Ok, I don't know if this sounds weird to you, but for me, by the time I was 12 I could NEVER see my life with the family I grew up with after 18. I lived with nothing but verbal and physical abuse my whole life. My parents hated everything about me that was not EXACTLY in keeping with Mormonism, that is unless mom was in a particularly bad mood and then it didn't matter, you couuld look left rather than right and she'd blow up. The point is, I'm realizing the abuse, the judement was so bad, that internally I actually could not see my life with them after 18. I felt the rejection to such a degree that I could not imagine living my whole life with them.

Also, I think the enormity of expectation after HS graduation with mission, marriage, children, more boring church and rigid rules and control for the rest of my life terrified me even if at the time I couldn't put all of that into words and it sounded so miserable. I only had to look at my adult family members to see how miserable they were and it scared me to death.



I realize that must sound strange as Mormonism is all about "forever families", but the severity of the judgement that comes with that is so poingnant that it "broke" us. To this day we are severed. Mom never grew up, dad just sat with his "authority" and never engaged in anything and us kids were expected to magically build our lives with no money, guidence etc. I realize millions of kids have to do this, but not everyone lives under the premise that their families are much more loving and special than "yours". I know it's pathetic, but when I see families so close even after 40 years, it hurts to know what I'm missing out on.

Have you ever felt this way?

Yep. Like waiting for Christmas, some of us kids stared at the calendar just waiting to turn 18. One sister even moved out at midnight the minute she turned 18. Me, it was first thing in the morning.

I hear ya on this. I moved out three days after graduating from high school. I'd had my plan for two years before I graduated. If I couldn't have found a place to live, I would have lived on the streets rather than live in that house again.

And my parents weren't even abusive, well my mom and stepdad, who I lived with, weren't. But it was absolute chaos. I couldn't stand it living there.

Sometimes I wish they knew how abnormal their behavior really is, because there is this huge divide between us, and the weird thing is, I don't think they even know it.

And yeah, it hurts to see "normal" families and long for something I missed.

Me too. My family was rigidly Mormon and horribly dysfunctional. Most of us moved out in either anger or despair. Now my parents have a big house in south Utah, and no one wants to visit them. They've reaped what they've sown.

I moved out sometime the summer after graduating high school. I was already halfway into my 18th year at that point, just trying to work out where to go and how to do it.

My parents, well my mom, told me they were going to charge rent.
I said I wasn't going to pay.
I went right out and got a storage unit and started taking a little of my stuff out at a time. It took me a month or two to gradually take the stuff I wanted. I was busy staying out late and partying and trying to come up with excuses for where I'd been.

In the end, they started talking rent again, and I left. In my car. And lived in my car for quite a while.

I don't think they ever threatened to charge rent from my sister, but she was a good molly and did what she was supposed to. They payed for a lot of her college too, after telling me there was no money for school.

Me? I was no molly. I had a personality!


Yes, I'd been pushed to the outside of the "family circle" for years. Not my sister, she's the golden child. I'm the scapegoat. 8)

I had given up trying to conform long long ago. I was cast in the scapegoat role as a young child. By the time I was 18 I had figured I might as well have some fun because they all thought I was up to no good anyway, even when I was being my goodest.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/16/2011 04:36PM by WinksWinks.

That's miserably infantile to scapegoat your child/sibling because they think "differently" than you, but then, I was never a Mormon....however I saw things like that attending Fundamentalist Christian schools, especially for political things (!) like badmouthing the Republican Party.

You have my sympathy, WinksWinks.

Google "family dynamics scapegoat golden child". It doesn't require mormons or religion, necessarily, it is just what happens in a dysfunctional family. There can be any number of reasons behind it, but having a scapegoat enables the family member who has the REAL problem to deflect attention.
Scapegoat is another name for "identified patient".

In my case, I believe my mother has a personality disorder.

Thank you for the sympathy. :)

My case was a little different. When I was 18 I got my first job that wasn't for someone in my family. And I moved to a distant remote town to do it.

The absolute freedom of not living at home anymore and getting paid for it was intoxicating! I only came home three or four times that summer and never on Sunday so no church for me that summer.

I was ruined for life. No more goody two shoe mormon boy.

I left town a week or so after graduating hs. I knew I was leaving and going to college. My parents were understanding that I had no future in the small town. My sisters had also moved out and so I was the last. My parents were great and we got along good. It was just that I hated the town and the mormon only envirement. Had money saved and got a job in SLC. It was just time to fly the coop.

Thanks for all your replies. I hear you.

For me, Mormonism is what destroyed the family, not save it. It made my mother mentally trapped, lazy, and she had no anger management skills, or parenting skills. I too was the scapegoat.

Years of hearing you aren't good enough, and being screamed at broke the natural bond that is meant to be there with your kids. Like all Mormon kids, we weren't meant to be individuals, we were meant to be robots and obviously that doesn't work.

It's just sad that now 40 years into this life, they still haven't figured it out and the same dysfunction still exists and will exist until they either wake up and face themselves...or until they die. So sad.

Shout out to all the Mormon Orpans!!

G

I probably lied my head off every day between turning sixteen and leaving for college.

There was no other way. My family was just too messed up, and trying to look perfect to everyone else.

I'm right at about 1 year since my last chosen contact with my parents, and it's rough. The wound of hitting that point where I had to break ties is still fresh for me.

I joined the Mormons at 15. My dysfunctional family was never Mormon. I left home at 17 1/2 to move to Utah and later go to school at BYU at 19. (Took that long to finish a GED, take the SAT, apply, get tuition paid for, etc.) I know exactly what it feels like to go out into life with no guidance cause that's what happened with me.

My mom was a nightmare to live with, I could not get away fast enough or far enough. Judgment is so destructive in mother-child relationships, I've never completely deleted her from my brain despite years of therapy. But my mom wasn't Mormon. It's really not uncommon for parents to do great psychological harm to their children. Sadly, its a common life experience. And then children grow up feeling alienated from their roots because they were so destructive. I feel that every day.

Mormonism seemed like such a safe haven for awhile. It did actually help me during those early years when I needed some structure and vicarious guidance from somewhere. The problem is that Mormon doctrine stifles human development (and mental functioning) so it eventually revealed itself as the toxic brew it really is.

It is about ripping apart any family in which any member questions the church or otherwise does not exactly fit the one-size-fits-all mold. This board is FULL of posters whose birth family and/or married family has been harmed or destroyed by TSCC! “Family church?” Ha. “ANTI-family church” would be more accurate!

After that upbringing, Gabriella, it is amazing that you had any sense of self left to manage to break free. Glad you did, though!

Keep posting.

Mormonism only supports the family member who pay and obey. Don't do that and you are under the bus.