Are you there God? It's me, elle.

** I can’t abandon the idea of God, no matter how often I feel I should and given how illogical some things seem. But even as I believe, I’m angry. And so, on my granddaughter’s birthday, I  composed this letter. **

Trigger Warnings:

Childhood sexual abuse

Mental illness

Disabling illness

Death of a child

Probable blasphemy or sacriligiousness

Dear God,

You’ve created a world where tension and animosity often reign supreme amongst humans. Sometimes, I wonder if you feel the discord. And if you do, I wonder if you need relief through humor and if you get that through some of us. Like me, God. I question my existence often. Why is it? Why has it played out the way it has? Don’t know what I mean? Let me describe.

God, I come to you wondering if you need laughter sometimes. You must. Otherwise, why would you create people with so much potential and constantly throw obstacles their way?

Like me, God. I feel like you poured a lot of good things into me in the form of intelligence and probably being an empath. Maybe you meant for me to achieve a lot. But whew, don’t underestimate all you threw in my path!

I only remember being happy for a few years and then the molestation by two family members happened and has warped me for the rest of my life. I’m fighting for my life out here, but I can’t shake all the effects of childhood trauma. At almost 50, I’m still in therapy. Many of my relationships and many of my choices have been shaped by the irrevocable damage enacted on a young me.

But you allowed me surface success. School was always easy. Graduated with honors and distinction each step along the way. This had to be balanced with my ongoing, vicious struggles with depression and anxiety that appeared in my youth. Why, Lord? Was the abuse not enough?

I landed a job many people would have died for. But my initial love for it was lost over the years and the streak of perfectionism I could not shake made it impossible for me to publish even as I constantly, desperately wrote and hid the words. My depression and anxiety were also at work undermining everything else I did, laying me low and robbing me of the excitement and determination that animated my earlier career.

Then Lord, I found some joy and what would turn out to be great success in fiction writing. And what did you do? Ohhh, you were particularly diabolical here. You gave me a disorder that primarily manifested in my hands, robbing me of the physical ability to write. I won’t lie—I get mad at how you must’ve laughed at that one. Take the rarest thing and throw it at me and my hands, knowing the damn perfectionism and fear that lived within me and already made me a slow writer.

I thought maybe you did love me when, in the midst of the nerve disorder, you gave me my first granddaughter. Arielle was the light of my world, my reason to go on. She came early, with many health issues, but you finally let her come home and into my arms. But, ooh, you’re sneaky. You gave me just enough time to get attached, to feel like maybe I wasn’t cursed. Sixteen months.

And then you took her.

She would’ve been two today and instead of planning a birthday party, I’m looking at a vault that holds her. People tell me don’t get caught up in thoughts of that; that the human body was just a shell. But you know what, God? I loved that shell. I loved the bright eyes and the smooth brown skin and the few teeth that had sprouted and the little hands that patted me and the little wide feet that hated shoes. So don’t tell me shit about, “It was just a shell.”

Today, she was supposed to be two and people say things like, “Oh, it’s hard but from before she was conceived, her time was determined.” Don’t tell me that. You a damn lie. It wasn’t some divine plan that killed my baby. Human error and carelessness and selfishness did.

So, mimicking that old book, I have to ask, Are you there, God? It’s me, elle. I’m not sure why you keep giving me moments of greatness then sinking me so far. If I’m the butt of a joke, damn, it ain’t old by now?

I’m hanging on by a thread. And given how you’ve let my hands be affected, my grip isn’t strong. Let me know something,

elle