She was the only girl I had ever loved.
Like that.
And after that, no girl ever seduced me in a way that captured my heart — like that — ever again.
I was 15 when we first met. It started slow and came on fast.
I forget how we met, but it began with a crush on a boy. That led to a girl. Who left me for another girl. A girl who I thought had been my friend.
To be a girl myself who loved another girl was a sin. A mortal one. My mother said so. Jehovah said so. Everyone at the Kingdom Hall said so.
Except the girl I loved lived at the Kingdom Hall. She was the darling there, the daughter of an Elder. Whispers that she was headed for Bethel filled our ears. Brooklyn, New York, was the place to be. At the time, it was the HQ for Jehovah Witnesses.
My mom from Taiwan would prefer I go to Bethel rather than Stanford, where my dad from China, wanted us kids to go. Mom, like the rest of the Witnesses, wanted us to be a Pioneer, or at least, an Auxiliary Pioneer, to preach the Good News to all the goats, every chance we got, to turn them into sheep.
We were going to live forever. We were going to escape Armeggedon.
We were the chosen ones.
. . .
Except I had chose her. And for a little while, she had chosen me. But if we were truly going to be together, we’d lose the Forever Life.
And that would mean yet one more rule broken. We had already broken so many of Jehovah’s Rules.
I walked through life often wracked with shame. One of my favorite stories in the Bible was the one about the Prodigal Son. How after sinning he returned to the welcoming arms of his father.
I was always yearning to be welcomed back.
But what I didn’t know then was that the only person to welcome me back was myself.
Now, looking back, I see how it had all unfolded.
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