No No Sito

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Then, as the girls were all alone, the host introduced three women meant to “guide us on our journey in being young queens.”

The first woman that spoke was a pastor, who emphasized the idea of not trying to fit in with everyone else and be yourself. One of the examples she used for this was how she had kept her virginity through high school and college. After she announced this proudly, she expected an applause. She mentioned how everyone knew her as “the good Christian girl” and that she was proud of it. She also said that during 9/11, everyone looked at her because they knew she would pray for them. Although the idea of being yourself is great, it is sorely lost in the unwanted virginity allusion and constant references to religious trains of thought.

The second woman was involved in the education sector in some way. She gave an anecdote about how a guy she met on a dating app ended up attempting to kill her by strangling her. She said that she had kept this relationship a secret, so if he had ended up succeeding in killing her, no one would know. She used this to ultimately make the argument that if something needs to be kept secret, then it shouldn’t be happening at all. She also emphasized that if she had waited for the man god meant for her, then it wouldn’t had happened. She uses this to essentially shame the concept of “dating around” and took a soulmate-esque approach on the situation. In addition, she explained that she had forgiven her ex boyfriend for his attempted murder, even if he wasn’t sorry. Again, there could possibly be a valuable message, however it’s lost in the traumatic storytelling and religious imagery.

The third speaker had a phD and was a nurse. With this information, I expected some sort of a health related speech, however, this was the most traumatizing of all. She gave an extremely detailed description of the morning that she had found her son’s body after he had hung himself. I will not give the full description on facebook, but it was so descriptive to the point that I felt like I was there with her and could imagine her house around her. She explained that this happened because her son was bullied. She used this story to say that people these days are too mean to each other and we need to stick together.
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After the boys were gone for no longer than 20 minutes (compared to the girls’ 40 minutes), everyone was combined again into the church. They then had a guest speaker, Donk, who gave the most fantastical story one could imagine. He started by saying at the age of 9 he was shot in the stomach and saw his intestines fall into his hands. Then, he was paralyzed and in a wheelchair from the ages of 11-13 (not sure what happened from 9-11). One day, according to him, he was with his grandma who was snoring very loudly and he started to wiggle his toes and wasn’t paralyzed anymore. Then, he started “messing with the wrong crowd” and ended up in prison with a life sentence + 90 years on two accounts of armed robbery and a murder. He said how he was sad in jail and tried to kill himself with a bedsheet (which he demonstrated with a prop sheet he had on stage), but somehow he changed his mindset and got out of jail.

At the end of everything, the host made the audience make a choice. He said “If you want to eat, pizza is right outside those doors for you. If you choose change, if you want to get better, come towards the stage towards me.” At this point we had not eaten and frankly, I was done being traumatized, so I left the building.

This is solely what I witnessed at the day of hope with no other sides of the story. I had heard from multiple sources that when the boys when in for their 20 minutes they only did push-up contest and games. I heard from a few people that for the people that chose hope rather than pizza, another story was given about when Donk tried to attempt suicide by jumping in front of a train but the train magically stopped in front of him.

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