I used to be the type of girl who loved to walk alone at night.

Who used to boldly prove she was never afraid of the dark.

I used to be the type of girl who kept her shoulders up and head high as she walked past the packs of boys that would hang outside the bars.

Who used to even dared to look back.

I used to be the type of girl who judged all the girls for what they wore.

Who used to even tell people that they were probably "asking for it."

I used to be the type of girl who would go with the flow.

Who used to never said "no" because "no" was "uncool."

But I'm not that type of girl anymore.

Now I'm the type of girl who never walks alone because she's knows what kind of monsters hide in the darkness.

Now I'm the type of girl who holds her head down and pretends not to see the way they look at me.

Now I'm the type of girl who understands that it never matters what you're wearing.

Now I'm the type of girl who always says "no" cause she realizes how scary "yes" can be.

I used to be the type of girl who thought she could never get hurt, but now I'm the type of girl who can never forget it.

He sat across the empty room, cap pulled over his head, hooding his eyes like a Sith lord, though he held a very different power than the force. All that was visible was his crooked smile and the blinking red recording light coming from his phone. It was pointed at me. As I sat on his couch the black lights hung around his room casted my body in dim glow. The room was minimally decorated, raunchy posters scattered across the walls and besides the couch and armchair that we were respectively sitting on, the apartment was empty. I ran my palms against my bare legs, spreading the sweat that had accumulated there from stress, I knew I was running out of time.

“Three minutes,” a calm voice across the room mused, and despite how I couldn’t see his eyes I knew they were baring into me.

“Why are you doing this to me? Isn’t there anything else I can do?” I gently pleaded with him, hoping that anything I could say would make a difference, but his only response was a wider smile and the unsettling knowledge of having only two minutes.

I asked again, more desperate this time. “Why are you doing this to me?”

“I told you, I’m Satan.”

We sat there in silence. I could hear my heartbeat as it reacted to the cigarette he had forced me to finish earlier. He had promised to give me the information I wanted if I could finish it, but once again I had run out of time missed my chance on his game of manipulation roulette.

“One more minute...” his statement hung in the air as I was forced to reevaluate my worth, dignity and my price. I slowly stood up and walked toward him pausing one last time to breath in the toxic air the surrounded me and to nudge a tossed beer can with my foot. The distance between us seemed endless, like a desert where each movement was the choice between life and death.

“Well?” he said, removing the hood from his head and cocking his eyebrow to remind me that the sand in my hourglass had slipped a little to far for his liking. I finished my walk and stood before him knowing what I had to do, and hating myself for getting pushed this far.

I got on my knees and watched as the blinking recording light flicked on then off. 50 shades of grey? more like 50 shades of Hell...

When I was little my favorite color was purple. I loved purple so much that when I was in third grade all I wore was purple, purple shirts, purple pants, purple sweaters, and purple shoes. But these kids kept making fun of me for loving purple so much; to them it didn’t make sense. They lived in a kaleidoscopic reality when I was satisfied being monochromatic. So I decided that I would try to make me favorite color blue. I bought blue clothes, wrote with blue, number-two, sparkly pencils, and even painted my room Tiffany Blue at my father’s house. No matter what though, I just kept coming back to purple. As much as I desperately tried to love blue, purple was just my color, and I couldn’t help it.

That’s what loving Anthony was like.

Even when tried to move on, even when I attempted to get away, even when he broke my heart, I just kept coming back. Anthony was just my color.

We met at a party, as all teenage romances do, and it wasn’t how much that we hit it off, it was how much that we didn’t that intrigued me.

“You talk a lot,” was one of the first things I told him.

“Then don’t listen,” was one of the first things he told me back.

After exchanging phone numbers, our mutual annoyance with one another blossomed and I found myself texting him constantly throughout my school day. We went to different schools and confiding in him about all of my crappy classmates and incompetent teachers seemed like a novel way to create a human diary. He became my lifeboat, I would pour into him whatever the world threw my way and he would keep me afloat. I began telling him all my secrets, letting him shine light into the deep, cavernous walls I had built around my calloused, child-of-divorce heart. But as much as I told him, he told me little in return. His whole life revolved around the breakup of him and his ex, who he refused to name. The more I let him in, the more he shut down regarding his past, and the more I realized I loved him, the more I began to worry about what he was keeping from me.

Anthony and I never dated. We never even kissed. But I watched as our emotional reliance on one another orbit around like two unsteady planets, one gravitational pull away from a crash.

“What are you guys talking about?” Anthony and our friend were giggling as I returned from the coffee shop bathroom.

She began waggling her finger at me, “Anthony finally told me who his ex was, I can’t believe you never said anything!”

“That’s because I don’t know who it is.”

Gasping, she retorted, “Has he not told you?”

“I asked him not to…” My voice got quieter as her octaves jumped with each exclamatory statement. Was I crazy because I trusted him enough not to ask who his ex was? I had always assumed he would tell me when he was ready. Was this missing piece of the puzzle something that would change things? I hadn’t really thought so until now.

“Want me to tell you?” She was back at it.

“No, he will tell me when he’s ready.” I looked to Anthony for support. He shook his head like the idea that his ex was a big deal was something we hadn’t spent three months perseverating on.

“It’s ok, it’s no big deal.”

I felt powerless as our friend and him laughed at my knowledge gap and helpless and she whispered into my ear the name “John. His ex is John.”

I shutdown. In that moment I wanted to like any other person except Anthony, I wanted to love any other color except purple. I felt duped, like the whole reality we had created together was a lie. On the ride home he kept turning to me sheepishly, as if his lopsided grin would be all the apology I needed for him being attracted to men and never saying anything. I had known that he didn’t feel the same way I felt about him, but I had always assumed that it was because I wasn’t pretty enough, not because I wasn’t his type entirely.

“You should have told me.”

“You never asked!”

“How was I supposed to know that it was going to be a dude?!”

“Why does it matter?”

“Well I guess it doesn’t now.”

We stayed friends, but the uncomfortable tension of knowing that you were in love with someone, who after we had this talk, decided to come out as gay persisted. I began trying to control him, trying to change him, hoping that one day he would turn around and realize that maybe there was more to a relationship than just physical attraction.

We became entangled in one another, he loved me as a friend, a best friend even at this point, but I wanted more and I refused to settle. We rode a roller coaster with unstable ups and downs, littered with screaming matches and “friend breaks” where we would take a week to cool off. I became clingy and jealous; he became manipulative and cruel, knowing exactly where to shoot his poisonous arrows that would render me speechless.

“I love you,” was one of the last things I said to him.

“I know,” was one of the last things he said back.

At some point I realized he was holding me back. But I didn’t mind, it was comfortable, safe, purple. I was afraid of treading the water alone, and even though we had tried to “stop being friends” I always came crawling back hoping that each time maybe it would be different.

I surprised myself when I was the one who decided to end things for the final time. Words just started pouring out of me, disappointment, bitterness, and heartbreak, all of the hurt I had kept relatively bottled shot out like a cannon of emotion I didn’t want to stop. He understood, and to my ultimate regret he didn’t fight for me either, because why would you fight for someone who’s just your friend?

Sometimes we still talk, but it’s not the same, not because the bridge is too burnt to walk over but because I know what will happen if I walk back. I stopped feeling like I’m drowning and found other swimmers who encourage me to reach the finish line in ways he never could. I learned to step back and appreciate all of the colors of the rainbow, even if purple is still my favorite.

Anthony was always my color, maybe just not the right shade.

Like a galaxy of longing you were endless, and among your stars I was lost.

Wandering, pushing past the cosmic dust that cluttered your brain,

lurid colors strung between dim memories.

As your astronaut,

I could only explore so long before I ran out of air.

I could only touch you so long before I was hit by another one of your

famous asteroids.

It was always a risk to reach out

grasping at the hidden film beneath your glimmering exterior.

You were strong

and the blank and black reaches of the innermost crest that was your soul,

you kept under thick protection,

like a planetary exoskeleton.

I wanted you

I needed you

but among the vast wasteland you pretended was your personality,

I was entangled in your vivid rays.

One time my pastor told me, “Happiness comes from the earth, but Joy comes from God,” so I guess if I could describe Happiness in one word, it would be Joy. The Joy of knowing everything I’m doing comes from a place of faith. And I know that sounds like an overly religious answer, but at the same time, if I place my identity in my faith, why shouldn’t that be the source of my ultimate happiness. I find my fulfillment in the Joy of knowing that I’m loved by God and from that springs everything else in my life.

Happiness is circumstantial, but Joy is permanent.

I remember the way her lips tasted, and I remember the way that stupid boy pointed his finger at me when he dared me to kiss her. It was direct, no guts, no glory. I remember her tasting the exact same way a boy tasted but at the same time due to the fact that at my entire soul was brimming with finally understanding what fireworks felt like, completely, different. I remember pulling away and all at once feeling completely and utterly alone. It was a party trick, the oldest in the book. For me it wasn’t just a trick, like pulling a rabbit out of a hat, it was magic. And magic is something powerful, like when Harry Potter’s wand chose him and his hair flew back and all at once everything felt real and right. Unfortunately magic can also be dangerous, and when placed in the wrong hands it can divide us all, between the light and the dark, and between love and lost. But as I mentioned earlier, no guts, no glory, and sometimes, you just might have to dance in the darkness to realize the value of the light.

Telling my pastor I was bisexual was the scariest thing I have ever done, even scarier than going to college all the way in Iowa when I grew up in Virginia. I guess I was worried that I would get excommunicated or something drastic. I think a lot of times we hear about how judgmental Christians can be and I was no exception. I had newly discovered my faith after attending a college ministry and had not only fallen in love with the community, but with Jesus. Christianity was so new and sparkly to me, but at the same time completely overwhelming. I had no idea what I was doing, and doubted if I even deserved to be part of this wonderful slice of my Midwest campus. Most of this doubt culminated into the shame I felt surrounding my sexuality. I had always felt ashamed of my sexuality but around this group of people I looked up to, my disgust in myself grew into a ball of self-loathing and hatred.

We sat at Noodles & Company as I cried into my Pad-Thai and confessed my horrendous sin to her. I blabbered about how I knew God would disapprove even though I felt like I couldn’t stop how I felt about girls and begged her not to stop being my friend.

Her first response to me was, “I’ll always love you, no matter what.”

Now remember, Christianity was new to me, and so was my pastor. Her immediate acceptance of me was a blessing I never imagined, and a revelation to someone who had always been afraid that loving Jesus might mean she couldn’t love anyone else. She left me with this simple truth, and as I’ve grown in my faith, her statement has allowed me to separate the reality from where warped magic may have blurred the lines.

“Your sexuality doesn’t define your identity. Your identity should define yourself, and you are so much more than just your sexuality.”

Everything I do, I do with God in mind. For me, it was never about whether I could eventually marry or whether I had to be “freed” from my sin, it’s always been about my relationship with God. I’ve learned that my sexuality isn’t going to make or break my faith, and some answers are just bigger than our earthly existence. With the current social climate surrounding faith and sexuality, it’s hard to watch as people divide between the idea that who you love defines who you can be loved by. I never would have expected to be standing on my imaginary soapbox, attempting to explain how faith is supposed to bring people together, and not tear them apart. I know that I am loved no matter what, and ultimately, only God will be able to decide what is truly considered light or dark. Throughout my journey of faith, I’ve learned that we all have the capacity to wield magic, but it up to us to decide how to use it.