Today on my ride home from school I thought about how far I've come in the last two years and I felt happy.
Two years ago I had just stopped going to church, I was depressed, I felt confused and hopeless and powerless about the future. I felt alone. Once I started going to counseling, my life improved by leaps and bounds.
Today, I am living the life I want. I have found the love of my life; he is smart and sweet and goofy and responsible (in his mother's words, he is truly a mensch), full of integrity...everything I need. Even his family is too good to be true. On top of that I have been accepted into the doctoral program of my choice; I am healthy; and most importantly I simply feel empowered to seek after the future of my dreams.
But then something reminded me of my life before. I started feeling powerless again. Powerless to have the kind of communication and connection I want with Mormon friends and family. Powerless to feel at peace with their beliefs, which seem so inextricably connected with memories of my past and current pain. Powerless to change the choices and attitudes of my past. Powerless to be able to never think about Mormonism again.
Critics of exmormons are always saying they don't understand why we can't let it go.
Let it go?!? Oh, how I wish I could!!
For me, Mormonism wasn't a hobby. It wasn't a phase. It was ME, it was MY LIFE, it was MY WORLD. For 28 YEARS. And even having tried my best to free myself, it seems like it will always be there: present in my relationships with loved ones, haunting my memory, coloring my worldview!
5 comments:
For what it's worth, based on what you write here, you sound far more healthy than you were 2 years ago when I first started reading. I think you sound far happier than you used to be. You must be doing it right.
Thanks Reuben, I really think I am. But I have a ways to go! :)
I am an ex-evangelical and I too often get the "why can't you just let it go?"
The thing is, I am not sure I want to. I see it as this great knotted ball of string. It is worth it to me to spend time undoing that knot, because there is a lot of stuff in that knot I may want to keep. There is a lot of me and my life in there. As I pick away at the knot, a lot of evangelicals get uncomfortable... I understand that. However, I will continue to pick until I can separate the garbage from the stuff I want to keep.
I love the metaphor Andrew!
Don't forget that the opposite can also be true. While they may make accusations that you "Can't let it go!" What they're also doing in the process of this is admitting that they can't let you go.
Intellectuals, people who dare to ask questions, and "apostates" are the groups that Mormons tend to be the most biased against while they're happily being blindly obedient to a group of old men and try to claim they aren't a cult but are giving out numerous pieces of evidence to the contrary.
I'm still on record but, as I told my brother yesterday when he got on my case for buying something on Sunday and eating green tea ice cream, "There's more to the gospel than being a busybody Mormon." I don't need The Church(TM) to help me find God.
Hope you continue to find what you're looking for. There may be times when you feel powerless, but you're never friendless.
Post a Comment