𝐅𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐕𝐚𝐦𝐩𝐢𝐫𝐞 𝐓𝐨 𝐕𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐮𝐞 I'm about to shock you... I've come to terms with the fact that I will never be a monster account or massively popular. I don't think it's fun to mock people or hurt them, and I "talk about Jesus too much". I wasn't always this way... I will never stop talking about what God has done for me and the transformation He made. I used to be an absolute vampire. I've always been conventionally pretty, barring the couple of years I shot up to 300lb wildebeest status. Fueled by childhood abuse and adult trauma, I could wreck and seduce a man from across a football field. I grew up surrounded by boys and five younger brothers. I understand men better than most women ever will. I know what they hunger for. I know what to do. I know what to say to climb inside their defenses and take up residence. I did it all. I loved it all. After an assault as an adult, I started seeing a trauma therapist who saw right through me. I'm female, but kinda not. I have a lot of traditionally masculine traits: aggression, dominance, even some psychopathic tendencies, though I'm not actually a psychopath. I see you better than you know yourself. Your motivations. Your strengths. More importantly, your weaknesses. If I know how to twist the knife (metaphorically) I can stop you before you ever hurt me. Working with Ed, he named what I was. For a woman, I am a wolf. Men will be drawn to me like gravity. Women will bristle and recoil because something in them recognizes an innate predatory nature. I trigger the oldest parts of the mammalian brain. That truth has carved deep loneliness and isolation into my life. Saying I am not like other women is not a cute line. It is a fact written in blood and carved in my bones. You would be shocked by everything I survived as a kid and still kept my sanity. My childhood didn't break me. It turned me lethal. Into a weapon. Then a series of events happened. I won't bore you with the grisly details. They brought me to my knees. I quite literally had nowhere left to turn except God. I was torn asunder and shattered. Karma, I suppose. I started Bible in a Year with Father Mike, and it was the first time I fully began tackling what I had always seen as a monumental task: simply reading it. Rapidly I saw that the whole book is about broken people redeemed by His grace. For the first time I didn't feel beyond saving. I didn't feel like I needed to tear other people apart to feel better. It never actually did, but a wounded animal bites. Bit by bit. Step by step. I began to transform into someone who likes to help other people, write about beautiful things, and heal. I made a personal covenant with God to start my day with the Word in some fashion: a sermon, a devotion, or simply learning new ways to understand Him. That has made all the difference. I still have to fight the compulsions instilled in me over a lifetime of survival. But now I have hope. Now I do far more good in the world than bad, and every day I am a tiny bit better than the day before. Last night I climbed into my fiancé's lap and kissed his neck. He said, "Even sick you're a dangerous woman." I smiled and said, "Only for you, baby." And I meant it.