Got a tbm friend who’s still been talking to me. He listens, and so I keep talking. Apparently, he’s able to listen only because he sees me as a pathetic mess. He doesn’t listen to anything I say, I mean the substance of it: he just sees me as a sad sinner spinning his wheels in need of a friend. I guess I should be grateful he puts up with me when so many others can’t do that much. But learning that his interest wasn’t any deeper than that was off putting. I don’t know want patronizing pity. I’ve had a lot of time to think about what I want by continuing to plead my case with Mormons, and it’s this:

I want acknowledgement that I cared about the religion, that I understood it correctly, that I was making all the right kinds of sacrifices for it, that I was not just going through the motions, and that it was failing me anyways. A lot of my mental health crisis right after my mission, and the struggles I had before were because I cared, because I had internalized it all so deeply that when I couldn’t live up to it or when it appeared not to be true, I took it profoundly hard to the point that it messed up my self-esteem and trapped me in cycles of self-flagellation. Then, I want acknowledgement that there is a strong case to be made, that there is a body of evidence out there that none it is true. They don’t have to look at it; they just have to acknowledge that people who don’t want to be Mormon aren’t moral and/or intellectual failures, and I’d be content. The person I really really want to hear all of this from is my father, and I want to hear it because my inner child was wounded so I would cling to this stupid faith to compensate. Mormons continue to stick their thumbs in those wounds that were made to saddle me and ride me and fret me and play me in order to make me flinch because that to them proves that I’m just running away from my guilty conscience. But I keep offering them my wounds for them to peruse with their fingers, willingly, so they can know that both my testimony and the unmaking of it were real and that my personal story is true.

I am not running from a guilty conscience, although I do flinch to think that other people think terrible things about me. I have always laid my sins bare on the table. I have turned my psyche inside out looking for the defect that makes me a chronic skeptic and poured out my soul like water on the ground for strangers to sift through and diagnose for me. All I wanted was to believe more perfectly and be made whole in all the ways the religion promises. I put up with years of humiliation and quackery trying to be faithful and patient with the process, and no one had answers for me in the end. The church did not have answers to the questions that challenge its credibility, and my bishops did not have answers to help me kick all the habits that they claim every person should be able to kick at will and for all time. I listened. I waited. I obeyed. And I figured out that after all my investment, all the time and energy, they were never going to give me any credit for any of it if I didn’t kill my brain and be content with nonthinking. I figured out that as long as I did give them that, none of the stuff I was so anxious about for so much of my young life really mattered as much as I thought it did. All they wanted was my thinking mind, for me to scoop it out and replace it with true and final belief. They tortured me in effect to get this result, but I never accepted that my thinking mind had to die if the church was really true. There were times when I was able to briefly convince myself that it was, and I had many great spiritual or emotional experiences or events that carried my belief for a long time. But I can’t stop having thoughts, and ultimately I crave to know that I know what I think I know. I mean, there’s no shortage of people challenging Mormons on their religion, asking you to prove it, to show you that it’s biblical, to justify it. I was Mormon, and I accepted those challenges more boldly than any of the cowards who sit behind their big desks under an imposing portrait of angry Jesus ever did. I got good at fighting that fight. Towards the end of my testimony’s journey, those cowards were coming to me for scripture and for rhetorical maneuvers to use on the skeptical, and it was often said by all the churchy Karens who know my family to my mother that I was destined to be a great leader in the church.

I am treated now like I never knew anything about it. I guess people have watched me faceplant a few times in the lone and dreary world, and they figure some unfair and inaccurate idea of me and my state of mind from watching me struggle must be true. They watch how I crave to hear a specific something from them that they will never give me, and it makes them feel good. Not a single person will sit down with me with a CESletter between us, or just with something I’ve written myself. There was one time my father offered such a moment to me, but it was a sham. It was a pop invitation to come have dinner with him in his office. He did not tell me we were going to talk about the church after having gagged me for over a year. I did not have materials from which to make a presentation. I was not prepared. He also didn’t tell me my mother was going to be there. I figured out quickly he was just going to take a contrary opinion to everything I had to say to show my mother that there was nothing at all to it. I hated him for that. It was a sham. No one will give me the moment I crave. No one will tell me the words I want to hear. I don’t know why I keep setting myself up to be hurt again and again and again. There’s life that I feel, I guess, when my old social connections come alive again, however briefly. Because then it feels like what I am does not matter, when those people regard me as an honest man, like they used to do and as I ever have been. I’ve never not been straight with them except, perhaps, for the brief time at BYUI when no one but an online board called RFM knew about my doubts. But about that: when is it ever a good time to reveal that you don’t believe anymore? Do you have to? Can you at least have time to be sure one way or another? Or are private thoughts forbidden?

I don’t know exactly why I keep wanting to expose myself to Mormon feedback. All I reliably get from it is another human mind bogged down by ignorance, proud of it, even, trying not to let anything I say get to it while it pleads to an invisible being who does not exist except in its imagination for the next little trick to be revealed to keep it from becoming like mine, as though my current state were worse than death.

If your dad pulls a surprise like that again, just tell him that you can't take seriously a church where the founder slept with more than thirty women, and you're surprised that he can. Don't argue, just stick with the fact that Joseph Smith was a hound dog who can't possibly be taken seriously.

One of the secrets of life is to develop a thick skin and not care what other people think about you and your abilities. Mormonism is a really, really small denomination in the scheme of things. It barely registers on peoples' radar outside of the Morridor. It might help you to start thinking of it as small and insignificant, and therefore not worthy of your attention. When other people talk to you about it, try referring to it as "your church." That will help you to develop some mental distance from it.

I'm listening Cold-Dodger and I get you, I understand what's going on. Don't really want to maybe fix it all for you (some things you just can't fix) but at the same time I've seen impossible situation and circumstance change. What I'm trying to say is you can have a spiritual life away from the nutz in Mormonism and it ain't all that bad, millions of peeps do have non-LDS beginnings with their own tiny light, their found "higher power" even AA Groups talk about.
The original Martin Luther had his hope's crushed, then and only then did the new beginning start.
Keep writing, you touch people you touched me.

that was years ago. wow, it's been years. *sigh*.

There is ALWAYS an ulterior motive with MORmONS!!! ALWAYS!!!

Any thing that appears to be genuine concern is ALWAYS heavily compromised by the MORmON motivation and expectation that the MORmON will eventually have their MORmON way with the subject .....target.....victim.

An easy way to stop it.

"I don't discuss Religion or Politics".

If they try, leave.

One of my big breakthrough moments in counseling was when my therapist advised me to stop chasing after the love and approval of those who can't or won't give it, to mourn that loss, but then look around and realize there are many many people willing and even eager to give us love and approval with no strings attached.