Lillys Of The Field And The Ugly Duckling

“I quietly rage within the silence, where you left me cold and bare,

Abandoned by the wayside, in the shadow of your stare.

You watched as I retreated, shamed by who I am,

While you basked in fleeting joy, I pondered what I might have done.

You cast me off like trash, worthless in your eyes,

Lured me with false friendship, beneath deceitful skies.

With open heart I sought you, arms wide with hope unfurled,

But you led me to your hollow, your cult-like, vacant world.

You whispered care and kindness, then vanished like the night,

Your absence left me wounded, your betrayal seared so bright.

No closure to the chapter, no solace for my ache,

Just remnants of a friendship that was nothing but a fake.

I'm hurt by how you played me, with charm that turned to dust,

Innocence now shattered, left only with mistrust.

I deserved a better ending and not this cruel, unjust charade,

For in the ruins of our bond, a deeper pain was made.”

There are betrayals that feel like a slap, loud and immediate and undeniable. And then there are betrayals that arrive in whispers… slow, delicate dissolutions that leave no visible scar, only a pervasive emptiness. This is the story of the latter: of the soft erasure performed by a girl named Lilly, but truly performed by many girls like her… especially within the invisible, unspoken social structures that saturate Utah’s dominant culture. I was seventeen when she became my friend. Or rather, when she played the part of one. And I, starved for connection as a foster girl in her 3rd of 7 homes… and gladly accepted the illusion of her friendship.

Lilly was sunshine on the outside and I admired her greatly for it. She smiled when adults watched, wrapped her words in cotton candy, and performed a kindness that, at the time, I mistook for sincerity. It was only later, much later, that I would realize she had not extended her hand out of empathy or mutuality… but out of expectation. I was never a person to her. I was a project. A number. A numerical project of a soul to save.

I was raised in a religious environment… non-denominational… but with wavering conviction. My family was fractured, I was in foster care up for adoption and investigating the Mormon church at 17, lonely in high school… my mind was tumultuous with the symptoms of a disorder I couldn’t yet name. When Lily approached me in the hallways of our ward building one day, shiny straight hair and composed …unshakably confident… I felt something akin to hope. She saw me. Or so I thought.

She invited me to church and church activities. Young women events. Temple trips where I sat in the lobby til I was actually baptized. At first, I was flattered. Grateful. I assumed she wanted me there because she liked me, because something in me resonated with her. It wasn’t until I overheard her referring to me as “her baptism”, just once, and gave me an annoyed look during girls camp when I hugged her for a photo, that the cracks began to show. Not her friend. Not even her peer. Her baptism. An achievement. A milestone. A box checked. A number. Barely a person she can stand.

The world Lilly invited me into was both enchanting and suffocating. It gleamed with pearly smiles and beautifully braided hair, perfectly hemmed skirts, well manicured nails, fresh clean scents and carefully measured speech. It all preached modesty and virtue, grace and sisterhood… but beneath its surface lurked something colder… a silent but merciless code. You belonged if you conformed. You were welcome if you performed and looked the part. And love was conditional, always, upon your willingness to disappear into the mold.

I didn’t fit the mold. I never could. I was too sad, too intense, my brain not so nearly developed. I wanted to talk about grief, about God in ways that didn’t always match scripture. I asked questions. I made art that unsettled people. And most importantly, I needed something real… connection that wasn’t tethered to whether or not I prayed correctly or looked “appropriate.”

Lilly began to pull away once she realized I wasn’t going to become the poster child for repentance. She stopped texting. She ignored me in public. Her smile dimmed in private moments, replaced by a subtle disdain I can still see if I close my eyes. It wasn’t rage. It wasn’t cruelty. It was worse…  indifference. I had been stripped of my usefulness, so I was discarded.

This wasn’t just about one girl. It rarely is. Lily was a mirror of the broader culture that raised her. In Utah, where the air is thick with both breathtaking beauty and the suffocating pressure to perform holiness, the roles for women are often predefined. Be sweet. Be quiet. Be busy. Be beautiful. Be useful. And above all… belong, or pretend to.

If you don’t belong, and you don’t pretend well enough, you’re tolerated for a while. Pitied. Prayed over. Lovingly prodded back into the fold. But if you keep diverging, if your sadness doesn’t subside, if your mind remains in pain, if your authenticity threatens the façade… eventually, you become invisible.

This is what happened to me. And not just with Lilly. Again and again, I have encountered women in this state who smile but do not see me. Who speak kindly but never call. Who perform closeness without offering it. The wound they leave is not loud or dramatic… it’s a quiet ache. The ache of not being enough. The ache of watching others laugh without you. Of seeing yourself reflected in none of them. Of knowing that your openness is seen as a flaw, and your depth as a liability.

For a long time, I thought this was my fault. I told myself I was too much. Too fragile. Too dramatic. But as I’ve grown, and as I’ve healed… somewhat… I’ve come to understand that the culture itself cultivates this dynamic. Within the specific framework of Utah Mormon womanhood, image is often valued over authenticity. Connection is conditional. Smiles are currency. Vulnerability, unless repackaged as a faith-promoting story with a clean ending, is dangerous.

But life is not clean. Friendships don’t always end with closure. Betrayals don’t always explain themselves. Some hurts linger in the silences. Some wounds fester in absence. And some poems, like the one I wrote, are born from the residue of people who claimed to care but never really did.

“You cast me off like trash, worthless in your eyes,

Lured me with false friendship, beneath deceitful skies…”

There’s a cruelty in manipulation masquerading as salvation. In being told that your soul matters, only to find that your humanity does not. I was brought into a circle under the guise of compassion. But it was never about knowing me. It was about fixing me. Saving me. Claiming me. And when I failed to transform into the ideal, I was dropped.

For years I’ve carried the question… What did I do wrong? And the truth is… nothing. I was merely honest. Raw. Messy. I needed what so few people in that culture were willing to offer… unconditional presence. The kind that doesn’t require conformity to exist.

Writing this now, I grieve not just the friendship I lost but the hope I once had in friendships like it. I grieve the girl I was… the one who believed that kindness was always sincere, that friendship meant permanence, that faith communities were safe. I mourn the innocence that Lilly’s departure shattered. And I mourn how many other women I know who have felt the same.

Because Lilly isn’t one girl. She’s a type. She exists in the Relief Society president who won’t sit with the sister who wears too much eyeliner and her bra peaks through her top. In the young women’s leader who praises thinness in every testimony. In the ward member who whispers judgments behind a smile. In the culture that teaches women to perform grace but not practice it.

Still, I do not write this to condemn every woman in the church, nor to pretend that the pain I experienced is universal or irredeemable. There are extraordinary women in Utah, in Mormonism, in the world… women who break the mold, who offer real friendship, who sit in the mess with you and do not flinch. But they are not always easy to find. And they are often just as wounded by the system as those they try to love.

I write this essay to name the wound. To give language to a betrayal that so many people like me experience and yet are told they must not speak about. Because it’s not “Christlike” to call it what it is. Because it might “hurt feelings.” But silence protects no one. And truth is not cruelty when it is spoken to heal.

My poem, Lilly Of The Field And The Ugly Duckling, began as a scream I couldn’t say out loud. A cry for all the times I was overlooked, patronized, invited in and then quietly excluded. It was a way to claw at the wall of invisibility. To insist that what happened mattered. That I mattered.

“I’m hurt by how you played me, with charm that turned to dust,

Innocence now shattered, left only with mistrust…”

In the years since Lilly’s exit, I have worked hard to rebuild trust… not just in others, but in myself. To believe that I am worthy of genuine friendship. That my sensitivity is not a flaw. That my intensity is not too much. That I can write things like this and still belong somewhere.

And maybe that’s the miracle of writing… It gives you a voice where you were once silenced. It turns the ache into articulation. It transforms isolation into shared language. Maybe someone will read this who has also been dropped without explanation. Who has also wandered the clean halls of churches and felt unspeakably dirty. Who has also mistaken performance for love.

If that person is you, know this… You are not alone. The problem is not your need. It’s the culture that taught people to fear it. You deserve friends who see you. Who stay. Who want more than your story wrapped in the bow of redemption. Who can handle your sadness without trying to fix it.

You deserve women who know how to weep without hiding their mascara. Who sit with you on the bathroom floor when the world is too heavy. Who text back. Who show up. Who don’t just say your name… they mean it.

The pain Lilly left behind has shaped me, yes. But it has also refined me. I now recognize the difference between kindness and performance. Between inclusion and tolerance. Between being loved and being used.

I write this to offer something real. Not a sanitized, easy answer. But a witness. A reckoning. A reach across the page.

If the “She Said” anthology exists to gather stories of what it means to live as a woman in Utah, this is mine… I have learned that the worst betrayals are not always violent or loud. They are quiet acts of abandonment in spaces that preach inclusion. They are smiles without sincerity. Invitations without intimacy. Faith without love.

And I have learned to say no to that kind of faith. To seek something truer. To create the kind of community I was denied. To be the friend I once needed.

So if you’re reading this, and you’ve ever felt like an outsider in a room full of sisters, let me say what Lilly never did… I see you. You’re not a project. You’re not a number. You don’t have to perform to be loved. You’re already enough.

And still, even after all these years and all these words, I sometimes find myself searching for her face in crowds. Not just Lilly’s… though hers is etched somewhere permanent in the depths of my overthinking mind… but the face of every woman who ever offered me something she didn’t intend to keep. There is a ghostliness to that kind of memory. It lingers not as a sharp pain but as a dull echo. A familiar hush that returns whenever I feel on the outskirts of belonging.

You learn to live with these ghosts. You learn to eat around them, speak over them, dress in ways they might have approved of once, even when you know better. And then you learn… if you’re lucky, if you fight… to stop seeking their approval altogether.

Because healing, as I’ve come to know it, is not about forgetting the injury or making peace with what happened too soon. Healing is about understanding it. Giving it language. Letting it live outside of your body for long enough that you can recognize it when it tries to return.

Sometimes healing looks like writing a poem.

Sometimes it looks like not texting back.

Sometimes it looks like leaving the church that baptized you but never held you. Sometimes it’s returning to that church and standing proudly as you are. And sometimes… it looks like standing at a party full of women who all seem to know each other, who all have matching nails and perfect laughter, and choosing not to shrink when they glance past you.

Because you’ve come to realize that you are not invisible. You were just unseen.

And there’s a difference.

I used to think that survival was about changing myself to be less abrasive. Less raw. Less in need. Less “too much.” But I no longer wish to be less. I want to be more. More honest. More complex. More textured and contradictory and vivid. I want to live in full color, even if it makes some people turn away. Even if it reminds them of their own shadows.

Because here’s what they don’t tell you when they praise the quiet girls, the modest girls, the agreeable girls…  there is no glory in being palatable if it costs you your voice. There is no virtue in invisibility. And there is no sainthood in swallowing your own ache just to make someone else comfortable.

What I learned from Lilly… eventually very painfully… is that I would rather be lonely and real than loved for a lie.

And it took a long time to say that out loud.

I used to pray to be lovable. I used to cry into my pillow asking God to make me easier to care for, easier to hold, easier to carry. I thought maybe if I could just look more like them… laugh at the right times, wear the right clothes, cry only in testimony meeting and never too much… then I’d finally be enough.

But I no longer want to be easy to love. I want to be loved rightly.

I want friendships that are spacious, that have room for silences and breakdowns and dark nights that don’t resolve neatly by the end of the story. I want women in my life who are brave enough to look me in the eye when I am grieving and not try to smooth it over with a platitude. I want people who stay when it’s inconvenient. Who ask how you are and mean it. Who don’t need you to wrap your pain in scripture to validate its existence.

I want the kind of women who recognize that compassion isn’t a goal… it’s a practice. A messy, inconsistent, holy practice.

And I am slowly becoming that woman for myself.

There are days I still doubt it. Days when I walk into Relief Society… or into any room where women are expected to smile and sit still… and I feel like the odd one out again. I feel the weight of all the times I wasn’t chosen, wasn’t invited, wasn’t seen. But then I remember that I am building something new. A life that does not depend on being chosen to matter.

I am not anyone’s baptism anymore. I am not a soul to be rescued. I am not an emotional errand, a pity project, or an inspirational footnote in someone else’s journal entry.

I am a person. I am a woman. I am a friend.

And even if I walk into every room alone for the rest of my life, I will not disappear again to make someone else feel comfortable.

There is a strange sort of peace in accepting that some people will never come back to apologize. That some friendships will remain unresolved. That closure, in many cases, is something you build for yourself when the other person won’t give it. I waited for years for Lilly to say she was sorry. For a message. A call. Anything. But it never came. And now I know it never will.

And still… I forgive her.

Not because she asked for it. Not because she deserves it. But because I no longer want to be tethered to the pain she left behind. Because I don’t want to carry her silence with me forever. Because forgiveness, when it is real, is not about excusing what happened. It’s about refusing to be defined by it.

Forgiveness is not the same as reconciliation. It’s not pretending we were ever truly close. It’s not minimizing the wound. It’s simply this…  letting go of the hope for a better past.

And in its place, choosing a better future.

One where I am whole. One where I surround myself with people who don’t flinch at my honesty. One where I don’t have to shrink to be accepted. One where I become the woman I once needed when I was seventeen and aching.

Because that girl still lives in me. She still walks the halls of that ward building. She still stands too long near the corner of the room at youth dances. She still waits for someone to say, “Come sit with us.” And I want to be the voice that answers her now.

You don’t have to become what they wanted you to be.

You don’t have to be the quiet one. Or the grateful one. Or the girl who always smiles even when her heart is breaking.

You are allowed to take up space.

You are allowed to be sad.

You are allowed to need more than what they’re offering.

And most importantly… you are allowed to start over.

Because the truth is, for every Lilly who disappears, there are women out there who stay. Maybe not many. Maybe not right away. But they exist. They’re the ones who find you crying in your car and sit with you without trying to make it better. The ones who laugh loud, love deeply, and aren’t afraid of the mess. The ones who say, “I see you,” and mean it.

And maybe you have to become one of those women first.

Maybe you have to build the table before anyone sits down with you at it.

But it’s worth it. God, it’s worth it.

Because there’s nothing lonelier than trying to make yourself small enough to fit into spaces that were never meant to hold the real you. And there is nothing more holy than refusing to do it anymore.

So I’ll end this… not with a final word, because grief is never final… but with an invitation… If you’ve been hurt like I was, come sit beside me. If you’ve been discarded, excluded, reshaped to fit a mold that crushed you, come closer. If you’ve been told you were too much, let me be the one to say you’re just enough.

You don’t have to pretend anymore.

You don’t have to smile if you don’t want to.

You don’t have to wrap your truth in doctrine to make it digestible.

Your grief is sacred. Your story is valid. Your voice is a miracle.

And though I may or may not walk the temple halls again, I’ve found something holier than all the polished sermons and white stone in the world…

A friend who stays. A voice that dares. A woman who writes, even when it hurts.

This is for her.

This is for all of us.

We are no longer ugly ducklings.

We are swans now… wounded, perhaps… but wild and rising.