Well well well….Is all really well in Zion?

One of my readers said: “This blog is really good; depressing as fuck, but really good.” Depressing as fuck, huh? Well it’s about to get even more depressing….. just kidding. I don’t have anything depressing to say. I mean I could probably come up with something…actually, maybe I will. Okay, onward depression ho!

Let’s talk about abuse (abuse is totally depressing). When I was a Mormon I would hear stories about people being sexually or emotionally abused by leaders and how that led them away from the church. My response was always: “Why would you leave the church? Just because that leader was a bad person doesn’t mean the church isn’t true.” My response was not unique. Members are taught to defend the church, attack the people. I was a little robot programmed to spew assholery.

I would like to apologize for the person I was when I was Mormon. And now that I’m not, my response to those people is: “I’m really sorry that happened to you. That is really awful. I hope you have gotten help processing that trauma.”

This blog doesn’t make up for pain I might have caused but can I ever make up for that? I don’t know. Is an apology better than never causing pain in the first place? That’s a question for another day. Today I’m talking about abuse because abuse is depressing and this blog is depressing as fuck. I have an image to maintain. 

So there are people who are blatantly abused by clergy and that is ugly and awful, but what about the religious system itself? Now that I am out of the church I can see the Mormon church system is abusive no matter how nice the people are. 

Everything about the church is abusive from the indoctrination since birth, to the leadership determining the worthiness of others, to the temple ceremony, to telling poverty stricken families to pay tithing, to the Sunday school lessons telling you are bad and wrong and selling God as the remedy because God doesn’t love you unless you’re perfect. Ask Russell M. Nelson, he’ll tell you what dick God is. 

If I became the ghost of Christmas future and visited my past self to say I was being abused and exploited by the Mormon church, past me would just shrug and say: “I don’t feel abused.” 

And maybe this is the crux of the problem. If someone doesn’t recognize abuse, is it really happening? Someone told me that even if your mind doesn’t acknowledge abuse, your body begins reacting to it. I don’t know how this works for Mormons because some of them sure seem like the healthiest people alive, even if that smile is a little strained. 

But I do remember one Sunday years ago when I was still intermittently going to church, I had decided to go to church but I couldn’t get out of bed. I wasn’t sick and I didn’t even feel tired; I was just unable to get out of bed while the time for church drew near. Eventually Tyler came into the room and asked if I was going, I said yes, as soon as I could get out of bed. He said: “You’ve been saying that for hours and now we’re going to be late. Why don’t we just stay home?” I said okay and immediatly got out of bed and had a healthy happy day. 

Was my inability to get out of bed my body reacting? But then how had I gone years and never had that reaction? The church hadn’t changed. 

Now that I’m all the way out of the church I’m having reactions all the time: I went to jury duty and left in a panic-induced crying fit because it reminded me too much of the temple ceremony (something I thought I loved). I saw a billboard of old men in suits and it took me two hours to stop shaking. 

Why wasn’t my body reacting when I was more invested? Why aren’t those overachieving members who run ten miles a day reacting? Is the reaction dependent on the level of awareness? Denial is a survival mechanism, if we acknowledge something we can’t change….then what?

These questions plague me. This conversation is not over.

(There you go, Gadget, depressing as fuck enough for you?)