Hope Deferred Makes the Heart Sick

Here it is, 15 years since “the incident.” I’ve forgiven them... I really have. But that doesn’t make it stop hurting. How can it still affect me so deeply all these years later? How can that one church, out of the hundreds of people in my lifetime who have hurt me, still haunt my dreams? I still dream of M, my former best friend and pastor’s son. He’s married with a child now, far away from where he can hurt me. But I dream of seeing him, hugging him, loving him. When I awake, the emotion is bittersweet. I’m not angry with them anymore. But I’m still very sad.

I feel robbed. That time period changed me so drastically that I can never be the girl I was. I still grieve for her. I grieve that she died and left this hollow shell that pretends to be alive. But I’m not alive. I simply exist.

I met a guy recently that I can’t help but think would have been perfect for her. I refer to my former self as “her,” because it doesn’t seem like she and I are the same person. I catch myself flirting with him, but quickly remember that “her” type and mine are no longer the same. She only courted church guys; I won’t touch them with a ten-foot pole. It’s a shame, really. This guy seems so pure, innocent, and perfect for 18-year-old Holley. But 33-year-old Holley knows she’s too tainted and worldly now. I would love to be “her” again: on fire for God, able to feel His presence, pure, innocent. But she’s forever gone. She’s been replaced by a grieving tainted shadow whose innocence is long gone. She leads a very lonely existence, caught between two worlds, completely alone. If it was as simple as going through the doors of a church, I’d do it for the sake of what has been lost. But it’s not that simple. I tried to go back. Hell, I DID go back for a long time, trying to revive her. But it didn’t bring her back. It just reminded me that something had changed. For a long time, I’d hoped it would one day go back to the way it was before. But now, after hoping for so long, I’ve lost hope. I don’t believe I’ll get it back. I also have stopped believing in my Beloved. It was a nice fairytale, but it never came true. Sometimes, for unknown reasons, we simply exist. Some prayers are never answered. And some wounds apparently never heal. And that just plain sucks.