My mind was stripped to a blank canvas before I found my faith. I had nothing left.  I felt nothing. I wanted nothing. I was empty. You know how we choose our outlook on life by deciding on whether the glass is half full or half empty? I poured it down the drain. Yeah, I EMPTIED THE GLASS. I found my faith from a glass pipe. My dealer was my preacher who showed me the ways of the Holy; both wrong and right. He told me I was apart of something bigger; a new testament. Where instead of me being a fuxked up kid, from a fuxked up home, living a fuxked up life; he told me I’m somebody. He said I was just like him. I built my faith on the streets slanging to people that praised me for the little baggy that I slipped into their hands that they called “faith”. I was their messiah. I was their preacher. I took care of them. I gave them faith.  I knew that not everyone would agree with my beliefs. With who I praised. With what I preached. I lost the ones closest to me, because my path was different from theirs. They became the demons I had to exorcise from my life. So I did. My lips hit the pipe because it keeps the demons from changing me. They hit the pipe because it keeps me closer to God. I have faith that there is a reason that He gave me this life. Because I found God on this broken road. I found faith.

LOVE, Lizabeth

I looked at myself in the mirror, tonight. After you put your hand on my soul and after I touched yours. After our moment. And I felt disappointed. Because “My body is a temple…” I repeated over and over to the devil in my reflection. How could I have let you touch me like that? Why did I want you? Why did I want it? I have spent so much time imagining the moment I would let a man touch me the way you did. And you were that man. What made it worse was that you touched me with no emotion. You were getting straight to the point. You had one intention and one intention only, sex. I looked at myself in the mirror tonight… Who was this stranger staring back at me?! I didn’t know her. She couldn’t be anything like me. But she was. She was me; my visual echo. As tears rolled down my cheeks, I declared war with my reflection. I screamed. I cried. I begged. Had I really disrespected myself? Then I realized that no one else could end this battle but me. I had to be the tyrant; my own worst enemy. To remind myself that I love myself. I respect myself. I looked at myself in the mirror tonight and I told myself, “I will be bigger than you. You cannot defeat me.”

LOVE, Lizabeth

I have never thought about it until today, but I am extremely happy with how my life has turned out.

I may have not completed college. I may not have the greatest job. I may not have a boyfriend/fiance/booty call thing. I may not be the most fashionable. I may not own the fanciest of things. I may not have your world.
But…
I have a stable job. I have the best of friends. I have shoes on my feet. I have clothes to wear. I have food to eat. I have people that I call family. I have MY world. And I am happy.

I had a talk with some of my closest friends today and realized that we would have never been close friends if it wasn’t for the store we all decided to transfer to. And it made me think… I am so happy at how far I have gotten. And on top of it all, I am sincerely thankful.

LOVE, Lizabeth