Scenes From a Closeted Convert

“Draw the curtains and turn off the lights!” my mom exclaims. “It’s the Mormons!” My siblings and I run to every corner of the house to slam the shutters down and snap the curtains closed. My mom races around, frantically flipping down every light switch. “Now, everyone HIDE,” she yells. I crawl under the desk with my siblings and snicker as the two teenage boys wearing crisp white shirts knock, knock, knock on our door. As my fingers grip the base of the window, I catch a peek and lock eyes with the taller one. Wide-eyed, I stare at my brother. “They caught us.” 

Five years later, I’m sitting in the pews with my mom and sister. 

My parents were both raised Mormon but left before I was ever baptized into the covenant. Following their divorce, my mom started attending an Indiana ward again with me in tow. I quickly learned that the Young Women’s bake-offs and volleyball tournaments weren’t exactly the open invite hangouts I had attended for my non-denominational Christian church growing up. 

“We’re so happy to have you back,” my leaders would say to me. “I held you when you were just a baby.” Despite their warm memories, it was evident to me I didn’t fit in. Hell, I didn’t even know what “BYU” stood for. 

“We can get you set up with the missionaries,” they’d say. I quickly realized that my being there—sitting in on Sunday School lessons I couldn’t grasp and Monday night activities where I was talked over—was a sign to them that I was ready to take the next step: my carnal, fourteen-year-old soul must be prepared for baptism. It was unlike anything I’d ever known before. 

During the Plan of Salvation lesson with the sister missionaries, the images of the three kingdoms in my head were replaced with orbs of light from a migraine that blotted my vision. I wanted to drill into my own skull to release the pulsating sensation making my head go boom, boom, boom. “People who do not accept the fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ in this life or in the world to come but live honorable lives will receive a place in the Terrestrial Kingdom.” The wind was knocked out of me. I felt that by listening to this lesson, I would be punished and bound to this kingdom for all eternity if I didn’t accept the message. That splitting headache combined with an all too causal explanation of what I thought was my damnation was too much to take. I lurched forward, and everything I had eaten that day ended up on the carpet of my living room. The missionaries looked up at me in shock as I sat back up slowly, my mouth sour. I opened my eyes to the white orbs blocking my vision. The Light hurt my eyes. 

After being baptized in my aunt’s ward, outfitted in a white jumpsuit a size too big, I immediately chameleoned my way into my new Utah ward. No one could know my past. I made sure to familiarize myself with the Young Women’s theme before my first day in my new ward so as not to blow my cover. For my first time in the temple, I googled how to grab the baptizer’s hand before being dipped into the water. When someone asked me if I was close to my ward back home, it was a simple “yes.” No one could know that I wasn’t like the rest of them. 

Then, came my first day of high school. First day of seminary. My public Utah high school instantly felt like a private Catholic high school minus the uniforms. No one could know. I instantly became a star seminary student, texting the boy I liked, “What’s our homework in seminary for tonight?” on the first day of school. Night after night, my red colored pencil hit the books, my licked pointer finger turning the pages until I passed out for the night. I never missed a day, until I did, and I struggled to forgive myself. I took the sacrament each Sunday but I kept making the same mistakes over and over again. My sin of missing a night of reading would become a sin of not reading fervently enough. My sin of not reading fervently enough became the sin of not looking unto God in all I did. I became obsessed. 

I had to teach myself the idiomatic vocabulary that circulated around my new school. I learned that the best way to fit in was this: I know, I know, I know. I know these things are true. 

During a particular interview with my bishop to get my temple recommend renewed, he wrapped up the interview by asking me, “Do you feel you are worthy to enter the Lord’s house?” There was a long pause. “No,” I replied. “I could be doing more.” I had answered yes to all of his previous questions. In a matter of months, I went from a carefree fourteen-year old to a spiraling fifteen-year old overburdened with guilt which was invisible to everyone but me. I felt as if every mistake I made was being tallied on a chalkboard somewhere up in heaven. 

I loved my friends in my ward and the messages about divine nature, eternal destiny, love, and repentance, but I couldn’t help but feel like no one had explained the fine print to me: eternal polygamy, Kolob, families can be together forever. 

You see, my younger brother was never baptized the way my sister and I were. “You can just go visit him in the Telestial Kingdom!” people would exclaim, like that was any sort of solution at all. Even, once during a fight with a friend in high school, they weaponized it against me, saying, “You don’t even care about your brother’s salvation.” Families can be together forever—if every member of the family lives unquestionably from the handbook. Why would God separate me from my brother who I love so much? The “families are forever” sentiment that was the glittering cornerstone of my classmates’ testimonies and cross-stitched on their living room walls tangled my brain into a warring state of cognitive dissonance. 

I dropped out of seminary my junior year only to be called as seminary class president my senior year. Still under my disguise, my reattempt at piety was once again fringing on all-consuming. Every thought that came into my brain could only have come from one of three sources: myself, the spirit, or the devil—and I had to decipher the source of each thought. Despite the cognitive dissonance that constantly racked my brain, I was caged to the words of church leaders, who said that only we, as members of the true church, would ever feel true joy. 

That school year, on a weekend backpacking trip with a couple of friends, I took up the rear and trailed behind them—sobbing silently the whole way up the mountain. Only being able to focus on either what was in my head or what was on my back—both of which were weighing me down—had created the perfect storm. The guilt, confusion, and frustration from my time as a “lifelong” member was pent up, thrashing around in my head. “You’re bad at church,” my classic one-liner to myself, was what I told myself all the way through Willard Basin.  

I was a closeted convert who was “bad at church,” a secret known by few and understood by none. 

So, I made my way out of Willard Basin and forced myself to remember this: 

I know how to blend in.

I know all the right lines.

I know these things are true.