Posted by:
Cold-Dodger
(
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Date: August 27, 2015 01:50PM
I told my father about me this morning. There was no simple way to begin, so I just started talking. He said he was shocked that we were even having this conversation, because I know the scriptures so well and can quote the most familiar passages word for word. He objected and asked how I explained away the Book of Mormon. I said that all it would really take to write the Book of Mormon is about a third grade education with lettering, a great familiarity with the King a james Bible and an acquaintance with how to lead people on in the most savory, most popular speculations of the day. The book might be impressive, but not necessary miraculous.
To make a long discussion short, he cried, but I didn't feel him closing his heart off to me. I felt almost nothing until after he left for work and then it hit me in my gut that things were different forever now. It's a terrible feeling, but always living in anticipation of that feeling is a worse feeling.
So, I just got it over with. He took it better than I ever could have imagined. He can sympathize with me about the judgmental mentality of Mormons in general. He understands that I have had a hard time, but he blames most of it on the drug that is pornography (since that was a source of much drama not long ago. He was confidant, my 'transparency' buddy. We've had long talks about life and the universe.).
I knew it would crush him, and it sure did. I love my father. That was part of why I was so hard on myself in my teenage years over doing what comes naturally to every lonely teenage boy (that, and it didn't help either that I was delusional and full of misinformation about healthy sexuality). I don't know if he can't help but dismiss what I say as an elaborate attempt to justify myself in sin. In a way he has a point: I have lived in great dread that nothing I could ever say will ever surmount the the vast amount of dirt I have incriminated myself with to every priesthood leader I've ever had within a ten mile radius of where I grew up.
I punish myself for keeping this secret so long, but then I remember my schooling is on the line. I remember that I just wanted happiness, and I was so transparent before because I wanted to be thorough and forthcoming so I could understand what I was doing wrong that made me feel the way I did. Come to find it many years later, it was depression and severe anxiety and a little bit of ADD to boot: no invocation of sin required to make sense of what I was feeling for so long. Mormonism sure lies at the root of the quagmire that is my psyche, though.
I'm slave to priesthood authority for a little while longer. When they ask me if I have resolved everything I would like to resolve with a bishop, I truthfully answer yes — knowing that if I spoke a word about myself, they would proceed to psychoanalyze me with that tripe that is in the Book of Mormon and making prescriptions of more self-basement (as if that solves a self-esteem issue). I don't tell the bastards anything anymore. They had their chance to monkey about with my brain, and I'm tired of them. No more.
My dad will be a work all day, but he said he wanted to have a long discussion with me when he got back. So now I'm just sitting here in my old room I've had since high school thinking... "fuck." I don't know exactly what will happen next.