Posted by:
g0rgone
(
)
Date: July 17, 2020 01:19PM
Hello to my secret friends here on the board. All of you. Bear with me, this may get long, but I need to get it out. I've been a long time lurker, I think almost 10 years now, but not much of a poster. I have come back here from time to time when I needed to see the words of others with similar backgrounds, when I needed to be consoled, or to know that I am not completely crazy; or worse, completely alone. I credit you folks for keeping me alive in the darkest of times.
I have been personally free from TSCC for 22 years, but dealing with my TBM family has always been keenly difficult, at best.
The last 9 months have been a literal nightmare for my family. My estranged older brother passed away after a 5 year battle with cancer, on Halloween. He was 43. We hadn't talked in 17 years, mostly because he openly destroyed my life(at the time) and successfully widened the gap between me and the rest of our family. I hadn't been allowed to be around for holidays, vacations, birthdays, or been able to do anything with my family for over 20 years because of his hatred, threats, and physical violence towards me, the apostate. All to protect his own growing family from my "bad influence".
I had to navigate my 20's alone, and without my parents' or families' support, which indeed made my life turn out vastly different from that of my siblings. This is besides the point, and oh so condensed, but I need to give at least some background.
I had to go to the funeral to support my parents, who were of course, completely devastated. He was my mother's favourite. It was one of the longest, most difficult and surreal days of my life. It was my first time inside an LDS church since I was a teenager. The front hallway was lined with a giant photo collage, including family portraits from which I had been painstakingly edited out of. There were 100's of people there. I had to look at his body, and then listen to a long shuffle of people talk about what an amazing, kind, and inspirational person he was before blatantly turning the conversation to the church.
I felt nothing. That was not the person I knew as my abusive brother. After the service, at the graveside, people were openly avoiding me, and I even overheard women talking malicious sh*t about me as I dropped a rose into the pit alongside my grieving older sister and brother.
39 days later, my mother passed away. I was on a plane the next day to UT to help my father with whatever I could(since my brother would not be there to stop me this time). We had a small viewing for immediate family. My uncle, my mother's only sibling came, and my father immediately started viciously berating him right in front of the casket, about needing to go back to church, as it was "her dying wish that he go back to the temple". I watched in absolute horror and disgust.
My mother had not wanted a funeral, but my sister protested and got the RS to sponsor a luncheon at their ward church after a short graveside service. Strangers and extended family were very kind to me this round, though I was forced into being in a family portrait next to my mother's casket. I was the only one with tears streaming down my face. I spent the rest of the week helping around the house, going through my mother's things, and trying to be close to my father again. He made it clear that keeping up appearances with his church friends was more important, but I was still happy to finally have my family back after all this time without fear.
I went home, the year turned, and then corona came. I am in the entertainment industry, so my career came to a crashing halt. I had been talking to my father and sister several times a week, which I was enjoying. My sister had always been a stranger to me so catching up with her and being involved in family decisions again felt good. She also lives in the same neighborhood as our father, so she was keeping an eye on him for the both of us. Towards the end of March, one of my cousins suddenly passed away, and I had been appointed to make some phone calls. I called my father to tell him the news. He didn't seem to care much and seemed distracted. He kept using the term "we" so in thinking he was losing it, I asked him who the h*ll is we?? He got really nervous and defensive and said there was someone there "he had met at the temple and she was teaching him how to do long form genealogy records". I hung up a little confused and called my sister, whom was able to figure out later with some digging that this woman was actually living at the house with our dad and that he claimed she was a "displaced caretaker" who had no home, car, or phone, and she was helping him out. My dad is 70 years old, very robust, and not of the helpless variety, so of course we were skeptical.
Over the next month he became increasingly aggravating on the phone, which was always on speaker, and I could hear lady peanuts gallery in the background telling him what to say. Then my sister calls me on April 25th completely hysterical, wouldn't tell me what was going on, but insisted I call our dad, because "he's so f***ing stupid". That was the first time I had ever heard my TBM sister swear, so I knew it was serious. That of course made me nervous and not want to call him, so I was able to weasel the truth out of her a day later.
Our father had eloped this stranger in complete secret, only 4 months after becoming a widow, in the middle of a pandemic, and had openly deceived us about it. I was gobsmacked, and the three of us remaining children are, to say the least, absolutely not done mourning, heartbroken and angry. He wasn't willing to tell us the truth, and I still haven't heard it directly from his mouth.
On Mother's Day, which was already hard considering the circumstances, my favourite Aunt (my father's eldest sister) passed away. We were told in a brief, cold text msg from daddy dearest that there would be no funeral. We didn't even know that she had passed yet. He also sent us a random terrible group text msg a month later on my mother's birthday, saying something like, "Thanks for shunning us, I feel like I'm back in my first ward, hope you're all happy. We don't know why you're mad at us, you never told us. You should feel HAPPY for your mom".
This of course infuriated all of us and none of us have talked to him since said second hand revelation about the marriage.
I guess I'm telling all of you this because I know you'll get it. I think I finally had a real nervous breakdown and being locked up doesn't help the trudging descent into depression. I feel like I cannot catch my breath. I feel that having my father back for a few months after so much tragedy, only to have him ripped away again in what feels like pure ignorance has reopened so many old wounds for me. I am so tired of TSCC's grip, its' destruction of families, its' blase views on death, it's touristy-photo-snapping funerals... I am allowed to experience grief, am I not? I am merely human. Am I wrong to be angry at my father for this? and yet also extremely worried? I know it's his life, he's a grown a** man, although completely naive, and I think he has made a terrible decision based solely on his religious beliefs that people are nothing unless they are married. I know this, as his daughter whom has been made to feel worthless because I am not.