The sacred act of being unholy

“I am going to say fuck and I need you to love me anyways” is the only line I remember clearly from my dream last night.

My parents were on the couch in the basement and I knelt in front of them, putting a hand on their knees, staring up at them with eyes full of pleading, “I’m going to say fuck and I need you to love me anyways”.

But pleading wasn’t the only thing in my eyes. It was also determination, it was certainty. I was stating a fact. “I am going to say fuck” and I love me anyways. 

That was the unspoken line behind my words. I love myself anyways. 

My voice did not hold pleading, but a command. "Love me anyways, even if there are parts of me you don't agree with"

As I've been away from home the last 5 years, I've discovered a version of myself that defies most everything I was taught to be growing up, and from that I've found a glow. And I would very much like to bring that glow home, and be the version of me that I've matured into over the years. The one that feels like me.

I want to be that version of me with the people I love - so my command - was almost a warning to them: This is who I am. If you shrink or shrivel at it, you’re going to have a really hard time loving me. 

You’re going to have a hard time having a relationship with me if you gasp every time you see the sides of me that I have developed in the last 5 years being away from home.

That one moment in my dream, as I sat there with determination in my voice, a million words flashed behind my simple statement. It yearned to say: I am your daughter and I love who I am. I am full of light, I am powerful, I am intelligent, I am based in principle, I am honest, I am hard working, I am kind, I am curious, I am courageous...and I’m going to say fuck. 

And I need you to love me anyway. 

I need you to trust me. Trust in my goodness. Trust that goodness doesn't always look like what you've been taught to accept.

That's truly what the root of it is, I think- I've found goodness in a lifestyle that should have brought me pain and shame. And when my family looks at me, I'm afraid they'll still meet my eyes with a piteous judgement. Bracing themselves with politeness until I "come back to the light".

What I'm trying to communicate through my very poignant dream is years worth of discovery and acceptance of myself. It sounds cheesy when I see the words on the page, but I don't fit in the mold they want me to fit into, and I desperately would like to be loved as I learn to live outside the protective molding I was born into.

There's one thing I’ve noticed about the proper, rule following, virtuous parts of my family structure - they can’t meet the worlds eye without flinching. 

They can’t stare at the worst of humanity and hold eye contact.

They turn away, they blush, they judge, they pray it away, they are fearful of it. "Dear God, please help Bethany to see the light, help her to come back to thee" while they cover the eyes of the young, hoping to protect them from my devious ways.

But, by choosing to hold so fast to their standards that they refuse to acknowledge other ways of living, they have created this bubble of righteous fear around them. One wrong step and everything will pop.

Over the last 5 years since moving away from home, I've had the courage, or maybe the misfortune, to pop that bubble all on my own.

As a little 19 year old I moved outside of the Utah Bubble, into the belly of the beast with no knolwedge of the world, but a fiery desire for it. I took a leap outside of what I believed was "good". I shattered the boundaries of my childhood morals and I held my breath as I waited for fire and brim stone...but it never came.

Slowly, as I woke up day after day in my Austin apartment, trying to make sense of the years of religion I'd so fervently held to, and the exhaustion of shame that had subsequently come, God met met there. Not in a way that I would have expected, but in a gentle, patient, kind way. In a way that allowed me to discover what is fun and what's not fun, and allowed me to scrape my knees as I fell. It allowed me to do reckless things with strangers and wake up...fine. Happy, even. It made me question, "Does obedience really bring happiness? Or am I allowed to just be happy?"

And the quiet force that answered steadily was, "You're allowed to just be happy. I'm right here. You cannot scare me away."

Little by little, God has taught me to stop holding my breath when I take a step that I think might just shatter my illusion of goodness. Little by little, He's taught me to breath with confidence that I am capable and smart. Little by little, He's shown me I'm allowed to explore and find what feels like home to me.

I will find what feels right to me. I don’t have to beg for my own wholeness. 

Courage is the word that comes to mind- it takes balls to release everything you've ever defined yourself by and trust that you will be ok anyways.

It takes guts to do something so defiantly opposite of the morals instilled in you and still look up to God saying "Am I good?" and it takes strength to believe Him when He says "Yes, Bethany. You are still good."

How else can you really figure out what you believe in, if you do not challenge the very foundations of it?

I have never rebelled, or ran away. I have only walked. I have only played. I have only lived.

I have explored the world, and met God there.

My family? The way I was raised? The entire world was based on obedience. How strange that I have found God in my very defiance of that.

Here's what brought this to mind:

My dad and I had many conversations as we drove from LA to Utah last night, but one that stood out to me was when stopped in Vegas for dinner and I told him “Dad, nothing scares me. Because I know where my center is, and I know how to come back to it.”

We had been having such a good time up until we entered the parking garage of Caesars Palace. He had been joking about the smell of weed and I felt safe enough in that moment to bring up the fact that, "Dad, I've smoked weed before."

Before this, we had been discussing religion and spiritually for hours up until that point, but as I spoke, he grew still and quietly said, “I know more than you think I know”.

Not quite the response I was expecting...it truly rattled me a bit.

I wasn’t sure what he’d found out- maybe it was about the nights I stayed out with strangers, the nights I explored altered states of mind, or the men I discovered sensuality with, or the moments of love and delight in cities across the country, or really anything I’ve done over the last 5 years since leaving home.

So I playfully asked what he meant, i tried to tease it out of him. He wouldn't tell me. 

Actually, he couldn’t. He couldn't say it outloud.

He kept blushing, saying he preferred not to think of me like that.

He didn’t want to think of it. He couldn’t stand to look it in the eye- to look ME in the eye- and still see goodness in that moment. 

Even when he tried, he couldn’t say it out loud. 

He said someone had sent it to him, and I knew. It was the excerpt of writing that I posted on snap chat where I detailed my experience doing ecstasy.  

“I wonder what I looked like, lying there, naked, shivering on the floor, tripping out of my mind, finding faces in the ceiling and listening to words spoken by the fan. Living every mothers worst nightmare for their daughter. 

He was outside, smoking- I found it sweet he did it outside because he knows I hate the smell. He had walked out after he stood there looking at me, huddled and ragged as I was, pouring my heart out to him about how I felt I was inherently broken. 

That I was evil and bad and fragmented and I will never truly heal, only keep putting on masks. That I will never be truly loved because I only show my lovers versions of me and the real me is constantly at war with herself in her mind. My eyes turned to him, pleading silently for understanding, compassion, connection. 

His sharp pity and long silence broke with “You are so beyond help”. And then he walked out to smoke weed outside because I hate the smell of it inside. 

As I lay on the cold tile floor of the mansion in west lake, playing pretend that I was not disgusted by this man, that this little life was ours, I felt so small, so scared. 

Nothing was right and every shadow of my mind was on dancing display in front of me. Every one of my demons scaled the walls beside me and began to build their shrine on the ceiling while the fan spoke an eerie language.”

Yes, if I were an old school, devout Mormon father reading those words, I would shrivel away from them. I would be horrified. 

But that is his flaw, not mine. 

He is so scared of anything perceived to not be “holy” that he can’t find compassion for his daughter in a moment of terror and weakness. He can't even talk to me about a moment that scared me to my core, he couldn't show up and be a father in that moment, because he didn't know how to handle it.

Do you know what I feel when I read those words? I feel like I want to hold myself, I feel like I want to scoop her up and listen to her talk for hours, and let her know she is safe.

I want to hear more about her mind and her experiences, and I ache for the fear she felt. 

Those words draw respect out of me, not fear. I met my demons eye to eye as I lay exposed and vulnerable in the most literal sense. 

And I still became who I am today. Not in spite of, because of. It’s just who I am.

This story is not some anomaly, or some mistake I made, it is the essence of who I am. Within this story you get the most sacred glimpse into my mind and my world. It is beautiful.

There’s nothing to be afraid of, it’s just me. 

It’s just me.

And I am not afraid of myself because I know I am good. 

I am not afraid of anything because I have seen the devil and lived on. I know where my center is and I know that no matter what I experience- whether it be wonderful or heinous- that I can come back to my center. I know that even in those moments, I had some of the most powerful dialogue with God that I've ever had, and that through the fog I found myself discussing the extend of my heavenly fathers love- precisely because the man I was with couldn't provide anything close to it.

That is power.

Obedience to some line of morals is not power. Experiencing life and still choosing to believe in your own goodness is power. 

Yes, it hurt to see the fear in his eyes as he looked at me, but I knew in my heart of hearts that his fear had nothing to do with me, and everything to do with him.

I am not ashamed of that moment, I find it beautiful. 

I would have loved to discuss with my dad everything I saw, felt, heard, and learned that night- both about myself and God- but his fear stopped him. 

He didn’t get to experience all of me because he could not look me in the eyes and meet me for all that I am without flinching. 

It’s a strange thing to watch your dad be so small like that. So narrow minded. He thought I should feel shame, instead I felt pity- for him. He doesn't get to hear about the conversations I had with God.

Dad, I am going to say fuck. I am going to experiment, I am going to drink, I am going to explore my sensuality, I am going to do the shrooms I bought on the boardwalk, I am going to do things that you have deemed evil, unworthy, and inappropriate.

And I'm inviting you to meet my eyes anyways. I'm inviting you to believe in my goodness anyways.

I'm asking you to love me anyways. 

Because I do. 

xoxo,

Beth