WIGLEAF. HELP.

My recent intrusive thoughts are set in the summers I spent at church camp. I'll be writing and suddenly I'm past-me, sitting out of four square to read my Bible, flipping its pages in the faces of girls bouncing balls on a blacktop and shouting—this is important, and this is why we're here. FUCK. Or sometimes I'm in Hobby Lobby and realize the song playing softly over the speakers is an instrumental version of Up From the Grave He Arose, and even though I can't recall what I did yesterday, I can't forget solo-screaming that chorus around a dying campfire. I STILL KNOW EVERY WORD, WIGLEAF. I think I could recite my camp testimonial to you, but maybe not. That memory is mostly devoted to the stinging of nettle sores that my counselors ignored because they were a lesson—do not stray from the path. 

On a recent date, religion was talked and I mentioned camp. Is that when you knew? she asked. And I said yeah, even though the only thing I knew for sure at church camp was that I felt God. But we both know it wasn't God, Wigleaf. It was just me, galloping on the back of a horse named Simon the Zealot and feeling, for the first and last time, so certain.

Wigleaf, you're a great comfort. You are very wise. Tell me—how to forget? I've wasted so much of my life loving everything that cannot love me.

Abby