The Worst Symptom Was the Praying

It’s 2013, and our car starts making a strange sound. I have been at my book editing job for almost a year, my first “real” job out of college. My wife, Valerie, and I have a baby now. I am supposed to be in full adult mode, and the vehicle issue feels like a mark on my attempts at adulting perfection. I know nothing about cars, but the auto repair shop in Springville fixes the hiccup with little issue. However, now I can’t drive ten minutes to the movie theater without significant anxiety. Driving thirty minutes to my parents’ place is torture. Anything more than that is unspeakable. Driving brings tightness in my chest and overwhelming, catastrophizing thoughts. But the worst symptom is the praying.

Jumping back, it’s September 1999. I remember the month because it was right before my twelfth birthday. My parents and my older brother are watching The Sixth Sense, rented from Hollywood Video in American Fork, Utah. I’m in the next room over, trying to watch something more light-hearted on the other TV, maybe some Whose Line is It Anyway? But all I hear is the ghost story, and I glean enough from just the sounds to be terrified. I’ve always been sensitive. I feel sick for a week, even on my birthday—thoughts racing, an unending stomach ache, nightmares. But the worst symptom is the praying.

It’s 2001, I’m a teenager now, and the adults in church have started teaching us more and more about the dangers of “lustful” thoughts, and we’ve memorized Matthew 5:28: “But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.” In my Book of Mormon, I’ve also underlined in red Alma 39:5, which literally says that sexual impurity is second only to murder. Both my church leaders and the scriptures are telling me often that sexual thoughts are anathema to Mormon heaven.

I already have a tendency toward obsessive thoughts, and my perspective on girls has become the fabled pink elephant analogy, but on overdrive and without me understanding it fully: if you think about girls, even one time, you’re a sinner, and sinners don’t go to heaven unless they repent. Of course I think about girls. I can’t stop because