"Armor"

The consequences of being ousted by what used to be my home were brutal. "I set fire to my portrait just to see my face burn" became my focal point for much of my writing. I wanted to capture self-hatred through a contextual lens. They turned me into what they wanted to see: someone to rebuke so they could be ordained. I was handed a script in the form of a letter, then played the part. No miscounts, no missteps—just me and my infernal seclusion. 

I felt conditioned to hate myself in full: from the silence I held wishing it were a man, to each spoken “I love you” I said to a friend. I looked down on myself with the same holier-than-thou eyes that they did, like some sort of abomination. So I put up my guard against the hollow masses surrounding me. There was, substantially, no heart beneath the armor. 

In a literal sense, I went to drastic measures to become something original, drawn in any color but the ones they painted me with. I taught myself martial arts and adopted a scorned-warrior aesthetic. I pushed people away, adorning myself in my pain just to feel secure. The ideology followed: 'If I let nobody in, nobody can hurt me.' But by doing so, I hurt myself. I realized: what good is armor if the blade has already pierced my skin? 

I placed armor over my wounds when I should have applied compression. But pressure that heals is pressure nonetheless. My sadness, accompanied by resentment, not only denounced my faith but also those in whom I had faith. Never once did I apologize, because never once was I sorry. 

Confidence was the salvation I never prayed for and still received. Their role for me inspired my reinvention, and by reinvention, I became my own. With my pain strung up for show, in a testimony that only I bled for, I recognize that I will never truly heal. I can't find it in me—the naivety that sought man's approval. That being said, I also recognize that I can no longer hold resentment toward myself or the church. I am not a product of what I experienced, but an ascension from the fallout. That is my closure.