The Disconnect

By Desiree Pomerleau

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It’s the Disconnect

Most of all, it’s lonely.

When I visit home, there’s an invisible weight hanging in the room. It’s the thoughts unuttered on both sides, what everyone wishes to say, but doesn’t. These are the people with whom I used to be most at ease; I share DNA with them, a name, and for many years, a home. They were my whole world. I revisit the days where all seven of us rode the bike path to afternoon picnics at Fred John’s, taping the best moments with that old Canon recorder. I remember all the camping trips to British Columbia and the Lion King soundtrack replayed and memorized word for word. I remember helping my mom make caramel popcorn in the kitchen while my dad threw bananas and ice cream in the blender and then everyone watched Funniest Home Videos together.

I was part of something even bigger than my family.

I lived my religion, heart and mind. At age ten I was at the podium talking about Jesus and Joseph and how true it all is. I took the sacrament, paid ten per cent of all my money to the church, loved God, felt distant from Jesus but knew he was important, read my patriarchal blessing weekly and focused intently on the sentence about the righteous man I was promised to spend eternity with. Each date who picked me up could be that man, but he wasn’t. I graduated from Seminary and Institute, I played the organ in church, led choir, taught religion classes, led activity groups, worked in Church Welfare and Public Relations, never saying no to anything they asked me to do. I always tried to look put together at church so that someone would notice me. But they didn’t.

By the time I turned twenty-five, all my friends were married, and I had never even had a boyfriend (was there something wrong with me?) and I received countless priesthood blessings, one after another, and I listened for something about that man God promised me, and those unborn children, how I just wanted them to come, and I went to the temple and I didn’t feel peace, and I took the sacrament and I felt numb because the guy in the front row at church was still not paying attention to me, and now he’s married to that blonde and they have two kids, and I am still alone and I wonder if anyone will ever love me. Jesus loves me, and maybe he will listen if I pray hard enough.

Years go by. Marriage, the thing I dreamed most about, never happened, but I learn to reconcile that with my new dreams and I hope I can find contentment in spite of. I find myself in a career I love, and I do find contentment. And I tell my sister I have different dreams now because I had to make new dreams, and she has two kids and another on the way, and she is just sad for me. -- Being a mother is the most worthy and fulfilling calling, didn’t you know that? Aren’t you jealous? Every woman should be submissive and sweet to her husband, they say so in the temple, didn’t you know that? Marriage is hard, Desiree. You’ll understand how hard it can be when you get married.-- And I hold her sweet babies, and I can’t help but feel so alone.

Somehow along the way, I changed my mind about it all: my testimony and tithing and God, and church every week, and saying yes to everything, and waiting until marriage to a righteous Mormon. I’m not doing any of it anymore and I don’t believe it anymore. I start saving my ten percent and making my own decisions and drinking coffee. I try wine for the first time, and I get tipsy so fast, and the hangover is excruciating, but I learn. I believe in other ideas but the community is gone, and I have to make new friends, and my family usually judges me silently, but sometimes loudly. You are being led by Satan, they say, and my mom emails me, what did she do wrong for me to end up like this? So I close up. There’s nothing to say that won’t hurt them, so why say it? So much I do in my life is evil in their eyes, so why mention it? So I entertain them about other things: work, friends, books, movies, and they listen. But they seem distant and far away. It’s the disconnect. And it’s lonely.

I am home in my apartment. It’s a safe zone where I can be myself. I wear a sleeveless top and I go out with the guy I’ve been seeing, and he has met the family maybe twice, and he can’t register where I’m coming from. The blank expression on his face when I tell him my family must not see me wearing that top or the vodka cran in my hand, and they certainly must not know he sleeps over sometimes. Would he fit in with them? The same way I don’t fit in anymore with my family. And there are so many things he needs to know, like for instance, please don’t ever drink coffee around my mom, I say. No, they will not like your tattoos. No, they will not be comfortable if we live together first or have alcohol at our wedding. And I imagine my wedding dress and how beautiful I would look, but my mother will disagree because my shoulders are showing.

And he doesn’t understand any of this. They never do. So much disconnect.

It’s terribly, terribly lonely.

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