Pittsburgh

A couple nights ago, I was scrolling down my Facebook feed, as per usual, when I saw a girl I had met a few times post a statement that I had known true to my heart since the first day that I moved to this city:

"Sometimes I feel like I'm in a relationship with Pittsburgh."

Sometimes I look outside and want to hate this city so much because it's too damn cold, or windy, or rainy, and forgodssakewhereisthesundoesitevercomeoutdoesitevenexisthereomgomgomg ok. (I'm done. sorry.)

Sometimes I look at the shamble ridden infrastructures of South Oakland and feel disgusted that half of these places, many of which are falling apart in their own ways, are still deemed livable to college students and the occasional older couple.

There are many days that I have woken up, wanting to give up, feeling not an ounce of motivation boiling in my blood, feeling myself surrender to the grey weather and coldness around me.

Oftentimes I get really frustrated that I can't pick up my surf board and drive out to the beach, or sit on the lifeguard stand at Hobe Sound Beach and write, or think, or simply cry when I couldn't put words to paper over what I have felt.

There have been many times where I have forgotten what warmth feels like, what it felt like to have the warmth of the sun lick its rays against my shoulders as they continuously brown into a deep tan.

There are days when the PAT buses are running so slowly (I'm looking at you, Sunday schedule) and all I want to do is dig the heel of my boots into the ground until my utter frustration simply vanishes, although it never quite seems to until I finally arrive at my final destination and exit the bus.

This is the city that has destroyed me in so many ways. It stripped me bare and broke me. It's made me lash out, act crazy, be a bitch, be selfish and a bad person.

Yet, that doesn't make up for the amount of times that Pittsburgh has actually saved me. For every bite of destruction it gave me, for every awful incident that has been thrown my way, Pittsburgh and it's daunting skyline have blessed me more than I could ever hope in the three years that I've been here, amidst all the frustrations and anger I shed towards it sometimes.

Pittsburgh gave me an amazing group of girlfriends my freshman year. Pittsburgh gave me a few wonderful guys who came in and out to teach me how to guard my light, how to protect myself, but also how to let myself love others. Pittsburgh gave me Kenny, and Alex, and Megan, and Josh, and Noelle and Nikki and Katherine and so many other beautiful people that I am continuously thankful for. You know, sometimes you hate to acknowledge how much love surrounds you, and maybe that's how it needs to be, because we'd actually destroy ourselves from feeling the exuberant amounts of love that we show towards others and that others show towards us. It's why we need to feel numb, indifferent sometimes. Yet while our hearts may be numb to feeling, we should never let our minds stop ourselves from remembering the amazing things the loved ones in our lives have done for us. This city has torn me away from so many wonderful people, yet in return has also given me an abundance of beautiful souls that seem to love me amidst my brokenness despite the fact that I'm really awful and irresponsible and have a super fiery temper and make stupid decisions sometimes.

Pittsburgh gave me a level of strength that I never recognized I had within myself, where I have located some of my darkest shadows, where they have followed me around and tried with every fiber of their existence to engulf me in whatever dark places they wanted to take me to and keep me there. Pittsburgh has let me explore myself, to re-create myself from the extremely shy-girl shell I had put myself in high school because I was so scared of letting people get to really know me. It's broken me, sure, and there are so many days when I don't think I'm smart or strong or pretty enough to do certain things. I discovered I can be that crazy emotional person, and I was at a couple of low points. But in a way, there are more days when I feel like Charlie does in that scene from The Perks of Being a Wallflower where him, Sam, and Patrick are driving through the Fort Pitt Tunnel and he is in the back of Patrick's pickup truck, holding on for dear life while Patrick is driving through the tunnel, yet completely lets go and simply lets himself soak in Pittsburgh and it's skyline once he lays eyes on it. He is strong, he feels beautiful, he feels invincible as they are flying across the bridge to downtown. Pittsburgh and the people that come along with it gave him an energy that made him believe in himself in that moment, as I have found people that have helped me many a time believe in myself.

Whenever I feel frustrated at this city, whenever I am at my wit's end with this place, I always find myself putting on my Asics and running. I run despite the chilliness, despite the rain, despite the heat when it does actually feel like summertime. I run regardless of how depressed I may feel or frustrated or angry. I run to the top of Flagstaff Hill in Schenley Park every time. It has become my new lifeguard post from Hobe Sound Beach, my thinking spot. For those of you who have been there, you know. For those who have not, I encourage you to walk up on a clear night, sit, maybe take a good book, and gape at the almost idyllic painting that's drawn right before you, especially at sunset. I reach the top, turn around, sit, and then I'm reminded of who my first love ever was, why I fell in love with her, and why I will always love her despite my moods, my quips about the awful weather and so many parts of her existence. I think the reason why I love this city so much is because she's almost, if not more, broken than I am. Down to the crumbling buildings, to the broken souls I pass on the streets of Oakland every day, to every homeless man and woman that has wandered through Oakland begging for a way of support to keep them alive, to the drunkards stumbling out of the bars at 2 am on East Carson Street, to the Lululemon-clad, small dog-wielding women in Shadyside who always seem to have a yoga mat on them and be on some new juicing diet. Everything about this city is broken or borderline questionable it's it own ways, factioned sometimes even by it's many neighborhoods, but amidst it's brokenness I find only pure beauty and hope in the most strange situations sometimes. I see a city that has fallen down and rebuilt itself so many times, from our sports teams to our public transportation system to our nightlife.

We break, we heal, and we rise again.

This is Pittsburgh. This is our city. This is my home.

8/22/12

(Disclaimer: I was never planning on fully writing a public blog about this, especially on this topic because I still feel as though to this day there are open wounds over it, and for me, I really hate writing on topics that have traumatized me that I don’t fully have closure on. I tried doing as much research as possible to make sure I was taking as valid as a stance as I could on this issue, and I know this blog is probably going to anger some, but I ask you not to read this with judgment. This is first and foremost for the girls and guys that have been through this too. It is taking a lot of me to post this, and honestly I don’t have the time to listen to critics when I’m emotionally pouring myself out through writing in this way. This is extremely personal for me, and I feel honestly terrified opening myself up this blatantly. I still don’t know a lot about this topic, as it is extremely sensitive and may carry different meaning to people who I don’t know. We all already are shown enough judgment in this world. All I ask is that you read with an open mind and an open heart.)

I don’t normally remember dates with the exception of birthdays and holidays, but I remember August 22nd, 2012. It will forever be engrained in my memory.

August 22nd, 2012 was the day that I was sexually assaulted.

Before this day, I had been very naïve and trusting of people; usually would walk home by myself all the way from Oakland to Shadyside without thinking anything of it, would be okay with passing out at a guy’s house if I knew him relatively well. Some more unknowledgeable people would say I was asking for it to happen to me. I was extremely lucky before August 22nd, because before then I really never had to worry about distrusting people. Usually I guess freshman year of college is supposed to be that time that you learn some street smarts, learn to not be stupid when it comes to people you don’t already know super well, especially when at parties. Yet, I had been dating someone most of my freshman year. I didn’t have to worry about being protective of myself, because he was in a fraternity and I spent most of my time at his fraternity parties instead of encountering new parties, new people, unknown faces. His brothers were polite and cordial to me while we were dating and even after, and I know would’ve never attempted something that awful towards me. Even after I had stopped hanging out there, I by good chance had gone to a CMU fraternity that one of my friends had known one of the brothers at and was once again, extremely fortunate to meet a group of nice guys that would drive me home if I was drunk or ended up missing the last bus and really took the time to make sure I was doing okay. I ended up spending the rest of my freshman year hanging out around them. Like I said, I was lucky. I was naïve. I wasn’t exactly dripping in innocence, but I really didn’t know my way around college because I never had had a chance to experience it all by myself before my sophomore year, before August 22nd.

Evil loves innocence. Evil loves naiveté. Evil loves both those things almost as much as it loves preying on it.

So when I got an invitation to a party that night from a guy I had met at one of my new friend’s houses, I really didn’t give much thought to it other than, “Oh, that sounds like fun!” because he clearly knew all of the new guy friends that I had made that seemed pretty trustworthy, and they were all involved in the same organization. Even if he kind of was an asshole and a little creepy, I, like I did with most people back then, gave him the benefit of the doubt. Especially because I really wanted to make new guy friends, since I was at an all girl’s school and never really got to beforehand. I wasn’t attracted to him at all, and was not intending for anything to ever happen with him. Since it was a Wednesday night, though, and only one of my other friends was willing to come out with me and it was already late, I told myself I would only take half-shots and would watch how much I was drinking because I wanted to make sure I could get a Port Authority bus home. I could handle my liquor decently well, and from drinking freshman year and having a bad blackout experience, could tell what my limit was. I told myself five half shots, nothing more, or three beers if there was any there.

I already should’ve been alert the second I got there. I was told I was coming to a huge party. There were only four people there. It was dead. We immediately were taken up to a bedroom. Red flag number two, although that was not processing in my mind at the time. I should’ve paid more attention to the fact that the pour filter was missing off of the bottle of liquor while I was drinking.

No matter how many warning signs I could’ve pointed out starting at the beginning of that evening, though, and no matter how intoxicated I was, that still did not give him the right to touch me. It took me over a year to realize that.

One half shot, two, three, four. Okay, I was good for a little bit. However, I started feeling really off all of a sudden. Weird. It wasn’t even so much that the room was spinning like it normally would when I was drunk. I was starting to see in glimpses. I sat down on the bed since it was close by and next thing I knew, I was lying down and my friend that came with me was trying to get me to get up so we could go and catch a bus. I tried to lift my arms to get up and started panicking because I couldn’t move a single part of my body. I tried lifting my arm, and it felt like a heavy weight. I couldn’t get it up off of the bed, let alone lift myself up and start walking around. My vision was blacking in and out, and all I remember was mumbling to her “I’ll be okay.” Speaking was a struggle, I could barely let words escape my lips, and I just figured I would fall asleep and wake up the next morning and leave, like I had once or twice beforehand when I couldn’t catch a bus home and had to stay at my friends houses. They never tried anything, so I was thinking the same thing would happen here.

I was so wrong. That night, evil met my life once again. And it met me to harm me.

I don’t remember much else from that point on except for in glimpses. I kept telling him, with whatever strength I could muster to speak at that point, to stop, that this wasn’t who I was to do something like this, and “no, please” repeatedly. The last thing I remember is him saying, “I just want to make you feel good!” and I said, “No.”

By the time I woke up, I was extremely confused and in so much pain.

Let me tell you, waking up one morning and not knowing whether you were just raped or not is one of the most terrifying feelings in the world. I would never wish it upon someone else.

I remember waking up with barely any recollection of the night before except for what I just shared. The guy turned over and looked at me and smirked. I immediately got up and started dressing myself so I could get out of there as quickly as possible. “Why don’t you stay? I didn’t even get what I wanted last night”, the guy said as he continued to smirk at me. At that moment, I felt a completely new wave of disgust as I had never felt before come over me. I said goodbye, and ran out of that house as quickly as I could.

I ended up walking home because no PAT buses were coming. I was in a way happy that it was so early in the morning, because it meant no cars were out if any, no one could see me amidst my shame and anger and didn’t have to watch me doubling over from crying so hard. I probably had to stop at least five or six times, sink down to the ground and let myself really let the tears flow. I hated him. I didn’t know what I hated him for more, though. For violating me or for making me so publicly vulnerable.

As soon as I got back to my apartment at school, after I showered, I sat in the tiny hallway of my apartment, I sat on the floor of my room, both in the same position of hugging my legs to my chest as if to cocoon myself off from the rest of the world, and I cried. I thought showering was just going to make the shame and guilt I felt drip off of my body, but it never did. I still felt so unbelievably broken, and incredibly numb. My roommates asked me what was wrong, and I told them what had happened. One of them started screaming at me, calling me an idiot for letting myself get into that kind of a situation, that I was too naïve for my own good. It was the last thing I needed to hear at the time, and she eventually calmed down. I know she freaked out because she was frustrated and because she, to an extent, cared. Still, I feel like it was her yelling at me that really made me feel like what had happened was just me being overdramatic and stupid, and that I just would have to move on like normal. She was what made it so hard to tell my parents, because I was scared of getting the same reaction. The other one was calmer about it and told me I needed to call the police and do a rape kit immediately. Eventually, they both agreed. I resisted immediately with phrases like “It was my fault...” “I shouldn’t have done this....” “I had been drinking....” “It really wasn’t a big deal...” even though I knew it was a lot worse than I was making it out to be. I just thought if I shut myself out to what happened, it would eventually go away. I didn’t want to feel anything anymore.

Even after having an ambulance take me to the hospital, having needles prodded in me and a rape kit examination done that was almost as violating as the actual event itself that preceded it, I still refused to deal with and continue to acknowledge the fact that I had been assaulted. I think the last thing I was genuinely upset about was that I was taking up a hospital bed when there were people dying in the room next to me. I felt guilty. I was occupying a hospital room, making all these doctors and nurses poke at and examine my body, having two police officers question me when they could’ve been taking care of obliterating some crime that was way more important, all because I had thought I had maybe been raped. I went on with life like normal, even though there were freak-outs here and there, especially when I was drunk, that made people realize I was far from okay. My favorite dress and my clothes and my DNA were all compartmentalized in a rape kit sitting to rot away in a police station, and it bothered me, but I never did anything about it. I was either extremely emotional in flashes of anger and sadness or felt extremely numb. I was quite literally going crazy. My roommate would be yelling at me in anger over something, and I would just look at her blankly, wondering why I couldn’t process a reaction to it. After those things happened, I finally had admitted what had happened to me, although I never actually dealt with it. And even then, I wasn’t honest to everyone over it...which was okay, to an extent. Not everybody needs to know my business.

What really bothered me the most was that a detective and two police officers stopped by my apartment to take a statement and were interested in furthering on the investigation upon finding out that there was stuff in my system that night that wasn’t supposed to be there, which would explain why I felt completely paralyzed for a good while and was feeling so off. I hesitate to say that to people; because I do not want people thinking that it was the person who assaulted me who gave me that. There were other people there too. That, however, does not excuse my assaulter from touching me when I said, “no.”

A detective took interest in my case. Yet, not wanting to deal with it, I threw his card away, and I never called him back. I kept somehow putting the blame back on myself.

I never called him back. I didn’t even want to help myself it seemed like. That still haunts me to this day, and even though I have the option to have my kit brought out, I don’t think I’d ever want to for personal reasons. I could never wear that dress again without it bringing up painful memories.

I think the first moment of reality that really made me start finally dealing with what happened, besides me instigating fights with all these kinds of people when I was drunk that I normally would never snap so badly at and having to apologize for it and them still hating me and thinking I was crazy, was having finally been forced to tell my family what happened.

I still remember when my mom called me and asked me why she had gotten a large hospital bill for an ambulance. I lied and told her I thought I had had appendicitis--anything to keep them from knowing the truth. She had called UPMC and asked why she had received this bill and what it was for. The lady on the phone told my mom, “You really need to talk to your daughter.”

I sat in the student lounge of my apartment tower that night, and finally told my mom and dad every detail of what had happened, from going to the party, having my clothes taken off, the hospital, all of it. It was the first time my parents have all conference called me all at once, and I was sobbing while I was telling them everything, completely broken down from lying to them. I could hear them sobbing from their respective lines of the phone as well. I had never heard my Dad cry before that day. It broke my heart even more, knowing that I broke their heart. As soon as I got off the phone with them, my sister texted me asking if everything okay, because all she could see was my mom sitting on our back porch, sobbing and looking out at the lake in our backyard. This kid managed to not only break me, but also my family.

The next months were back on a winding road of self-hatred. I kept thinking I was stupid for letting happen what happened that one night. That’s what evil wants, as I’ve learned. It wants to make you blame yourself and to make you feel like a fool for having trusted someone else. And it’s not even as though this guy is evil. It does not mean he is underserving of being forgiven or loved, it just means he needs to recognize that what he did was not okay. He was acting along with tendencies of evil strewn into his intentions. I thought people didn’t want to date me and they only wanted to have sex with me, so that’s what I did. Yet, I was still freaked out about having people touch me at all and would always end up leaving right away, or just end up completely cutting off the people I would talk to from my life because I didn’t know how to deal with my feelings, if I really even had any at this point. My guy friends I don’t think understand this sometimes, but I still really get anxious and upset when they do something as simple as lay their head on my lap, or put their arm around my waist, or hold my hand. I hate sharing a bed with others (there are a few exceptions to this) because any physical contact freaks me out. If I was talking to a guy, I made him go over leaps and bounds for me to make sure I could trust him, even if it was just to let him in as a best friend. I was beyond scared of getting hurt even more, so I always made sure I had the upper hand when it came to talking to people. I never cried in public at this point anymore, and I tried more than anything to not show emotion. I really was hurting, there was a lot of inner battle with myself and there continues to be even if I don’t show it.

I started going to counseling at my family and professor who I had opened up to’s insistence, and I can gladly say I’m feeling better and have been for a while now. I’m always going to be healing, though. While at the Jubilee Conference this past weekend, speaker Dave Allender, a counselor and victim of abuse himself, tackled the question of how long does it take to ruin a child/person’s innocence. I spent a good amount of both of his presentations choking down sobs that were fighting to come out. He finally said to me the things I had been waiting to hear for over a year now, even if I didn’t know what I needed to hear beforehand. It was the amount of finality and definite closure I needed to start writing on this topic. He told us a heartbreaking story of a client who, after 29 years, still has to see him because of one incident where her grandfather put a hand on her breast for a minute. That is not what causes all of her problems and pain, but it is a strong root for it, as he told us. It only takes seconds to ruin someone’s life like that. Seconds. Some people lose their souls, their lives, and their hearts to evil over a matter of something that happened years ago to them, for only a few seconds, and it’s all because of this idea that if we scream, no one will hear us. If we don’t, all of a sudden the abuse perpetrated on us is now our fault. You kind of get a sense of “Why bother?” after a while, and it’s this cynicism of “Yeah, I was abused,” and being so nonchalant about it that really makes going through it so much worse nowadays. We don’t need to downplay what has happened to us or become detached from the situation altogether. It’s not supposed to be like that.

Dan Allender continued by saying that the numbness and the ambivalence people like me have shown towards dealing with being assaulted was a problem with the hookup culture and with our generation nowadays—we seem to shy away from emotion, make it off to the world that the less you care, the stronger you are. We can’t name our abuse and we instead use filler words to lessen its impact or what it actually was. This quote from American Horror Story, of all shows, really sums it up after one of the characters also was sexually assaulted.

            “I am a millennial. Generation Y; born between the birth of AIDS and 9/11, give or take. They call us the global generation. We are known for our entitlement and narcissism. Some say its because we’re the first generation where every kid gets a trophy just for showing up. Others think it’s because social media allows us to post when we fart or have a sandwich for the entire world to see. But it seems our one defining trait is a numbness to the world. An indifference to suffering.

.... We think that pain is the worst feeling. It isn’t. How could anything be worse than this eternal silence inside of me?”

I felt that for months, and I still feel that way sometimes. However, as Dan pointed out, when Jesus first died on the cross, death wasn’t over for him, if you believe in Christianity. Why would we think that once assault happens, it’s just over for us? If anything, the more we ignore it, the deeper the scars grow. The more we hurt. The worse it gets. At a couple points when I was opening up to people they told me to stop talking about it, to not continue my story, either because it was hurting them so much to hear it or they were still angry at me for the way I was acting because of it. That’s not okay though. This is something that does need to get talked about until we stop hurting each other like this. It happens and we should never shove off something bad that happened to someone, no matter how angry you might be at that person or how badly you want to judge him or her. If someone takes the time to open up to you about something that they have a hard time talking to him or her, be there. Listen. Let them finish their story or what they want to tell you of it. Don’t be naïve to assume some people have been hurt while others haven’t. Be there for them, and love them. They chose to lean on you for a reason.

I may be broken, but I am tired of being weak. I was told to have the courage to name my story. Well, here is a big part of it. My name is Alexia and I was assaulted. I was told yesterday while at this conference that it was still okay to be a Christian despite this thing that happened to me, because I can’t know God without knowing darkness. “If you step into His heart, you will find his war with darkness.” Since darkness has found me, since evil has beaten me down, I am now at war with it too, and always will be. Once it finds you, once it finds a way to creep into your existence and try to separate your heart from your soul, it will never leave, so we always have to keep fighting it off. As another speaker at Jubilee, Bethany Hoang said, “There is no darkness that can overcome me, and even the gates of Hell don’t stand a chance.”

One of Dave’s finishing lines was, “Don’t let evil deprive your heart of tenderness because you’ve come to say, ‘whatever’ about something that happened to you.” Well, don’t. He’s right. How you address your heartache is going to show how you will continue to act towards others in the future. Don’t ever give pain that kind of satisfaction, and don’t let it own you. Once something bad happens to you, every day is going to be a battle from that day forward. Wake up and play. He continued to say, “The best way to play is to hate evil.” Carry an invisible sword with you wherever you go, protect your heart and your existence, but don’t let it harden, and tell yourself that you are no longer afraid of your own shame. What happened to you is not your fault; don’t let it take ownership of you.

I will not let my heart be deprived. I will not let evil own me. I decided to start being strong again, but not in the cold, closed off, mean sense. I decided to be strong by learning to open myself back up to people again. I will try to keep myself safe, but to also start fighting for the other people who cannot yet fight for themselves (it’s okay, it takes a while sometimes, it took me almost two years).

At the end of the day, you embody a lot more strength than you know. Use it. Embody it. Don’t let someone else’s hurt destroy you. You are better than that.

We are better than that. 

Being a Christian

(Disclaimer: This is not meant to try to convert you to Christianity if you do not believe in it. I'm sorry if you feel it comes off that way, but I am merely writing how I feel. I respect other people's opinions and religious beliefs, or lack thereof. I still love you guys even though we may believe in different things!) 

Are you a Christian?

I’m a Christian.

I am stubborn, sometimes extremely cruel.

I am selfish.

I am a little bit of a basket case.

Sometimes, I am a b*tch.

I am weird to many.

I am loved by a few.

Many dislike me.

I am different.

Lots of people don’t know where to begin to put words to my personality.

But let’s start with one:

I am,

In fact,

A Christian.

It took me a long time to admit that...first to myself, then to others especially. Sometimes I do things that don’t seem like something that my idea of “a normal Christian girl” would do. I smack myself in the head and I feel embarrassed for calling myself God’s daughter many a time when I can act so stupid. Maybe it’s because when I was growing up, I thought, kind of like most people’s personalities, that you could just construe ten words together to describe a person or certain type of person. We all were fit into these subcategories and had to stay there for the rest of our lives, because that was what defined us. And my definition of “Christian” was nowhere near what I was like after going through high school. It was all about being defined to me while growing up, and “Christian” was a word I had stopped using in the same sentence as my name a while ago. Defining who I was felt like it was the only truly stable thing for me in an otherwise very unstable childhood. I wanted a definition put to the name of Alexia Nicole Heathcock when I could never seem to find one. Elementary, middle school, and high school, some of the kids didn’t have such nice words to put next to that name—and that’s okay, they weren’t the type of people that were meant to understand me or love me. There were much better fit people coming along down the road for that, and still are. But then, what does define me as a person...as a Christian?

My old idea, my definition of a typical Christian girl was what I had grown up with: you go to church every Sunday morning in a cute poufy dress, usually in some pastel color and would try to look nice, even though in reality you were totally scratching at the stupid stockings your mom made you wear to dress up your outfit more. You’d squirm in your seat in church and pretend you were listening when really you were just waiting for Communion in hopes that your mom would let you leave early, or at least Sunday School so you could split off with other people your age and finally get to the bottom of what the heck was going on in the sermon the pastor was giving. As you grew up, you’d learn to come into your own faith more and start appreciating the faith that your parents brought you up on in a bigger way. Maybe the dresses wouldn’t be so poufy or the bows in your hair so big, but the magnanimous smile and confidence in God would be. You’d go on all the church mission trips. You’d never get drunk or do drugs, and refrain from cussing or premarital sex. You’d never get wasted at those high school parties, or lose your virginity on prom night, or have your heart completely broken, because you waited until marriage. Frat parties in college weren’t a time for you to dance on the bar. You were too cautious maybe, too confident perhaps in your mind to do such a thing. You knew better. It wasn’t judgment to you, watching the other girls doing it. You just thought you had better standards because you knew God. Your husband would be just as perfectly Christian-like as you were because you both met through church or volunteering or some way that God brought you together, and then you both would live happily ever after with two Christian kids. Let’s not even get started on all your friends, too. Well, they’d be just as buttoned-up and Christian like as you all, of course.

That’s not how it all works out for us, though. I had those foundations laid at my feet in my youth, but little did I know at the time they were extremely broken. My mom was in fact not as strong in her faith as she had led on. My dad wasn’t either. Growing up means you kind of have to face the fact that your parents really are far from perfect, and so are you, and there isn’t a magic potion you take before you become a parent to make you look perfect to your children forever, or even your friends and family. The glass always shatters. As I got older, religion just seemed to diminish in my life as things started to go wrong and I had a huge dose of growing up injected in me. It wasn’t important anymore, I didn’t need it, didn’t have time for it, blah blah--the usual excuses. I’ve done some things before that are un-Christian-like and I just wasn’t ready to be that person who lived completely straight-edged to what I was used to. I thought religion was something my mother hid behind to disguise her cowardice, what I thought a lot of people used to hide just how broken they really were. It was a veil to cover their shattered pieces. It wasn’t real to me. If my parents broke their promise to me when they said they were going to be “together forever”, then it felt like everything else they told me was a lie too, including my faith. As the years went on, I would maybe say a prayer here and there, but it wasn’t like I opened a Bible or really attended any church sermons. I never spoke with the confidence that God was real; I was all “Yeah, HEY YOU, if you ACTUALLY exist could you maybe help me with...” and usually it was stupid stuff, like me asking God for an A on a chem test and to save me from accidentally setting my hair on fire from the Bunsen burner in chemistry lab (as you can tell, tenth grade was not a great year for me in the sciences.) I’m sure He got a few laughs out of my...interesting prayer requests over the years, mainly because He was sitting back and looking at me saying, “You have no idea how much your life is going to turn around.” 

I came to college though, wide-eyed, bushy-tailed and all ready for the exciting adventures that awaited me in Pittsburgh, which was a complete change of pace from my small town in Florida. Most of my friends were very much cut from the same cloth there, all preppy, all nice with decent upbringings. I was not even close to expecting what actually did happen to me. When I first came to school, I’m not going to lie—church was not the first thing on my mind. I was looking for the closest fraternity party that served the best beer, not the closest church. I was completely Kristen Wiig in that scene in Bridesmaids where all the girls are on the plane to go to Vegas, and Kristen Wiig character's already drunk and comes up to her friends, sunglasses on (indoors) and goes, "I'M REEAAAADYYYY! TO PAAAAAAAAARRRRRRTAAAAAAAYYY!" (yes, that reference was necessary.)  God I’m pretty sure just laughed at me and said “Ok Alex, you can try to run from my influence as much as possible but I’m still going to find ways to be there in your life.”

Many people think that angels are God’s servants, but they are only up in Heaven and have wings and wear white cloth and glow luminously. I disagree. I think angels walk on Earth with us, and they are apart of our lives every day. I think angels are the people in your life who remind you when things seem to be going wrong that things may not be working out right now, but God is always working in your life. They are the people who make you see the beauty in every day. Some angels have darkness within them, and they see it, but sometimes they don't know how to get rid of it. They show both sides to you and sometimes end up leaving you completely mind boggled as to what you're supposed to do with the love they give you. Angels come in all different shapes and forms, and maybe they even wear black. I’ve had many angels come in and out of my life, and am so thankful for all of them. I can even recall as early as my first week of freshman year meeting some of these friends, these angels. As you can see, God took no time hesitating putting His plan to work in me as soon as I moved away from home. I always have them to thank for helping me take the first steps back to believing in something again, and freshman year was what really made the wheels start turning.

One night that year, I was having a borderline panic attack second semester and didn’t know what to do with myself. Nothing was working out for me...figuring out a major, my grades were awful, I was going out too much and wasn’t balancing my academic work, and just felt like my existence was about to become a pile of shattered pieces of myself (I did not know at the time of course that it was only going to get worse sophomore year. I’m so silly.)  On top of that, this may seem really stupid and trivial, but my roommate and I were absolutely convinced our room was haunted and we were scared shitless. This one kid looked at me though that night, so beyond broken himself but for different reasons, and said only one word that carried heavy meaning with me: “Pray.” I just was sitting there like....”What?! Is it really that simple?”  He most likely doesn’t even remember saying that to me, but it resonated with me. I thought back to when I was younger and the sense of humility I’d feel from praying, even if it didn’t seem like my prayers were always answered in the way I wanted them to be. That night, I prayed for the first time in a long time. I mean, I really prayed. I remember saying “God, I know I did that whole thing where I accepted you into my heart a long time ago. But, I haven’t been acting like it recently. If you’re there, can you come back to me and forgive me for all the mess-ups and the wrongdoings? Even if those mess ups and wrongdoings keep happening?” That night, I heard God speak for the first time; at least I’m pretty sure it was. I’m positive God’s voice sounds different to all of us, but I heard a deep voice say, “Alex.... I never left.” I was really creeped out, and who knows, maybe it was a pigment of my imagination saying that and God really wasn’t speaking to me. Yet, it hit a part of me when I heard that.

That made me beyond determined to find meaning in my relationship with Christ once again. For once, I HAD AN ANSWER!  I started going to bible study, I started praying more and actually reading devotionals. What nobody failed to tell me though is how big of a struggle it is to fall out from your faith and have to take broken foundations and lay them back down and build upon them once again. This foundational structure, your soul, isn’t always stable, so sometimes when you find yourself going one step forward with God, there’s always Satan or some demon in your life, whether it be a person or the bottom of a whiskey bottle or a drug or that one person that you hate to admit is poisonous to your life, because all you want to do is love them....to only bring you back ten. I still to this day struggle, and always will. Yet. It was this redemption, if you will, that made me realize something. You know when I said earlier that I had hated Christianity when I was younger because it was a veil to disguise everyone’s broken pieces? Well, everyone is broken. But instead of our faith being a veil.... maybe it is really the glue that puts back together what broke us in the first place. It’s what actually holds us together amidst our brokenness. That’s why whenever somebody tells me he or she’s a Christian nowadays, despite the fact that they may do some bad things that aren’t conventionally “Christian-like”, I listen. We can’t judge others for being broken in different ways. Christians come in different packages. As God has made me learn, we’re all not the buttoned-up perfect people I had thought we were in my mind so many years ago. Some of us have tattoos; some of us have brown eyes, some blue. Some of us only wear black and some buy out the J. Crew catalog every season. To some, being a Christian may just mean trying to be a good person, and that’s fine. Some Christians curse, some have sex before marriage, and some do other things that make God upset; but God still loves us at the end of the day, all the same.

So, to pick up from earlier as well, I do define myself as a “Christian” now. However, my definition of Christianity isn’t what it used to be, and it probably may not be the same as what you all think of it. Our faith looks different to all of us, it means different things to everyone, and everyone has a different story of how they came into their faith-- which is what’s so beautiful about it, none of our personal relationships with God are exactly the same. Yet, we are all united by a common factor: Jesus. Part of my definition of being a Christian is to love how Jesus loved: unconditionally. To judge with the predisposition of not turning someone else’s words into poison in my own heart to use against them in hatred, because that is not what Christianity is based on. I fall short of these expectations oftentimes, because I am not perfect. Yet.... God understands that, He gets it maybe if He doesn’t really have that problem himself, and he still forgives me. That kind of unconditional love is the type I strive to show other people. I want to rise up, embody my strengths and be the best person I can be. Yet, I don’t want to do that so I can look down on people and see how far I’ve come. I want to get to that point so I can come back down and pick people to bring back up with me.

People oftentimes ask me, “Was it all really worth the struggle? Don’t you ever sometimes wish you just had stuck with your faith and not had to go through all of that to come back to it?” I always say no. You know that quote, “When you have really worked for it, sweated for it, cursed it, and loved it...you have something, sir.”? That is how I feel about my faith and myself.

I am Alexia Nicole Heathcock.

I am a student.

A friend.

A daughter.

A sister.

A lover.

An enigma,

A yogi,

A runner,

A traveler,

An aspiring lawyer,

I’m a writer,

God’s work-in-progress.

Most importantly though,

I am a Christian.

Are you?