s a lover of your soul you’ve kept on the outskirts of your heart. Each time the weight of your life doubles in grief, in misery, He stands firmly, waiting for you to acknowledge His depth. You sink toe-deep until every inch of you bobs beneath water, a spiritual baptism with the lover who’s never left.

Talk soon,

Ericka