Goodnight, BYU

I walk across campus to the scraping and whirring soundtrack of the Harris Fine Arts Center (HFAC) being torn down. Watching a corner of the building being crushed by an excavator, I am hit with a sense of melancholy that feels like sawdust in my lungs as I realize that BYU as I once knew it has also been destroyed, at least for me. 

My freshman year, I looked out of the window of my apartment every night and whispered, “Goodnight, BYU!” I was elated to be on this campus where we spoke of God in every class, where prophets came to speak at devotionals, where everyone around me was trying to live the same standards I believed in.

But slowly over the past four years the shards of my faith have splintered away, the walls of my relationship with God caving in. The parts of BYU that once felt like magic and a mainstay now feel like a mockery of everything I have tried and failed to believe and become. 

Trying to go on a mission and having my papers rejected because of health issues. Being in wards where I felt unwanted and could slip away unnoticed. Trying to find a husband to make an eternal family with and realizing maybe I won’t be marrying a man after all. Uncovering LDS history. Realizing I no longer hold the same values I learned at church. Going to the temple and realizing this isn’t what I thought my religion was all about. Learning it is not healthy or normal to fear God.

When I came to BYU I thought I could run away from my doubts, run away from being queer, and run away from how imperfect I was at living the gospel. I thought I’d find home and hope in being surrounded by so many good people. And when it became too much, when I realized I wasn’t sure this was my idea of God, when I realized I didn’t want to be here anymore with people unlike me who got married young and quickly, loved their missions, loved their garments, bore their testimonies in sacrament meeting—

I crumbled. 

Bulldozer to the soul. 

Excavator to my foundation. 

Empty. 

And now it feels ironic that in my last semester, as I am preparing to say goodbye to this campus where I have broken and grown and cried and loved, the HFAC is being torn down. Yet another piece of my history, my relationship with BYU, my experience here, is turning to ashes and shattered glass. A place where I saw concerts and plays and friends’ graduations, where I perused strange artwork and talked with people I love, the confusing and echoing building where I got lost even as I was lost in my faith and in myself. 

As I watch this fortress of a building be broken, and as I am trying to move forward with this newfound uncertainty about God and religion and life, I am learning that nothing lasts forever, not even this great building, not even faith. 

And I feel relieved. 

I used to love BYU so much I said goodnight to it every night, so much I thought I’d never want to leave. And now I feel a bittersweet sense of closure as I realize it is almost time to say goodbye, and I am no longer angry, although still a bit hurt, and I am healing.

There is a bare foundation of dust and nails that will emerge when the HFAC has been destroyed. And once those last remnants of BYU history have been swept away, new ideas can be built there. The next group of freshmen to come to this campus will not know the HFAC but will know something else instead. A replacement. And maybe someday, that replacement, too, will disappear. 

That foundation has also been created for me. A rock bottom, perhaps. But also just a fresh start. I am so afraid and so hopeful. I have so much to learn and explore. I am not the person I was when I came to BYU, and I think my younger self would be surprised, but she would also be grateful. I love the relationships this university gave me and the classes I took and the person I became. I love that my testimony was crushed, that I have a way to start fresh in the way I see God and the world and myself. 

I love that when I walk across that stage at the end of April that I will be leaving behind the place that broke and built me, and that I, too, will have a chance to start again.