A four letter word that means much more than just an intense feeling of deep affection. Love. It’s happiness in things like  sparklers and green lights. Love. It’s everything meant to be felt in a world of hate. A girl I once knew grew up in a house where beating a woman was acceptable; where verbal abuse made sticks and stones hurt my bones into reality because once her fathers hands gripped her mothers throat, the hateful words meant nothing, they could no longer hurt her. Growing up she was taught that alcohol was the key to a happy life, that just a sip and the fight that she was fighting could all be over, but because she was much wiser than all of the others, she took matters into her own hands and taught herself that the world she lives in is so much more than temporary release. Growing up she had to teach herself to love the ones who hurt her for teaching her how to deal with pain. Growing up she had to teach herself to trust until given reasons not to be trusted. Growing up she had to teach herself that per-pressure was handed out by the week and that being like everybody else isn’t how to live an ordinary life. She grew up surrounded by negativity, pain and suffering, yet till this day she has taught herself to be her own happiness and to treat herself with self love and give herself self trust because she knows one day all of her hope and faith will be mistaken as foolishness to a man like her father.