I said goodbye to Cedarville fifteen days ago, and I’m still not sure what to think.

There’s anger, of course. Four years of insults, hate mail, conflict and to top it all off, an incredibly unhealthy relationship with the president’s son. My eighteen year old self couldn’t have possibly imagined going to the police three times over any ex-boyfriend, much less that one, but here I am. I despise the feeling of being ignored and disregarded, but that’s what I got at Cedarville. The topic didn’t matter. It didn’t matter whether I voiced opposition to my school’s GLBT policies, or supported feminism, or asked for protection from a former partner. Nobody cared and nothing got done. I don’t have much hope that Cedarville will ever change. It certainly won’t under the current administration. But I did my part and now I wash my hands of it.

There’s gratitude, too. Thanks to Cedarville, I am able to defend a variety of positions. Evangespeak doesn’t faze me. I no longer have the urge to break furniture when somebody says “I love gay people but they’re still going to hell.” There’s only so many times one can be called a babykiller before it totally loses its shock value. Fred Phelps doesn’t scare me. James Dobson still does, but that is because I believe that fanaticism cloaked in respectability is far more dangerous than blatant extremism. With Phelps you know what you’re getting. Cedarville, and the brand of Christianity it represents, is more insidious. Sexism becomes chivalry or, better yet, complementarianism. Homophobia becomes scriptural truth. Academic inquiry is greeted with a censor in the PR department. But thanks to my four years in the ‘Ville, I see it for what it is, and I know how to fight it.

And there are good people here. Very good people. That night in the hospital could have been my last, and without their support it very well could have been, especially because of what happened afterward. Ben died. Barely a month after I was released and told to invest in a therapist, Ben died. I will never forget that day, the way my brain refused to process the news until I walked out into my yard and saw the coroners and the police for myself. I will never forget the way we sat around, barely speaking, staring out the windows. It rained that day and it rained for days afterward. And the most random memories still hit me sometimes. The first time I met Ben he attempted to guess my major: “No! Don’t tell me! Early childhood education? No? Some other kind of education? Nursing?” He guessed everything but my actual field. It made me laugh.

I’m not sure why I thought of that night. But Ben was a good person. For as long as I knew him, I never saw him do anything to hurt anyone. But he’s dead, and my ex is still walking around. For weeks I raged at the injustice of that, I longed for an answer. I know now that there isn’t one. Ben made his choice. Now I have to make mine.

In the past two months, I almost died, and my housemate almost died, and my ex-boyfriend threatened me, and Ben killed himself. Those two months alone would have radically changed my life. But in the past four years, I left the church of my childhood. I participated in my first protest and experienced censorship. I made friends and lost them. I fell in love and I lost that too. These feet of mine have walked in Appalachian forests, stony Maine shores and Ohio’s endless cornfields. They’ve walked on Welsh castle walls, green Irish fields, London pavement, and the streets of Rio.

I don’t know where I’ll go next. I do know that it will be on my own volition, and I’ll carry these four years for the rest of my life.

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