Jesus saves his documents as drafts.

I think it was Father's Day when my dad first realized we planned on fleeing the state.

"I don't know why you guys are in such a hurry to leave," he said, glowering at me dubiously.

I didn't really know what to say then, but now, looking back, this has been a long time coming. For the first half of elementary school, we lived in apartment complex, and my parents would often speak of purchasing a house. Sometimes these conversations would involve the notion of moving out of statee. When the topic came up, I remember feeling my heart flutter with excitement. I would tell them that I wouldn't mind going to a new school, and I'd daydream of the new person I could become in a new state. I'd think of the new clothes I'd wear, and how I wouldn't be so shy or quiet anymore.

But nothing ever came of it. So, when I was in the fourth grade, we moved into a small brick house just a few blocks away from the apartment complex.

When I was 16, I made my first attempt to leave this place. I went back to my Scandinavian roots, leaving for a country where I didn't speak the language, to live with a much older man whom I didn't know very well. I struggled to make it work, but the experience left my heart sick, and I eventually returned to Utah, defeated.

I'm not exactly sure I could point out a simple reason why I need to leave. I've never felt comfortable here. I've always been too small for my skin. If I sought to find kindred spirits in SLC, I'd inevitably see the same tired old faces with whom I've already burned a few bridges. There's no niche for me, no culture here where I could eke out a comfortable existence. And the long, long summer here makes me tired, stupid, and lazy. My eyes hurt when I go outside, and my fair skin makes me painfully aware if I've been out for too long.

The situation is not helped by the ghosts I see all around me. We live just down the road from my old house. The first 20 years of my life didn't go so well, and every time I drive by the house on my way to the grocery store, I feel those years, and I feel haunted. It was to that particular small rectangular structure where I would retreat to to lick my wounds after experiencing all my awkward teenage agonies. It was there, when I was 20 years old, that my mom told me she was leaving my dad. And it was that very same day that I got in my first car accident just a few blocks away.

Some good things happened here too, of course. In that same house, I spoke to my future love for the first time, and I put on my wedding dress in my old, blue-walled and spectral room.

But being here reminds me of all the ways I'm different now. I'll never be that person again, and so, I'll never behave in the manner that is expected of me by this place. I love my dad, and when I move away from him, I know I'll miss him dearly. But I have to escape, in order to be free to be the person I really am.

And that is why I will leave the desert, and my ghosts, behind me.