Little Lost Girl

Today's essay is one of, if not THE, most personal essay I wrote this semester. We were given the assignment to write a pilgrimage essay. For this type of writing, you go somewhere and write about the feelings and memories of it and how the way the place is now brings those back. I struggled with what to write for this. We were taught many different types of essay styles, but the pilgrimage was the one required essay and I wanted it to be good. This is what I came up with. And being Friday, I'm including a song. I feel like "Lost" by Katy Perry explains it perfectly. Happy Friday Everyone!

Little Lost Girl

            I can never remember if it’s 5^th or 4^th East I’m supposed to take. Looping near the back to park by the fountain is what I want, but I can double back up the hill if I have to. I pull up 4^th East, curving me around the little look-out hill bench thing and end up exactly where I want to be.

            I find it strange that this place is the one part of Cache Valley that continually draws me back. For me, it’s the valley landmark. I’ve tried so many times to get lost in this place, just drive and alternate between right and left turns to see where I end up. Maybe it’s the grid system, but no matter where I go, I can always see the sandstone brick, making me not lost. My mother would argue the second point. When I was a child she would tell my brothers and I “you’re never lost if you can see the temple.” At least not in LDS populated Utah, where temples and church buildings seem to be as popular as 7-Eleven’s. When we would take trips across the state, we would play “spot the temple” and see how many we could point out. It was fun when I was a kid, but things changed and the white walls didn’t have quite the same meaning for me as I got older. The attraction baffles me. I’m only in the valley for school, but I find myself driving past the Logan Temple every chance I get.

            Being a Sunday, the place is deserted. It’s okay with me. The less people gawking at me and my pink owl hat as I scribble away in my notebook, the better. Everyone that would be here are crammed into the church houses since the Temple is only used for certain events and religious ordinances. I could have gone to church today. I was awake early enough. But I didn’t.

            I fully planned on sitting on the cement steps that overlook Logan with the temple behind me, but someone has other plans. The big metal gates are locked, keeping me out. Ironic? Maybe. I’m not allowed inside the brick walls either. I haven’t been inside any temple since I was a junior in high school. So, if I can’t get in, why do I keep coming back?

            My car is a lot warmer than the crisp fall air. The fountain, covered for the winter, is right in front of me. I can almost see my sixteen year-old self sitting on the edge, the summer sun bleaching my hair, with my female church youth group surrounding me.

            “It’s a fairy-tale castle. One day my prince charming will bring me here.” That’s what I had been trained to think and want.

            That was before I knew about my brother. Before I started to question what I wanted. Before I walked away.

            The group of young woman taking pictures with their leaders outside the gates makes me smile. It’s freezing being November and all, but they look happy. Their innocence and pure desire to believe is more than apparent in their giggling smiles. In a way, I envy them. I was once that way, trusting because I was told to. Sometimes, I wish I could go back to being twelve and being described as “a spiritual giant” by adults.

            There’s an older guy in a jogging suit circling the sidewalk. He smiles as he passes me in my car before looking back at the castle. He seems lost, like me, and I wonder if his situation is like mine. In Sunday School they told us it was easy to get lost. I believed it. But everyone gets lost differently and I don’t remember hearing a remedy for my kind of lost.

            “Just go back to church,” seems to be everyone’s answer to my situation.

            But it’s not that simple. I did go back, right after my break-up this summer to see if church was what I felt like I was missing. I dressed up, found a ward I knew people in and went, telling myself it was where I wanted to be. But I didn’t feel what everyone professed to feel when they were there. I just felt empty and like a poser. Some would think that when I’m sitting at the temple, it would be the same thing since the church buildings are supposed to be an extension of the temples, but I don’t. When I’m sitting on the cement steps I just feel sad. And lost. And confused.

            Going by the checklist, all I’d have to do to get back inside the stone walls would be hit up some sacrament meetings, pay forth 10% of my paychecks and brush the dust off my scriptures. There wouldn’t be any major forgiveness to ask for, just commitment on my part. It sounds easy, but I can’t convince myself that I really want it back. I left for a reason. A big part being the inability to accept others I saw manifested in members of multiple congregations. Part of me wonders if the thought of returning to the LDS church is just for the guys. In Cache Valley there seems to only be two types of males. The one’s who only want good Molly Mormons to take to the temple and live the bubble life and the one’s looking for a hookup. I don’t fit in either group.

            Seeing so many of my friends and people my age, a young 20, get married in the temple doesn’t help much. They all seem so happy, but I’ve spent forever believing the ceremony venue does not guarantee a happy-ever-after. It’s about the two people in the relationship and their commitment to each other.

            So with everything I feel and don’t feel, I don’t have a clear answer. There’s something about this place, the idea of a fairy tale maybe, that draws me back over and over. Maybe one of these times there will be an answer waiting.