Bad Mormon by Heather Gay

Author:Heather Gay
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gallery Books
Published: 2023-02-07T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

One night, I heard a wailing noise coming from the other missionaries’ room. The sounds of a crying missionary were commonplace, but these cries seemed different. More primal. I needed to make sure she at least wasn’t bleeding. I walked into her bedroom and saw her with her knees bunched up to her chest and her arms cradling her legs as she rocked back and forth and back and forth.

“They’re all going to hell!” she cried. “They’re all going to hell!”

I looked at her and thought to myself, “She’s lost it. She’s completely lost it! She’s batshit crazy. But if I really believe the same things she does, she’s right. They are all going to hell.”

The sinners on the Côte d’Azur weren’t as keen on our stop drinking, stop indulging, stop sexing, stop smoking message as we had hoped. It felt like we were Americanizing them. And to be fair, we were trying our hardest to; it just wasn’t taking. The church seemed to run so much better in the United States compared with what we saw in France. Leadership was spotty, there weren’t enough priesthood holders to maintain the organization. Women converts outnumbered the men four to one. Gems of the gospel were getting lost in translation, and the people we encountered on the street were rejecting us at every turn. “Get out of our country. You’re a cult.”

If the church was true, she was right. They were all going to hell.

As much as I didn’t want to see myself in this missionary, I did. When you’re surrounded by your community and the tropes are reinforced at every turn, it’s hard to remain immune. When you see a missionary rocking on her bunk lamenting the corruption of the people you serve, it’s hard not to think, “Do I really believe this? Why am I wasting my time?”

I distinctly remember waking up the following morning, feeling overwhelmed and exhausted, and placing my feet on the cold tile floor. I sat there for a moment, looking down at my toes and dreading the thought of standing up and starting my day.

How am I going to do this? The hill I’m walking up is getting good and steep.

All I have to do is wake up at six every morning, roll out of bed, put my feet on the floor, stand up, and show up.

I couldn’t continue to serve with full energy of heart and spirit like I had been anymore, but I could certainly do the work. I could put my feet on the floor, put on my tag, and sonner, sonner, sonner, over and over again everyday until my mission was over. And for the next four hundred days, that would have to be enough.

I look back on my ability to relentlessly preach the Word of God and attribute it almost entirely to the Glinda bubble that kept me shut off from the world and shut off from the most natural parts of myself. My bubble kept me safe, but it also kept me separated.

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