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You are ten and confused because there is a boy in your class who smiles at you like you personally hung all of the stars in the sky. His eyes are warm, soft brown, his hair lays neatly-combed against his head, and the way he says the two syllables of your name makes your heart twitch against your ribs in ways you can't comprehend, ways that you aren't equipped to understand at such a young age.
His name is Steven, and he tells you that you're his best friend in a too-loud whisper, under blanket forts in the dark of your living room while your parents sleep upstairs.
You hold his hand any time the two of you orbit close enough to touch for a full year before your parents tell you, brows creased with suspicions unspoken, that boys aren't meant to hold hands with other boys. Because that isn't Heavenly Father's plan for young boys, Connor, they tell you, and you don't understand, but you let the distance drift between you and Steven, because you are eleven and terrified of what they tell you hell is like.
You are twelve and Steven calls himself Steve now, which you hate, but you are quickly realizing that the two of you are rapidly losing the authority to comment on each other's life choices. You have no room to talk about his nicknames, he has no room to talk about the way you let your parents squeeze you into the box of an ideal son.
He doesn't understand that you are the oldest son in a Mormon family, and that comes with a heavy price.
You are thirteen and you now know what your classmates meant when they told you that puberty fucking sucks. You are a walking ball of emotion, and you cry at the drop of a hat. You find yourself missing Steven at night, when you're staring up at your ceiling after lights-out, waiting for sleep to pull you under.
Your father believes that you are turning out to be a pansy, blames your mother, your older sister, your younger sister for making you this way. He asks you why you can't be like the Snyder boy, who won the middle school spelling bee, and who volunteers with the church of his own free will, and not because his parents force him to.
You point out that you came in third in the spelling bee, that your mother framed the yellow ribbon and the certificate, that it's displayed proudly in the hall, and are immediately sent to bed without dinner.
You are fourteen and his name is Peter. He's Catholic, and while he finds your belief system to be more than a little bit ridiculous, you think his is, too, and besides that, you don't spend much time talking anyway. He kisses you, and it's so revolutionary that tears shine in your eyes when you pull back to look at him. It continues this way every Wednesday, with your parents believing that you are staying for tutoring sessions after school, and his parents thinking he's at the library studying for the honor's placement tests coming at the end of the year.
You are at the library, but your books remain less touched than his hands and face and shoulders between stacks of books about mythology that no one has touched in decades.
Your older sister catches you one afternoon, and no amount of begging, Jenny, please, please don't tell, please, I'll stop being like this, please, I can change can stop her from telling your parents.
You are fifteen and back at school in September, with a plastic smile that you learned to paste on at camp. Peter approaches you and you brush him off with that smile, with an apology that's taken as insincere at face value while sparks light your brain, at the back of your eye sockets. You remember what the counselors say, and smile in the wake of his crumpled, defeated expression, and you know that you are the sort of broken that will never be fixed.
You are sixteen, and everything is fine.
You are seventeen and you are not fine, have never been fine, will never be fine again. You are filled with an awesome sadness, the sort that poets wrote about just before taking their own lives, and for a few long, dreadful nights, you think it wouldn't be so bad to do the same. Your bitter tears feel profound, and you scrawl your emotions in green ink into the pages of a composition book by the light of your phone screen at three in the morning on school nights, when the world is quiet and you are alone enough that you can turn your brain back on.
Your mother finds the book when she strips the fitted sheet off of your bed, because you had been careless on laundry day. You know this because you find it in the middle of your desk when you come home from school one afternoon, far and away from where it had been hidden under your mattress. She doesn't ask you if you want to die, and you do not tell her that you do.
You are eighteen and you wonder how anyone can think with the weight of the world pressing on the tender flesh at the back of their eyeballs. Your sister tells you this is a typical experience for a high school senior who is also spending exorbitant amounts of time reading and rereading rules and regulations and religious texts, but you feel as if your experience is uniquely yours in that you are nothing but a husk of a boy at the cusp of adulthood, far too empty and broken to consider his own health.
You graduate salutatorian, and second-best is never good enough for your father. You are invited to a graduation party, but you aren't allowed to go, because Peter was also invited, and your mother insists it would be a step backward.
You spend the evening crying into your copy of the Book of Mormon, hot tears blurring the ink of your annotations.
You are nineteen and boarding a plane for the first time in your whole life. You are going to the other side of the planet, and the only person who you have spoken to in the three hours since your family left you at security is your mission companion. His name is Christopher Thomas, and he is sweet in the way that golden retriever puppies are sweet, with blond hair and big brown eyes that broadcast his emotions in 1080p.
He clutches your hand at take off and landing, and you let him. You return his nervous, sheepish little grin with one that is plastic and artificial, because your body burns and your stomach is cold and heavy.
You are twenty and your district leader has returned home to Kansas, and the Mission President appoints you the new district leader. He says that you show extreme dedication to your faith, and strong determination, and that he's sure your district will thrive under your watchful eye. You disagree wholeheartedly, but you still stammer a thanks and find it in yourself to force a smile that he can hear over the phone. You are told that there are two more missionaries who will be joining you in Uganda, and that you should expect them in the next few weeks.
You are overcome with nerves as soon as the phone is back on the hook, and Elder Thomas sits by your bedside until your brain drops back into your skull and you know your own name again. You do your best to peel your tongue from its velcro grip on the roof of your mouth, to thank him, but he shushes you with a teeny smile and a pat to your shoulder.
You are still twenty when Elders Price and Cunningham arrive in the village.
You are still twenty when Kevin has his first hell dream while in Africa, and you stupidly twist your fingers together and ask him if you were in it.
You are still twenty when Kevin Price laughs for three minutes because both of your middle names are James.
You are twenty-one, and everything that could go wrong, has. You couldn't have ever imagined, while on the plane here, that you would be one of many co-founders of a brand new religion with very few rules, but as you sit in the living area and look around at the people crammed close together on the mismatched, sagging furniture, you decide that this is what your path had been all along. Your eyes drag across a pair staring back at you, deep brown, crinkled at the corners as a smile beams across the room at you.
Your palms grow slick around the book in your hands, and yet, you smile back. Something warm and small, clumsy, as if you aren't quite sure of the mechanics. You decide you aren't, as you look back down at the page of your book, trying desperately to shut down the bitterness staining the edges of your good night. An old dog can be taught new tricks. You can re-learn smiles.
You are twenty-two and waiting for your suitcase at baggage claim. Your heart is broken, smashed to dust and poured haphazardly into the big, warm hands of Kevin Price, seconds before climbing onto the bus and never looking back. There are too many ifs and not enough whens, and you can hear your little sister's voice now, telling you that pulling open your ribcage and inviting another delinquent Mormon boy to climb inside is one of your more idiotic decisions.
She meets you at arrivals with a tight hug and a messy kiss to your cheek, introduces you to her girlfriend, and a part of you aches with jealousy. You do not express this, though you know she can read it in your face, because Susan and Fiona are all you have for certain, now.
You are twenty-four and stumbling, twenty minutes late for work with a thermos of coffee tucked under your arm as you throw open the door, much to the surprise of the man standing on the other side, hand raised, about to knock. He is paler than when you last saw him, weary, but his cheeks are rounder. He tells you that he's sorry for keeping you waiting so long, but you are already in motion, throwing your arms around his shoulders and weeping as your thermos clatters onto the front steps, coffee trickling down the concrete.
You tell him that it's okay, that you would have waited lifetimes for this moment, and Kevin says nothing, just presses you close to his chest.
You are twenty-six and it is two in the morning, and you are desperately in love with a boy whose hands shake when his happiness is too big for his body to handle. You are in love with the way his eyes glimmer when you catch his gaze lingering, and you are in love with the way he reaches for you instinctively while caught in the floating place between waking and sleep. He tells you he loves you every time you need to hear it, and even when you don't, and it sounds so sincere that you have no choice but to believe him, but to give him every ounce of feeling you've swallowed down for years.
You stroke his cheek and his eyes crack open, bleary, and in the moonlight drifting in through the curtains, he smiles at you like you personally hung all of the stars in the sky.