Things Fall Apart

This is something I've been meaning to write for a long, long time.

When you’re a kid, being honest means not stealing gum from Walmart or fessing up when you break something. As years go by, honesty means being open with feelings and experiences — you get better at tough conversations, difficult relationships, things like that. But ultimately, I think the purest form of honesty means showing others who you are. And a necessary condition to this, of course, is knowing that yourself.

The Burning Gift. Brian Kershisnik.

I don't think it's any big surprise that I'm changing. I've been writing less and less. A post per week, per month, every few months. At times I’d muster the courage to articulate my feelings, but I was scared to you everything. I locked those secrets in a cellar for myself, and their shadows slithered through the light in the cracks.

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity

Mormons, quite literally, live in tribes. Tribe of Ephraim, tribe of Manasseh, tribe of Uchtdorf, tribe of Oaks. I am in a tribe of very frustrated, confused, and weary members of the Church. Sometimes we talk for minutes, sometimes for hours, and sometimes we just cry because the ceremony of innocence is drowning and no one is watching. Those people though, my tribe. They're leaving. People say there's room for us and I'm sure they're sincere, but I'm not sure it's true.

I've tried to gather the ashes of my convictions, but I don't know what to pick up and what to leave behind. Yeats believes this lack of conviction, this life in the grey, is a good thing. I don't think he's wrong, but I mourn for when I knew exactly who I was, what I wanted, and what I believed in.

I'm writing this down because if there's anything I have learned, it's that silence doesn't help anyone — least of all myself. Throughout the next few weeks, I’ll tell you a story. A story of faith, identity, and womanhood. Lest I disappoint you in the end, I should warn you that it lacks any sort of resolution. 

But that lack of resolution, in itself, is the story.