I'm too far from over you, because you were my world. You were my everything. I thought we would be forever. I thought I could handle you. I thought you could love me, but that was my naivety.

Now you linger in my heart never to go, and that's fine, but I hate that you have that much control over my emotions. That sometimes I wonder if you're too far from over me, because even though I know you're not, I still hope you are.

Don't take advice that you don't believe in, no matter who the person may be. Constructive criticism isn't always as constructive as you might think. If what you wrote feels right, why change it because someone thinks this word should be that and that sentence should be a little shorter and so on? If it feels right, you don't need to apply every change to a piece or to your style. Though the advice might be good, it might not be good for you and how you want your writing to be consumed.

My mother often criticizes my interpretation of the Bible, but she’s been doing it an awful amount this week. She doesn’t like that I feel that it’s important for me to voice my opinion. I’m a child, she says. I’m her child, so while I’m technically an adult, my opinions are still suppressed. The excuse is always that I’m breaking one of the commandments by sharing a negative opinion of her parenting technique or on anything relating to her or my (absent) father, really.

This leads her to fear-monger. I’ve heard so many times this week that I’m going to end up alone in this world, but I already knew that. All of us know that already. I suppose some people want their family with them at their deathbed. Some people want to feel like they had a hearty amount of friendships during their last breath. Some people want the assumed security of children that will take care of them in their old age. But doesn’t this all stem from the fear that...we might not have that? And we don’t. We could, but it’s uncertain. It’s odd to me that someone would assume the opposite.

But my apparent acceptance of this is also an issue. I often retort that I’m never really alone. That I always have God, because throughout my whole life. I have had him. I have had someone to look up to, talk to, feel comfort in, feel safety in.

I never really cared if all my atheist friends and mentors looked down on this. I never really cared when my Catholic family looked down on the idea that I would use God to, for lack of better phrasing, my advantage.

The idea that I’d even consider God as my company, when responding to the idea that I’ll die lonely and unfulfilled, is always admonished. It astounds me, but I understand it makes people uncomfortable. To have someone so secure in the belief of something. To be so solid in their views, or rather, to be so solid in feeling comfortable enough to share these views. My views change so often on my religious practices, my politics, my choices, but what I don’t falter on is being unapologetic and that includes my connection to faith.

I’m not practicing incorrectly, I’m practicing in a way that doesn’t fit my mother’s outlook for who I should be and how I should feel. I shouldn’t be content with God as my only company if that should happen to be the case in the future, and as it seems, it likely will be. I shouldn’t be as calm of a person as I am if I were practicing correctly, and I’m not sure how this was an argument, but I can only write it off as anger speaking rather than logic. I should be more grateful about the life I have, even though I am quite grateful, just not for the things she’d like me to be grateful about. And I can’t do anything, and this seeming apathy just boils the blood more.

This week and really I guess my life experience that all built up to these heated arguments made me decide that I am going to cut off the toxicity in my life, and that unfortunately includes my mother, so maybe she was right, maybe I’ll look back and think that I was practicing incorrectly, but for now, this feels right, and I know in my heart that God is here with me. I don’t know how He feels, but he’s there, and she can’t change that.

The soft, firm touch of your hands

Massaging my back in a dark room

Only illuminated by candles

As I doze off to the sound of you

Whispering sweet nothings

I sink into a world of senerity

I often feel like I should have been born a guy. Other guys treat me like one of them, I feel like I have the same logic as a man (most of the time), even my favorite article of clothing--the wonderful T-shirt--is usually purchased in the men’s section of stores. I always feel like more of a guy than I do a girl. Don’t get me wrong, I love being a girl, but if I woke up as a man, I wouldn’t mind at all.

The first thing I’d do is touch my body. Does it feel stronger? Does it feel nicer? Do I look attractive? I’d probably be a pretty boy artist, but my direction in life would be the same. Make art. Gain success. Get rich. Be happy.

What does my voice sound like? As a girl I feel like I sound like a 12 year old boy. Would I now sound like a boy who actually hit puberty, or would I still have that 12 year old voice that I think sounds gross, but funnily cute? I would use that voice to share my opinions as much as I do already. Would the topic of men’s rights coming out of my mouth sound more self-centered than when I discuss it as a girl? Would my views be boiled down to “You’re just saying that because you have male privilege” or would there be at least a little authority on the issue as someone who is a man? As a woman I receive the “internalized misogyny” angle on this issue, but I also can’t get bogged down by “male privilege.” I have more presence, I have more reach.

What about my friendships? Would I have more of them or less of them? It’s never been easy for me to make friends, but is it my gender? Would I find the camaraderie I sometimes crave as a man? Or would I be the loner male type that gets avoided by the plague? Would my awkwardness be just as apparent in male form as it is in female form? Am I doomed?

And my relationships? I often joke that if I was a man, I would be gay because I just love men so much, but would that truly be the case if I suddenly became one. Would my sexual orientation change? In fact, this raises the question, does my brain change when I wake up as a man, or am I still the same girl on the inside with the exterior of a man on the outside? How scary to think I wouldn’t be the same person, or that I wouldn’t present the way I was used to.

These questions would run through my mind, unsure of who I truly am, unsure of what this all is. Am I still who I am, or am I someone new? I can remember my past life, but does that mean I have that life? When I step out this door, will everything be different or will it all be the same, but me? Will I walk among people in another body with the same brain trying to find a new brain to fit this shell?

Take me back, please. I beg whoever did this. Just take me back.