I wrote this poem in the wake of spiritual abuse that left me shattered in ways I couldn’t see right away—and then couldn’t unsee. For a long time, I told myself I was okay. I wanted to be okay. I tried to act like I was okay. But I wasn’t. I was so deeply destroyed I could no longer do simple things I used to take for granted. Grocery shopping felt terrifying. Driving through town filled me with dread in case someone from that place might see me. I’d cry without warning, sometimes every single day. The memories played like an endless reel in my mind. And then came the dreams—of my teammates, of those leaders, of all the things that broke me.

I wasn’t just dealing with hurt feelings. I was dealing with trauma. PTSD. Something that affects the brain in the same way a physical injury can affect the body. It was like my nervous system had been hijacked, like I was constantly in survival mode. Exhausted. Hyperaware. Hollow.

So many Christians offered well-meaning but painfully hollow advice: forgive, move on, give it to God. But it wasn’t about unforgiveness. It wasn’t about effort. It wasn’t a lack of godliness. It was the very real, life-wrecking impact of spiritual abuse. I needed compassion. What I got was silence, dismissal, and pressure to “get over it.”

This poem is about that. About the years of my life that felt stolen. About the sleep I lost. The joy I lost. The ability to live freely, confidently, and unafraid. It’s about the cost of abuse in the name of religion. It’s about how long I lived in the wreckage, just trying to breathe again. I can’t get those days back. But I can count them. And I can name the truth of what happened.

This is me doing that.