Girl meets boy. Girl falls for boy. Girl and boy live happily ever after.

Isn’t that how this story normally goes? Well, this isn’t quite that story, but I am going to tell it anyway. The girl did meet the boy, and she did fall for him. That girl was me. Little did I know, a monster hid behind those vivid, green eyes and half-crooked smile that I so helplessly fell for. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. First let me explain how I even got here.I grew up in a small town, and within a pretty small little bubble if I’m being honest here, which I am. I grew up within a Christian community. Our family attended church services three times a week, and I attended a private, Christian school Kindergarten through twelfth grade. All of my friends attended the same Christian school, and most of their parents attended the same church. I think you get what I mean when I say “small little bubble.” Even within a small circle, I had lots of friends and was told on a regular basis that I was going somewhere, that I had all the potential in the world. Smart, sassy, sarcastic, confident, outgoing, spunky, decisive, a good leader, could hold my own… All of things were used to describe me by my friends and teachers.

Some of those things I let him steal from me, and the others I think are the only reason I got out alive. But again, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

So here I am, barely 18-years-old and with all the faith in the world. I was somehow under the impression that while there is good and bad in the world, as long as I strived to do good and showed that kindness to others, God would protect me from the evil in the world. That was until my deepest betrayal and disappointments came from the friends and mentors that supposedly knew the same God I did. I guess you could say one day I woke up, looked around, and I didn’t see the God I knew. The faith I thought I had was shattered.So, I went looking for answers to my faith dilemma outside my circle, and found him instead. Except he wasn’t going to save me. In fact, there was no god in any religion that could save me from him. He became the devil, and God was nowhere to be found.