Restlessness

Feeling markedly overwrought by the trap my family is in, I paced back and forth with a restless need to act. I was blown away by how drastically things have changed for me in such a short time span. I knew it was going to be one of those restless nights. The driving need to act I experienced that night was tormenting. What was I to do past midnight in a small town to satiate my desire for change?

Rather than stay in and accept defeat, I slipped on my shoes, pushed the front door open, and started walking. With no destination in mind, I paraded north. A block and a half later, I stopped at a well lit intersection. A road to the east led to the southern parking lot of my old middle school. Next to me, a street lamp illuminated big black letters on a yellow sign that read, “Dead End.” I laughed, how poetic. A handful of thoughts left my mind before I could linger on them. I won’t be traveling down that road anymore. I continued walking, wondering if I was the only one in town wandering its empty streets so late.

As I continued onward I found myself taking the same route I had taken countless times as a child to my old elementary school. It brought eerie feelings from a time when I was a powerless child, when many adults in the community were too concerned with the upkeep of their overbearing temperaments to positively impact our young lives. It was like walking through a time capsule. Everything was as it had been a decade ago, causing so many latent memories to emerge: a stretch of road that had no shade on hot days; an uneven sidewalk that made for first-rate bicycle ramps; a busy intersection that had seemed so perilous to us; the small old church we peeled paint off of; the place where an old acorn tree used to be (the same place where a friend stole my Silly Putty before pedaling away in nervousness); an old fence notorious for delivering splinters; and finally, childhood indoctrination ground zero.

The church building I had attended from age eight to seventeen was only a block away from my elementary school. As I approached it, the only words I could force out were, “There’s the lie.” I sat on the curb next to the building to take off my shoes and massage my feet. I sat baffled at how underrated my life had been because of the church.

As I got on my feet and circled the perimeter of the building, more memories surfaced: All of the silly Sunday school lessons about giant boats, floating cities, and Jesus’s magic tricks; waiting in the car each week while my mother gossiped; being the first member baptized in the new ward; mischievously playing with the equipment in the clerk’s office; all of the ridiculously dumbed down priesthood lessons; and all the members in my ward whom I shared nothing in common with.

Somehow, remembering all those things allowed me to stamp out a part of my past that was still oppressing me. By the time I got home, I was more restless than before, but for a different reason. I don’t know how else to explain it, but I had an urge to run through endless wild fields. After lying on the wet grass in the backyard and staring at the sky, I poised myself, grasped for a moment at the soggy earth below me, and dashed to the front sidewalk. In my mind I ran free for hours.

I welcome the restless nights to come.