The Salt Lake City Years (’13-’16)

I arrived in Salt Lake City, Utah not really knowing why–just felt like I should be up there. I think I remember feeling something like “move to Salt Lake, and buy a house,” something like that, so I headed north.

I didn’t have a place to stay ahead of time, and since I was used to living out of my car, it didn’t bother me a lick to go back to that for a little while. I decided to stay in the area where my job was, and I looked up the church congregation that corresponded to the area where my office building was (If you’re not familiar, LDS congregations are structured geographically. If you live in x place, you pertain to x congregation).

Anyway, I went to church that Sunday, sat next to some wonderful elderly people, later had a lady from the congregation offer to let me rent her place for a super cheap price while she was staying in Florida for an extended period of time, and badda bing badda boom, I was living in SLC. The duplex was just a block from where I worked, and I quickly settled in to the new digs and the new church congregation.

Life was both the same and very different up there.

Work was pretty much the same. I still struggled with my job. It was really hard for a number of reasons, but one of them was that I felt like I was wasting my life and talents, that I had so much to offer the world, and that I was squandering precious time.

At the same time, though, I felt like I was supposed to be there, so I stayed.

I enjoyed being part of my new congregation. There were some really wonderful people there, and I became really close friends with one of the single women in the congregation. She was just coming back to church after a long time away from it, and I was sort of there to have her back through it.

Anyway… life up there was generally pretty good.

I wasn’t dating anyone. In fact, it’d been since 2010 that I’d gone out on a real date. Truthfully, I’d felt like I ought not to, as I felt my life was going a direction that I already understood, and dating wasn’t really a part of it for the time being. So, not worrying about that… I basically just worked, served in the church, visited old people who I thought might enjoy the company, hung out with my new friends, and just saved my money as much as I could for a future I expected to have.

In fact, not only did I save all my pennies, rarely spending money on myself, I didn’t take really any days off work for the same reason (for years, until I’d accrued so many paid days off that I wasn’t allowed to save up any more… had to use them). I figured that once the time came to get married and have a family, I’d have built up a very sizeable nest egg and also a huge chunk of paid time off, and I would be able to start off a marriage on that fabulous footing.

That was my plan, anyway.

I continued growing closer and closer to god. Sacrificing what I wanted now for what I wanted most, serving, following god as best I could. It was hard, but it was the closest I’d ever been to god, and I felt real peace.

I did relapse in my addiction, though. I think after like 19 months being clean while living in Provo the last time, and then I made it like another 16 months and relapsed again in Salt Lake.

Unfortunately, relapses began to be more frequent in Salt Lake for some reason.

Anyway, life was just pretty quiet. I didn’t find myself going on the big adventures I used to go on on a regular basis in the previous years. I was basically single minded toward that future I thought god had designed for me, and it was during the last year I spent in Salt Lake that said experience that I felt laid out a future I was waiting to come to pass actually started coming to pass exactly as I’d understood it was going to, exactly how god had told me. There were some challenges, but it was finally happening! That cycle of doubt, fear, reassurance, peace, and excitement, etc., was turning into pretty much just excitement. Years and years of following something that was so powerful but so hard for me to trust, and finally, it was coming true!

I was on top of the world.

And then… everything changed. It all fell apart. It took a handful of months to fully unfold… actually the better part of a year, really, but it did. Some lies were spread. I had a chance to fight the lies and fight for everything I’d been waiting for (plead my case, so to speak), but #1. It didn’t feel appropriate, given the circumstances, and #2. I wanted to have faith that it was still going to work out as I’d trusted it was going to. I had faith it would, and it didn’t feel right to fight, so I just watched and waited, expecting it to work out as promised.

What happened was different. I watched and waited for a number of agonizing months, not knowing what was going on, what was going to happen, trying to have faith, but fearing a well…

Then… then it all slipped away. Every last bit, what I thought I’d known and understood, what I thought god had told me… it fell apart. My pain went from a 5 to a 10. It was debilitating. I could barely function, barely breathe.

At first, I turned to god, like “What happened?!?!” I was bewildered. I didn’t know what to do.

On my birthday in 2015, I drove away from home, not knowing where I was going but knowing I was lost, confused, broken. I ended up driving for probably only a few hours before stopping off at a motel, where I stayed until after Christmas.

I just needed some time to try and sort through things.

So at the motel, I just prayed, pondered, journaled… and tried to figure everything out. I tried to find answers. But I had nothing.

I came home broken but still hopeful. Hopeful I’d misunderstood something somewhere. Hopeful that it was still all going to work out somehow. I felt like god told me it was going to, and that gave me peace for a time. I held onto that.

In the months that followed, I managed to get mostly back to “normal.” I didn’t have clear answers as to what had happened, why things didn’t turn out the way I felt god had clearly told me they would, but I still felt like he was communicating with me, and the messages I felt he gave me, as well as the priesthood blessings I received were all consistent. One thing my bishop said to me that still stands out… Things can be designed to be a certain way, but people still have their agency and can choose not follow what they’ve been inspired to do.

Anyway, the last few months of my time in Salt Lake City were spent about the same as the first couple years there, back in a routine, back trying to have faith in the future, back to trusting what I thought was more inspiration from god, and back to the cycle…

Then, one day something happened at work, and I was just done. It was time for me to go, and I left. I thought about taking a job with my really good friend who had a business, but that didn’t feel right for some reason, so I declined the offer.

I decided to take a year off, live off of savings, travel around visiting family and doing genealogy and whatnot. With the future I’d thought I was preparing for now up in the air and with no immediate need for the money I’d saved up, since I was going to be traveling, I made the decision to lend my savings to a person I’d come to know well in order to help them get going. I wrote the person a check that included about 95% of my net worth, I packed up all my things in a storage unit, and I said goodbye to Salt Lake City.

Next stop, the open road…

(Disclaimer… I’m so close to the end of my biographical sketches that I can almost taste it! Having started writing them I think about a year or more ago now, I’m finally seeing light at the end of the tunnel. Unfortunately, that’s making me a little less thorough, I think, just wanting to get done. It probably isn’t painting the most accurate picture because I’m sure I’m forgetting important pieces that should be included. I guess what I’m trying to say is this: This sketch, as well as many others, will likely be revisited, edited, added to, expanded upon, etc. We’ll consider this a first draft. I’ll probably put dates at the top of the each sketch so that y’all will know, if you care, if a given sketch has been updated. It’s 10:23 p.m. right now, and I’m tired, so this is probably the least coherent of all my sketches to date, but it’s about to be published anyway!)