For Those We’ve Loved and Lost through Deconstruction

To the best friend of over a decade who started treating me like a project.

To the childhood favorite aunt, who I’m now afraid to share my address with.

To the parent with whom I long to have a deeper connection, but conversations remain either surface-level or spiritually hostile.

To the former mentor who is worried about me.

To the friends who were important to me but ignored me in a time of need because they didn’t want to support my “lifestyle”.

For all the relationships we cherished that will never be the same again after deconstruction, because they just couldn’t accept us as we are:

—

You don’t have to miss me; I’m right here.

You don’t have to mourn me. I’m still the one you loved all along.

Don’t worry about me. I’m doing better than I ever was.

There’s no need to rescue me from my own thoughtful decisions.

Please, just see me, hear me, know me. Like you used to.

Rip off the mask of your own making. It’s me underneath!

You’re drifting farther from me every day and yet I am the one who has fallen away?

I didn’t know love was supposed to ebb and flow like the tide.

I don’t think this is the lesson you wanted to teach me, when you said God was using you to be a blessing.

Your true colors are darker than they once seemed.

What a heartbreaking legacy.

Did you ever actually know anything about me, besides my theology? Or are they one and the same to you?

Did you actually like anything about me that wasn’t just my religion? Because that’s all that has changed, and yet now somehow I’m a stranger to you.

I’m pretty sure you were drawn to my truth-seeking, my tenacity and courage – all reasons I ended up here.

Yet the gaslighting says I’m a monster.

Now that I’m dead to you, did a little part of you have to die too?

Or do you really prefer a bird in a cage? A shiny toy in a box? Never changing. Never learning. Just endlessly the same for your own entertainment.

I thought Christians were the experts, but let me tell you, that isn’t love.

You’ve changed too, you know. And I have loved you through it all.

Even as your disdain and judgment grew, I tried to stay close to you.

But now I have lost you –

All for loving myself the way I thought you did.