Merry Christmas. Finally.

Eight years ago, I attended "Camp Creepy."

I drifted in late to the first session with caffeine in a styrofoam cup. Slid into the one empty seat. By the door. Next to an awkward, quiet Sri Lankan kid who borrowed my light blue gel pen all weekend. We were there because different strangers had invited us to rip apart the gospel of Mark. I was a freshman in college. And I agreed to everything.

There was a bible dictionary on the table. Plus a concordance to look up Greek words. He and I whispered snarky comments about the camp with a few of the other boys.

Secretly, we absorbed every word.

There was another girl — also Sri Lankan — whom I didn't speak to all weekend. She was as extroverted as I was. Maybe more bubbly. She told us — a room full of teenagers she'd just met — about the hell she'd endured with her family. I didn't know that this degree of honesty existed. But I was compelled.

So between sobs, I unraveled my story. The first time I confessed anything about my family. Up in the woods somewhere. What city was that? Somewhere in southern California.

Another girl spoke up. "Why does that kind of evil exist in the world?" She was livid. Frustrated. From across the room, I snapped at her. "It just does. People will always hurt other people. It's useless to question it. The real issue is what do we do with all of it?"

I had assumed she didn't understand what it was to grow up on your knees in a closet and wishing, as a little girl, that you could die. The next summer, I understood that I was wrong.

We all know degrees of pain. 'We,' as in.. all humans.

Your bartender slips you another scotch on the rocks. You don't realize that just before her shift, she was a wet wreck in the parking garage, screaming at a God she had ignored for months. Every time she zones out of conversation, she prays. Her life is torn up, she misses her father, and the night before, her pothead fuck buddy wasted hours convincing her not to harm herself. She flings you a smile. Adjusts her bra strap. You hand her another dollar.

When I played that role in the four-year movie called "Before 2010," those three kids from Camp Creepy stuck by me.

One found me on Christmas Eve in the middle of a deserted strip mall when I boycotted the holidays and ran from family. One scooped me up from countless gutters and fed me vegetables and mango pickle. One housed me in a refurbished convent and gifted me poems written by women who lived in forests.

They waded through my hells. Walked me through my parents' divorce. Talked me through my mom's new marriage. Pushed and pushed me toward a God who picked up my pieces and gave me a ticket to New York. They were the ones who prayed for New York.

One of them even had a dream. She said, "It's Sarah Lawrence. That's where you're going. That's what I'm praying for." She said this after my first rejection. I had four more rejections coming. Sarah Lawrence would be the last envelope I get. It would be the only school that takes me.

I fell to my knees at the mailbox. And wept. I didn't deserve to go to New York. Not for a second.

But it's not about deserving, right?

Almost exactly seven months ago, last May, I left my Brooklyn apartment in a tank top and skinny jeans. I was on my way to my second shift at a bar in Williamsburg. I had made up my mind to bartend fulltime. Stay in New York.

When I reached the subway turnstile for the G train, it was turned off. No out-of-order sign. There were people on the other side who had somehow gotten through. No one could tell me why it was suddenly turned off.

Annoyed, I walked out of the station and embarked on the 30-minute walk to the bar. And something hovered over me. I had a sinking feeling that I knew who turned off that subway turnstile.

So I texted the friend who borrowed my blue pen. Because I knew he'd say, "What if it's a sign? What if you're not supposed to bartend? Isn't that what you said? That you wouldn't bartend again?" He did.

He said, "So don't go then."

I said, "I have nothing. If I don't bartend, what the fuck happens next?"

"You find out whether God is real."

Just like that. As if it were that easy. I wanted to believe him. I had spent seven to eight years listening to his crazy talk about God, and I was tired of living in circles. I was tired of flirting to earn more money to spend on whiskey.

I stopped walking. I could see the bar from where I was standing. I had to cross the street beneath the Brooklyn/Queens Expressway to get to it. Then I called the Sri Lankan girlfriend who housed me in the convent. I told her all the awful things our other friend had said. About finding God and all that.

I told her because I wanted her to tell me that it was true. All of it. That God was real. That I could know this as deeply as they knew it. That it wasn't too late. That I didn't have to go. And she did. She said all those things. No hesitations.

I crouched on the stoop of a brownstone. Sobbed and sobbed into the phone. I said, "I need you to stay on the phone with me while I walk home." She stayed.

I walked up to my rooftop and wept. My third friend, the one who feeds me, was in my bedroom. She was visiting me from Boston. I thought she would lecture. Tell me to be more responsible. Not quit without a plan. She loved God, but she loved a practical one.

But when I wilted back into my room, she smiled. She told me that if I wanted to come home, I should come home. And by "home," she meant California. No. I think she meant a different "home."

So I packed my things. Left a month later.

Today, I went to a church's Christmas service. Okay, I'll tell the truth. I've gone to this church almost every Sunday since I've been back in California. I haven't attended church regularly since 2001. I haven't extensively "studied" any biblical texts since 2006. But something about this place lures me. It's quiet. Crammed with good spirits. Not pretentious, not judgmental. They don't give me "advice." They tell me, "Ask God for yourself." The people there don't care who I am or who I was. All they see is that God handcrafted me.

More importantly, they believe that nothing is impossible.

At today's Christmas service, one of those friends and I accompanied the other friend's musical performance. At one point, we belted out my favorite lyrics of his: "I'm standing right where I'm supposed to be. I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm okay." Some people started clapping.

It took everything in me not to cry.

I looked straight at my other best friend, sitting in the pews with her husband. She smiled. She understood.

I don't know how many more times I will iterate this: How many nights I drank and drank because I wanted alcohol poisoning. How wretched everything was. How cold, that house in Pasadena. How fractured, that relationship. How I screamed "help" so loudly, the landlord showed up because the neighbors thought someone was being raped.

I think some people wonder whether I exaggerate these stories. They see me calm. Joyful. And they wonder whether any of it could be true.

Nothing is impossible. People do change — when they have the right catalyst. Sculptures don't change form alone. They might rust or melt, but they don't transform by themselves. But a sculptor can melt his creation and redesign it to be a more beautiful, wholly different beast.

Today, when I walked back to my car, its ceiling was leaking and my driver's seat was soaked. The front vent part of my car was knocked off. Another addition to what was already a severely rocky week.

But the difference now: these storms don't phase me.

Yes, I react. I'm emotionally bent. I always react. But now, my heart is unshakable. Why? Today, for the first time in a long time, I really truly believed that I was standing right where I was supposed to be.

And I'm okay.
I'm okay.
I'm okay.