In 2001, when I was seven, I asked my first-grade teacher (a sugar-sweet, angel-on-earth woman named Sister Mary William) why 9/11 happened. She told me, “Because some people don’t have the love of Jesus in their hearts.”    “It made a lot of sense to you,” my mom recalled later.

When I was around eleven or twelve, I was old enough to understand the inevitability of death but young enough that I still prayed. I remember telling God that I knew he would someday have to take my grandparents to heaven, but I asked that he please not do so

Trigger warning: this essay contains mentions of sexual assault, rape, and violence. Two asterisks (**) indicate that the name has been changed to protect the privacy of those mentioned.   Author’s Note: Choosing to publish this was not a decision I took lightly. I wrote it as a form of