Severing ties to these theatrics was easy. But for some time afterward, I retained an intense hunger for devotion itself. For about five years—the end of high school, the beginning of college—I turned my attention inward, tried to build a church on the inside, tried to understand faith as something that could draw me closer to something overwhelming and pure. I kept a devotional journal, producing a record of spiritual longing that was fierce and jagged and dissolving. I pleaded for things I still find very recognizable. Help me to not put on an act of any kind, I wrote. I told God that I wanted to live in accordance with my beliefs, that I wanted to diminish my own sense of self-importance, that I was sorry for not being better, and that I was grateful for being alive. It’s hard to draw the line between taking pleasure in God’s purpose and aligning God’s purpose with what I take pleasure in, I wrote, between entries where I tried to understand if it was inherently wrong to get drunk. (At my school, you could be expelled for character-based spiritual offenses such as partying, being gay, or getting pregnant.) I stood between both sides of my life, holding the lines that led to them, trying to engage with a tension that I stopped being able to feel. Eventually, almost without realizing it, I let one side go.