Sarah Nyhan

This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.

I have no idea what I am doing.

I have dreams. I have hopes. I have what seems like an infinite number of ideas. But I really don’t know what this is going to be. All I know is that I feel like I need to start.

Nothing else is working out. It seems like my life has been on hold for seven to eight years. And will continue to be until I write this book. The story of my life. Of what happened to me. Of what I learned along the way.

I don’t feel like I’m anybody. Like, who am I? But maybe that’s the point. I’m not special. I’m as common as the next man. Something, someone, people can relate to.

I think that’s why Jesus came down to a single, unwed mother. Specifically born into a broken family. Specifically rejected. Specifically an outcast. More people can relate to that than can relate to royalty.

Is this Jesus for the common man? Or is this Jesus only for kings? Only for the religious elite (self-proclaimed or otherwise)? Only for the “perfect” people? The ones who have a curated social-media feed?

Or is this Jesus for the real niggers? The real bitches? The real po’? The real hustling-ass survivors? Just trying to make it through another day without completely losing it all?

I used to be that chick. That teen. That fucking heartless bitch.

I used to ride around in the back seat of my mother’s car maybe even on her way to church. Dragging me there. Most of my childhood no choice. And for awhile I would have a tennis ball that I’d opened up. With a rag inside. Soaked in gasoline. Trying to light it and throw it out the window. On my way to church.

I set the trash cans on fire at my high school. Three of them. Over two days. The administration on the loud speaker warning the other kids that someone was trying to burn down the school. I was that kid.

I thought they were dumb. Couldn’t they see that I lit the fires in the trashcans specifically so that the fires would NOT burn down the school?!

I would carry gasoline around in my backpack. In a sports water bottle that I took off my bike. My goal was to somehow get it into the plumbing system so that it would blow up the whole school. But I ironically didn’t want anyone to get hurt. That’s why I never went through with it.

But if I could have figured out a way to do it, I would have. I just never thought about it long enough to figure out a plan to make sure I could guarantee nobody was in the buildings before I set the whole damn place to explode.

My father is lucky. I would think for hours about how to kill him. I just could never figure out a way to do it without getting caught.

And then he has the nerve to later in life call my writings “Bible Babble”. Like, BITCH – if you only knew how close you were to being killed!

But what leads a kid who was literally burning her arms with lighters. With heating up metal objects and pressing them into my skin? I took lit cigarettes and put them out on my arms. I would take a hammer and swing it against my arms to try to break my bones. Before I was even fifteen. I swallowed an entire bottle of pills to try to take myself out.

How do I go from that to then this? To this woman who just wants people to know the Love that found me?

This isn’t your typical emotional testimony. This isn’t me saying I am a horrible person. And thank God for saving a wretch like me from an eternal barbeque pit. No, that WAS the old me. But that’s not the me now. That’s not the one writing THIS story. I have changed. Or rather I have been changed, been freed from that false religion. From that origin story. I am now Living a completely different narrative.

What happened? And does it matter at all? To anyone else but me?

I hated the word forgiveness. For good reason. When you get abused, most people prefer that you don’t talk about it. Don’t make anyone else uncomfortable by acknowledging what they don’t want to admit. What they don’t want to deal with. The world is hard enough. Can’t you just shut up about what happened to you? Like, goddamn it bitch! Do you want a fucking medal or something? Do you want us all to take our tissues out and run up to you so you can cry it out? How fucking long do you think you need? Because my show that I binge watch is about to be on. So I don’t have much fucking time for your little stupid-ass feelings.

My mother told me that she was going to warn HER family about me. Not OUR family. No, HER family. About me. Because I dared to directly confront her one day. I told her that I thought that not only did she know I was being abused, but she permitted it. She handed me over. She didn’t do anything to stop him.

There was one time. Where I thought maybe she was finally stepping up. When I had been remanded to the psychiatric hospital after the fires. After I turned myself in. And who knows what the fuck my father had been spitting to all their ears, but unbelievably there was a conversation happening about whether I should be discharged to my father’s residence after the hospital. I couldn’t even believe anyone was considering this an option! I was kinda in shock. And therefore somewhat relieved when my mother stepped up for once. To say I shouldn’t go to my father’s.

I thought for years that maybe that meant she could finally admit who he was. And finally try to protect me.

But then I realized in my 40s that, seeing as she had never stepped up for me before, she was probably just trying to make sure that her child support didn’t get cut by having my father take me. She probably was just keeping me around for the little itty bitty few more dollars I was worth to her in the form of that child support money.

When I was discharged from the psychiatric hospital, she made me pay back all the money that hospital stay cost her. There was no time to recuperate. There was no time or space to heal. She was not supportive.

In fact, once we got back to the house, she started literally pacing around the house dramatically having a meltdown about how they were going to put her in jail if she refused to fill my prescription they gave me for psychiatric medications.

Here I am, not two hours out of the psychiatric hospital, and having to call them back to try to calm her down. To tell her she wouldn’t go to jail if she didn’t buy the medicine.

Oh she had money for other things. I remember that was the time when she started buying silver jewelry. And going square dancing. Those were important.

But your daughter not completely losing her mind – nope, just an annoyance. Just an inconvenience. An irritation. Just an afront to your perfect choices and perfect parenting.

How dare I be so fucking ungrateful? To have any feelings! To have any thoughts! To dare to express them!! The fucking audacity!! You ungrateful twerp! You fat fucking bitch! Don’t you know?! Didn’t you get the fucking memo, you stupid bitch!?! You’re here to suck dick and keep everyone’s fragile-ass egos in check! That’s all you’re good for you whore. You stupid fat pig. Shut the FUCK up! Go know your place. Go back to your room. Spend your time looking good. Then we might throw you a bone every now and then. If you do your job. If you bend over and suck ALLLL the dicks. Just fucking take it you lazy loser bitch.

Make us look good. Never bring up anything that ever happened except the times where we get the credit. For doing something other people value. Versus actually having a real relationship with you. Yeah, that’s too much work.

Everybody’s doing it. Everybody’s the same. Who the fuck do you think you are for bucking the system?! For going against the grain?! For thinking anything worthwhile could come from this? From your stupid ass mouth. You have nothing to show for yourself. You’re a nobody. A lazy loser. A fat fucking pig. Except nobody even wants to fuck you now that you’re so goddamn big. You’re not even worth the little that was. Nobody wants you. You could go die and we’d consider it selfish of you to force us to acknowledge you even in your death.

It’s the same every day, you stupid bitch. Look around. Nothing is going to change.

Just shut your mouth, do you time, and die. Like everyone else.

Yeah, this was not the book I thought I was going to write before. Back in 2017. When I thought that all I needed to do was explain theology. In the academic sense. No, this is definitely not that book.

You have been warned. This is all the shit.

Buckle up. Or deboard.

You are forewarned.