The White Church in Puerto Vallarta

February 4th 2022

Lately i’ve been thinking a lot about the white church in Puerto Vallarta.

At 18 I got my first lead in a movie and used my cheque to buy myself a plane ticket to Puerto Vallarta - I went alone. I was volunteering at a hostel in exchange for a place to stay and hopefully a better understanding of myself. A couple of years before I had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and I wanted to spend time alone with the growing darkness in my head, far away from everything I knew.

In Puerto Vallarta, I found a deep loneliness that I had never experienced before, one of being alone in a foreign country - I felt the weight of my insignificance and uncertainty of who I was. I found intrigue and fear in the fact that every corner of my world was unknown.

I remember going on a walk one day, like I did everyday - but this day I found the white church. I came across the most regal and beautiful church, so white it could only exude purity. I had never spent time in church growing up and the concept of God has never called to me - but religion has always fascinated me. This church spoke to me, it was clear it was a church of Catholic faith with its intricate stained glass windows and ornate furnishings. I went inside and a skylight filled the church with a beam of sunlight, I was surrounded by hundreds of burning red candles.

The last pew on the right became a place I went almost everyday, I would sit there and write more than I ever have before. I wrote about my experiences with love and lack-there-of, my hospitalizations due to my bipolar disorder and my childhood.

I would sit in the pew for hours and watch people come in and out. It was a beautiful encapsulation of human emotion - the oceans of human feeling. Sometimes people would come in to pray and I could feel the joy inside of them - I knew there was a birth, a marriage, or a dream. And sometimes people would come in and cry and I knew there had been a loss, a death, or a heartbreak.

All day I watched life give and take from people. I watched them come to the same source to mourn or celebrate it. It reminded me that we always lose the things we love, but it also reminded me that we don’t know all we will love. I have never connected with the idea of God, or felt the pull of organized religion but something about watching this cycle gave me a simultaneous despair and hope - the solidified knowing that even though the loss always comes so does the happiness, so does the joy. In a time that felt sparse with joy, it comforted me to see others happy tears.