Nowhere but Up by Pattie Mallette, with A. J. Gregory Page A

of brushed it off. One thing was certain, though—she was glad my partying ways were behind me.
    Jeremy wasn’t the biggest fan of my new faith; I think he felt threatened. He was jealous that all of a sudden, my focus was on God instead of him. Jeremy didn’t have the same power over me as he’d had before. And finally, for the first time, I could see how toxic and volatile our relationship was.
    A few weeks after I left the hospital, Jeremy came over. He knocked on my door and begged me to come back to him. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days. Dark circles shadowed his eyes, and his hollow cheeks aged him.
    “Please, Pattie,” he begged. “Just come back to me. Let’s try this again. It’ll work this time, I know it.” His voice was so sad it broke my heart, but not enough for me to make another run at it.
    I shook my head. “I can’t, Jeremy. I’m sorry.”
    He asked if we could take a walk to get some air. He held my hand as he spoke. “Listen, Pattie, we belong together. We’re meant to be. I can’t live without you.” I was quiet, unsure of what I wanted to say other than that I didn’t want to get back together with him.
    Jeremy still couldn’t understand why I didn’t want to take him back. It was out of character for me, and the whole thing puzzled him.
    I was honest. “I’m finally happy, Jeremy. I have God. I feel free. And I finally realized I don’t want to be in a poisonous relationship. It’s bad for both of us.”
    Silence.
    Jeremy nodded slowly, his eyes growing darker. I noticed the immediate shift in his mood. The calm broke. “This is what I think of your God, Pattie.” He took a step back, loudly filling his throat with phlegm, and hawked a loogie next to my flip-flops.

CHAPTER
Seven
    My spiritual high naturally dissipated. At some point you’ve got to come out of the clouds and live real life. Again, it’s just like falling in love. The feeling of euphoria is only temporary. It’s cute not to be able to eat, sleep, or think about anything other than the person you have fallen madly and deeply in love with. But if that feeling continued at such an intense level, you’d never get anything done. You wouldn’t be able to function. You wouldn’t be able to work. You wouldn’t be able to manage your day-to-day responsibilities. I couldn’t live forever on feelings of ecstasy. I had to learn to balance the high with the realities of life.
    Despite the fact that my life was forging a new path of hope, I still had a lot of internal issues that needed sorting and mending. The trauma I endured from my past sexual abuse and the consequential harmful thought patterns I developed weren’t going to go away on their own or in an instant. Healing would come, but over time and in bits and pieces. That’s not something I understood at first, and that lack of understanding is what allowed me to revisit the very things that had led me to my breaking point.
    When I got out of the hospital, I started going to a nondenominational church that was different from what I had imagined church was like. Though no church is perfect and every congregation has its share of hypocrites, for the most part, I found the Christians at the church I attended to be very real and authentic, people who actually walked the walk and talked the talk. They led me by their example. They came from all sorts of different backgrounds and walks of life. And they taught me that Jesus is the foundation of the church—and the one who unites us all. We could respect each other’s differences and learn from each other because we had Christ at the center of it all.
    My hunger to know everything about my newfound faith was insatiable. For the next six months, I faithfully attended church every Sunday, sitting in the front row week after week. I went to Bible study. I was mentored by different leaders. I read books. I even called the pastors at all hours of the day and night (sorry about that, guys!) to ask questions and