Posted by:
Cold-Dodger
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Date: January 26, 2015 12:59AM
It's one of those situations where the facade of love and goodness has one the whole family over. We're all convinced that we have a special goody good family and it's all thanks to the restored gospel.
The truth is, some of us have suffered silently, and he has suffered the most, i felt. I'm still undercover as an active TBM, but I finally reached out to him insofar as to question his going on a mission and to criticize our family dynamics with all the words that have been brooding in my mind about it these last 26 years.
Excerpts from his reply below. I have never spoken to him like this before.
"It really means a lot, like A LOT, that you said these things. I can hide my feelings pretty well. That's why I usually look indifferent about everything around me. On the inside I constantly think about the things that I don't want to talk about because I'm afraid of what everyone else will think. You're right, everyone has these high expectations for us
and I'm scared.
I really don't want to serve a mission because I've never really studied enough for myself to really know these things. I can give you a very general answer and beat around the bush but there's a lot of questions that I won't be able to answer even if I study really hard and cram everything while I'm in the MTC.
I've always said that going on a mission is what I really want but really I only wanted it for me because everyone said a mission is so great.
I didn't prepare myself for a mission when everyone said that I should. I just did what I wanted to do. [What ever made me happy at that moment].
I'm not ready for a mission and I'm really not sure exactly if that's what I want. Sure, somewhere out there is a person(s) waiting for me to come into their life and introduce the gospel so that the can have and feel the love of Christ. If they are really ready then someone will do just that. It doesn't have to be me.
Everyone tells everyone what to do. That's apart of life. Well guess what, I don't want to do that I want to do this and be a snobby little brat because I'm not doing what you want. That's kinda how I feel.
...
Now that the mission is so close for me and I'm almost done with my papers to send them in, I almost want to do it to see where I would go but to be completely honest, I don't think I can handle it. I don't know if I really want to go. And the way we were raised is tearing me apart because this is what I'm supposed to do.
And I don't want it"
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I don't know what to say next. This deference every member of our family has for all checkpoints Mormon has destroyed our ability to share real feelings with each other. We're not the family we once were; now we're much more playful and giddy, but it still feels shallow, because we never really talked and gave closure to how we were before.
I came back from my mission emotionally devastated, and I'm afraid he and I are chips from the same block. Several weeks before I left, my mother confronted me and told me if I didn't serve an honorable full-time mission, not to come back. I didn't have the emotional confidence then to digest that threat. As a family, I'd say we have a history of codependency and severe helicopter parenting between the parents and the kids, and much of it has to do with the gospel being the reigning law under our roof. I served a mission, but whenever I began to doubt, my mind went to that place where I realized what the gospel had done to my family.
I came home feeling like a failure, distraught, and fell into a cycle of shame-induced porn addiction that broke my already then-strained will to live.
I don't know whether is better for my brother: to go, so he can meet the social expectations but suffer the roller coaster of a mission, or to stay and deal with the repercussions. The fallout with the extended family would be tremendous. We all have a semblance of closeness to each other, even with the extended family. They would not handle this the best, and I'm not sure my brother could handle the accusatory social proof he would receive in exchange for thinking for himself.
Help me help him. What on earth can I do or say? I'm a world away from home right now.
If he does choose not to go, I had figured it would be as good a time as ever to finally come out about my apostasy and speak my mind on a hundred different things. My parents are not bad people, but this gospel-motivated emotional codependency is hurting us all.
I had half-hoped, when I was studying alone, to win over my family. Now that I've connected with the Exmo community and reached out to several apostate friends and family, I know that never goes over very well. I'm willing to sacrifice my place at school here and with my family to speak up for my brother, and I have no idea how severe the falling out will be.
My brother sounds like he still believes (not that any of us had a big choice in the matter growing up. My parents succeeded in the illusion that our love was a product of the gospel and to return it had to take the form of building the kingdom). Questioning the gospel is something that has never happened to close to my parents before than me. Much of their self-esteem and sense of accomplishment rides on my siblings and I meeting expectations.
Advice?
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/26/2015 01:05AM by Cold-Dodger.