Day 92: On being done

After I realized I wasn’t going back to church, I started telling people: roommates, family, a few of my classmates.

“I’m done with the church,” I’d say.

That was my phrasing. Not I’ve left or I’m leaving or I’ve stopped going or I no longer believe —

I’m done.

What you might say at semester’s end or after crossing a finish line — that exclamation of joy at a hard thing endured and completed.

Or what you might hear from a person on a ledge, or from someone, exasperated, finally asking for a divorce after more than 25 years — unable to take it anymore.

But it’s also what comes to the lips of a 2-year-old, your nephew maybe, to say he wants no more to eat. “I’m done,” he says, bearing no malice to the food or the hand that feeds. Just a time when he wasn’t and now he is.

(This is Day 92 of a 100-day project. For more about When I Was Mormon, read the introductory post. To access older posts, visit latest stories and scroll down.)