How I Got Here

Some days the reality kicks in and I can’t help but wonder, “How did I get here?”

When I made the decision to move across the country with no real end goal in mind – no idea of what it really meant – I wasn’t living in reality. My friends asked, “Why?” and I didn’t have an answer. Some of them were actually really excited for me, but for the most, just like me, they couldn’t get a grasp on it. Moving over a thousand miles away isn’t something people do every day, let alone making the trek for the inexplicable, which I usually masked as, “I simply need change.” The truth is, I did need change, but I’m still not convinced that that’s how I ended up here.

It was May when I made the decision. My class schedule for my 7th semester at my university was set. I had already signed a year-long lease living with one of my best friends in the place that had slowly become our home. I had the very best cat babies (missing you, Rayne and Bella Bean) that I had to contemplate leaving behind. My mom was a 45 minute drive away and I had my hiding places for the days where I just needed to get away. For so many years, this place, this life, it was comfortable, but the truth is, it never was comfortable being me.

I seldom shared my story, always keeping it on the backburner for a mental breakdown in my room at 2am, or for the drunk girls at parties crying on bathroom floors. I convinced myself that I liked this life, making jokes out of the “bad days,” because laughing at the bad stuff  was easier than dwelling in it. I lived as if I were bulletproof, but at 4am on a Tuesday night I’d find myself wide awake, not knowing what to think of the girl in the mirror staring back at me. She looked like me, but I’m beginning to wonder if I ever knew her at all.

Growing up, I was raised as a Latter-Day Saint, or as most know it as, Mormon. In the midwest, this set me apart from most people in the crowd. For as long as I can remember, my family and I attended our 3 hour church meetings every Sunday, and we made the effort to participate in church activities as often as we could. For some, being Mormon was the best thing that could ever happen. To me, it seemed like a curse.

It’s not that I thought it wasn’t true – because I did, but thinking and knowing aren’t the same thing. I saw the kids my age at church and I just couldn’t relate. I never felt like I fit in, and the things they found “fun” and the things I found “fun” were never the same. When I stopped going to activities, it had everything to do with me and nothing to do with them, but I couldn’t help but feel alienated; like, I was the charity case and everyone was just going along with it.

Meanwhile, I was going through things that most kids my age couldn’t imagine going through (post at a later date?), in a constant battle between who I was and who I felt I wanted to be. I know now that this was spirit-deep – and battle between my physical self and and my soul. Always in an emotional state, I felt different from everyone else. I seemed to care more than most. Even the most minor problems seemed like the end of the world, and waking up for 6am seminary and then attending my classes at school seemed like the bane of my existence. Still, though, I was always the “good” kid. I was hard on myself, which meant I had an ideal to live up to. It wasn’t until the end of my high school career when things started to slip.

The college I chose was one that I felt confident about – they were the only school in the state that had my major, and it continually makes the lists for some of the best public colleges in the country. Even my mom felt good about it, feeling certain that this was where I needed to be. Maybe I did need to be there, but for reasons that seem so opposite to what we had originally believed.

It was the first time in my life that I could do whatever I wanted. That meant not going to church, eating pizza at 2am, dating whoever, whenever, and of course, drinking. Looking back, it feels so far away, but my life became centered around feeling like I was doing college “right.” For a few weeks during my freshman year, I decided that I wasn’t going to drink, but even that seemed impossible. It seemed like everyone was having so much fun, and I was the one missing out.

Now, it’s obvious – there’s nothing fun about drunk texts, or fighting with your best friends over the most trivial things, or wiping snot from your friends nose with their face in a toilet. There’s nothing fun about crying on a bathroom floor in a fraternity and waking up in the morning to the aftermath. There’s nothing fun about the hangovers, or crying the next day because of the stupid things you’d done. The only thing fun about it was maybe the stories, but like I said before, don’t we just laugh at those things because laughing about it is easier than admitting that that’s part of who we really are?

Now, I’m not judging people who drink, or go to frat parties and cry on bathroom floors, or send sloppy drunk texts – because how can I judge someone for the things that I myself have done? I get it; I get all of it. I get the stigma around partying, and I get why people do it. In fact, I understand people a lot more because of it, but that doesn’t mean I like it, and it doesn’t mean that I want to be a part of it anymore.

This was how I lost myself. For the 3 years that I was in school, nothing seemed to change, except maybe my hairstyles and the people I called my “besties.” I skipped classes more than I’d like to admit, and found myself wondering what the heck I was doing there. I didn’t care about my major anymore. I didn’t really care about my grades. For awhile there, I felt like I was stupid because the grades didn’t seem to come as easily as before, but now it’s so simple in my mind — I was getting by with the bare minimum. I was just existing.

Towards the end of the semester this past April, things seemed to be changing for me, but not really. I was less emotional, and I started to see things for what they were, and not what I built them up in my mind to be. I wasn’t where I’m at now, but I was getting better. It wasn’t until I reconnected with an old friend who was LDS that things began to change.

Growing up, one of my mom’s favorite sayings was, “People come into our lives for a reason, a season, or a lifetime.” It’s some of the best advice I’ve ever gotten, and it still holds as true as the day she first said it to me. This person came into my life for what seemed like a really dumb reason – I had just gotten out of a relationship and needed a distraction. I never would have thought that they’d be the person who contributed to me “finding” myself. At that point, religion was out of the picture, but I was still curious about the church and the people in it. He himself seldom brought up religion, and it seemed like I always wanted to talk about it much more than he did. I started reading the scriptures every now and then to humor myself, and most nights I found myself praying. Even though I thought nothing was going to come of it, deep down there must have been some faith there, because slowly but surely, I started changing. I’m not sure when it happened, but at some point I realized that this was real, and that even the most creative of people couldn’t make this sort of thing up.

This person isn’t really in my life anymore, and that’s a sad part of the story, because I wish they could be around to see how much they helped me. It’s hard to be sad, though, when all you want to do is say, “Thank you!” It’s funny how things happen, because although things can get really messed up and it feels like everything is wrong, looking back, they always seem to be blessings that we ourselves couldn’t quite see yet.

And so you’re wondering, how did you end up over a thousand miles away in the Mormon Mecca known as Utah? And the answer is, I don’t know. The idea popped into my mind months and months ago, while I was still in what I call “the dark days.” It seemed to come into my mind every now and then, but I was never serious about it, and if I was, it never seemed attainable. It was at that time that I realized that the fear of not changing was greater than the fear of actual change.

In May, I prayed about it often. I told my parents that that was what I was doing, and to my surprise, they supported me as long as I felt like that was what I needed to do. And let’s be honest – what Mormon parents would be opposed to their previously distraught child making a change that included being surrounded with a bunch of their Mormon peers?

I started to pray about it every day. Some days I was excited about the trip, but on others, I couldn’t help but think to myself, “What the heck are you doing?!” I was scared. I frequently got anxious about the trip, and some days I flat out decided that I was being illogical. Even though there was doubt, it never felt like not going was an option. I decided that if things worked out – if I could get my college apartment subleased and find a new apartment out in Utah, all while maintaining good grades in my summer courses and working at my summer job – then I would go. So here I am. Of course, things seemed to fall into place just at my deadline, but I went by the saying, “better late than never,” and decided that it was a sign.

When I got here, things weren’t what I was expecting, and I began to wonder, “OK, what have you gotten yourself into?” I’m not going to pretend like I don’t cry every now and then because of how much I miss my family and my friends, or like some nights aren’t lonelier than I knew lonely could be, but the truth is, I never truly feel alone. That’s the BEST part about my faith – knowing that Heavenly Father is right there with me for every step of the way – the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. It’s hard to feel sad when I’ve been blessed enough to be able to recognize how much love we are all given by Him.

I never thought I’d be here, yet here I am. I don’t know why, yet. I have faith that one day things will be very clear, and that this part of my journey is necessary, whether it be for me, or someone I meet along the way.

The most profound thing I have gained from the gospel is the overwhelming amount of love I have felt from our Heavenly Father and his son, Jesus Christ. I have never known a love or joy so great than the love that we receive from God and our Savior. Because I’ve been lucky enough to recognize it, I can’t help but spread that love to every person I meet.

I can picture my old college friends now – rolling their eyes with blank stares, wondering how someone like me could fall into something as silly as religion. But people like me are exactly who the gospel is for, because nobody’s perfect and every person makes mistakes, no matter how good they seem to have it. I know that most of my old friends won’t be around for the future, and that’s OK. I know that most people I meet aren’t going to see things the way that I see them, and that’s OK, too. I wish that every person could experience the gospel the way that I have, but I know that they won’t. I do know, though, that I can build more bridges than I burn,  be a listening ear or a good friend, and spread much more love into this universe than I can hate.

It’s so good to be here, and for the first time in my life I’m starting to realize that home has nothing to do with where you are, but who you are, and the people you meet along the way. For the first time in my life it feels good to be me.

So much love,
Mary Kathryn