God!
I don’t even know how to begin this. I have been staring at this page for twenty minutes, and I still do not have the right words, but I know I have to get this off my chest.
I messed up. I really, really messed up.
This is my Letter To God — He Called Me Naive
You know what I did. You were there, and I still did it anyway, and I cannot stop thinking about that. I cannot stop thinking about the fact that I prayed, I actually got on my knees and asked you to take these feelings away, and then I went ahead and did it anyway. What kind of person does that make me?
I thought he was different. I know everyone says that, but I genuinely thought Daniel was different. He was not loud or showy like the other boys. He was calm, he listened, and he made me feel like I was the most interesting person in any room. He said things that sounded like scripture without actually being scripture, and I let myself believe that meant something. I wanted it to mean something so badly.
I held on for so long, God. Months. I said no so many times, and I meant it every single time. But he was so patient. He never pushed, he just waited, and somehow that felt like love. I thought patient meant safe. I did not know that the patient could also be a strategy.
That evening, my parents were not home. I knew they were not home. I invited him anyway, and I think somewhere deep down I already knew what was going to happen. I let it happen, and now I have to live with that.
I thought the next morning would feel like something. Like a shift. Like we had crossed into something together. He looked at me differently, though. Not in the way I had imagined. It was a small thing — just a look —, but I felt it immediately. Something had changed, and it was not what I thought it would be.
Within a week, he was gone. Just like that. I was a chapter he had finished and closed. I heard through one of the church members that he called me naive. Me! Naive! After everything I gave him, that is the word he chose.
And now I sit in church every Sunday in the third row where I always sit, and inside I feel like a fraud. The church mothers smile at me and tell my mum what a good daughter she has raised, and I want to disappear into the floor. If they only knew. If she only knew.
I cannot tell her, God. I cannot tell anyone. My mother would be devastated. Not even angry — devastated. And that is so much worse. I could handle her anger, but I cannot handle her disappointment. I cannot watch her face fall because of something I did.
So I carry it. Every single day I carry it, and it is so heavy for something that lasted such a short time. How can something so brief leave something so heavy behind?
I used to be the girl people came to. The one with the advice and the steady faith and the quiet confidence. I do not recognise myself anymore. I look in the mirror, and it frightens me.
Am I still yours? After this, after everything — am I still your child? Because the enemy keeps telling me no. He keeps showing me every moment of that evening on repeat and whispering that I have disqualified myself.
I do not want to believe that. But I am sixteen, and I am tired, and I do not know how to find my way back from this.
Please do not leave me here alone.
Please.
Ada
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