We headed south.

We stopped in Gilroy and laughed about the aggressive stench of garlic. I got some much-needed new shoes and we ate at In and Out Burger – a particularly Californian experience at the time.

We drove out to Sequoia National Park.
Then back to the coast.
Then down Highway 1, soaking in the scenery.
I asked to stop at Hearst Castle. There were no tickets left for the day. Alas. Tragedy. We soldiered on.

None of it was planned. It was all spur-of-the-moment, let’s see what happens next traveling.

Freedom—real freedom—like I hadn’t felt in ages.

It took a few days for my body to catch up with the idea.

I didn’t have to wake up at a particular time, and study the scriptures with the right amount of enthusiasm for an hour, and I didn’t have to account to anyone, what I was doing with my hours….it felt wrong.

I had to stop myself from walking in lockstep with Mom, my body still convinced I had a companion assigned to me by God and paperwork. I had to remind myself I didn’t need her to go with me, when we stopped for gas and I needed to go to the restroom.

I could be alone now.

The thought put me in a cold sweat.

Putting on pants every day felt like rebellion. I kept checking for my name badge—muscle memory reaching for something that was no longer there.

For a person who very much did not want to live that way, I was having a surprisingly hard time stopping. I kept waiting to be corrected.

Part of it was practical. My entire life for the last year and a half had been scheduled down to the quarter hour. When to wake. When to study. When to eat. When to talk. When to think. Decisions had been removed from me like dangerous objects, and now they’d all been handed back at once. “No rules” sounds like freedom until you’ve been trained to believe that rules are the only thing keeping you safe.

And part of it was identity. I hadn’t just quit a job—I had stepped out of a costume I’d worn nonstop, one that came with a name, a purpose, and a script. “Missionary” had answered every question: who I was, why I was there, what I should be doing next. Without it, I felt blank. Unassigned. Like a file someone had closed but not saved.

We had hours to drive while I tried to dissect my behavior.

Jason and his wife Estela flew out and met us in LA. Since we were in California, we figured we may as well hit an amusement park. We decided on Six Flags – since we had never been before – and drove out.

We awkwardly traded stories during the hour-long drive as I tried to re-acclimate to my previous life.

My family members kept looking at me like I had just risen from the dead…the attention made me very self-conscious.

When we got near to Six Flags we started to get suspicious. And as we pulled up to the gates, we realized that the park was closed. It was a weekday, in December. Of course they were closed.

It was like we were there to reenact the scene from the National Lampoon’s Vacation.

We laughed as dad drove back and forth across all the empty entrance lanes in mock outrage.

And then went back to our hotel.

Oh well. We went to Knotts Berry Farm the next day instead. We made sure they were open first. It was a lot of fun.

And then the question I’d been avoiding caught up with us.

As we started home, for the first time I started worrying about what I was going to do when I got home.

I wanted out of the church—but I still wasn’t convinced it wasn’t true. Which is a very specific kind of mental hell: wanting to leave the building while still believing it might be on fire, but for a reason. I had doubts, plenty of them, but I’d been trained to “put them on the shelf.” Don’t question too much. You’ll understand later. Obedience first. Understanding eventually. Maybe.

For Mormons, this is not a metaphor—we really do imagine a mental shelf where doubts are stored indefinitely while you promise yourself that you’ll circle back once you’re more obedient and thus more attuned to the spirit and revelation.

Mine was already bowing under the weight.

My non-existent therapist would say I was dealing with loss of structure, loss of identity, and a sudden anxiety-inducing transition.
My very real brain solved this by occasionally praying over breakfast cereal.

And I moved back in with Mom and Dad—older, wiser, and somehow less sure of everything.