I think a bit about things I would have done differently in my younger years given the chance as most older people tend to do.
High on my list is telling my parents I wasn't going on a mission or at least leaving it early.
I went almost 100% as a result of high expectations and pressure and knew the entire time I was there that something was amiss and that the church wasn't what it claimed.
My smile was pasted on for two years.
I regret this terribly.
If you are considering a mission and aren't absolutely certain you want to do it don't.
I suggest that if you really want to go, spend some time earning the money to go and pay for it yourself instead of relying on your parents or other family.
Earning the money to pay for something expensive at 17/18 years old will drag to the forefront your real desires and help you make an honest decision.
It may also help you to act more a grown-up - unlike me.
I have found that we do things in our live in Times and Seasons. We make the best decisions we can with the information we have at the time. I'm convinced there are "no wouldas, shouldas, couldas, what if's."
There is a very famous quote by Maya Angelou: "When you know better, you do better."
With that as a basis, personally, I have determined it is self sabotage to have regrets. I also have concluded that everything that happened in my life had something to teach me, nothing was a waste, everything built on everything else.
So my message is to take it easy on yourself. No need to beat yourself up, or find fault. The past is over, done. Another saying I like: "Sometimes you have to make peace with your past in order to keep your future from becoming a constant battle."
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/31/2016 08:21PM by SusieQ#1.
My guess is there are more mishies past and present who felt/feel the same way as you did, and are too young to really question their parents and elders.
We grew up with that blanket of authority, not to question.
You were conforming because it was survival mode for many of us who were LDS.
With more information readily available to the youth via Internet as other resources about church/cult history, the young adults today do have an 'easier' time making up their own minds. *Unless* their families are still shoveling it on em like ours did.
At 19 and 20 most young people are totally dependent on their parents for their sustenance - and support. Until they get through college, missions, etc.
I've wondered myself why it took me until my 30's to figure out the fallacies of Mormonism. I bought into it hook, line, and sinker before the Internet. I also left pre-Internet taking hold of my household, but I was helped by virtue of the Tanners Mormon Lighthouse Ministry and other publications.
Looking back on those years I now see I did the best I could with what I had to work with at the time. It was *always* a dysfunctional religion and a cult. Seeing it objectively is what took some growing pains.
You didn't ask to be born into a cult. You didn't volunteer to go on a mission. It was forced volunteerism that most young adults are not ready for when they go. Honestly, would not want to send my children out on something so strange as that is knowing what I now know. Your parents are responsible for your going then. But you're grown up enough to see beyond that and hopefully forgive them for their indiscretions and be kind to yourself, nonjudgmental, and understanding.
We were not only raised to believe, we were raised to honor our parents and few of us at that age were ready to disappoint them or defy them. They were feeding us, housing us,hauling us off to sports or piano lessons, taking us on vacations, and we were answerable to them. That is a heavy debt we felt. Close friends and ward members were counting on us to do the "right thing" as well. And, we wanted to please. And though we thought ourselves wise and grown up at 18, we know now we just weren't.
More importantly we were not raised to think for ourselves nor act for ourselves. I am sickened when I read parents claiming that their eight year old has "chosen" to get baptized. Tack ten more years onto that and the same eight year olds were all "choosing" to go on missions like it was really a well informed thought out choice that they actually made for themselves when often extreme obedience had kept us in embryo and we had grown very little since the baptism as far as autonomy goes.
Being raised in a cult I could barely choose what to eat for lunch. We were primed to give up our coming of age years, our apron cutting string years, our breaking out into the world years, in deference to the Mormon cause.
I'm late sixties and I do what you do too much as well. We shouldn't be judging our young selves by what we know decades later. But we do.
Right there with you, regretful. When it comes to family, I didn't start acting like a man until I was 49. That year I wrote a letter to my father telling him everything I wanted to say. We haven't spoken since. My father doesn't tolerate men in his life.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/31/2016 08:42PM by donbagley.
You can't do anything yesterday. You did the best you could at 19 given your circumstances and the knowledge you had at the time. Unless you seriously harmed anyone, then you shouldn't waste your time regretting your past.
All you can do now is live the rest of your life the best you can. Life is meant to be enjoyed, not endured. Set yourself up for retirement, help your family as best you can, and then try to enjoy it as much as possible.
I lost a friend last week who was only 34. I lost another friend in March who was 45. Lots people don't get the privilege of growing old. Many don't even make it to 50. Take advantage of it.
What SusieQ#1 said! Lots of good posts here and I do hope there are(many) young TBMs reading your post. You may help someone to avoid having the same regrets as yourself. Remember what laurad said also:
" Be kinder to yourself. You were a kid. You were in a cult, controlled and manipulated."
"I do feel for you, though, and I suspect you aren't alone in your regret."
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/31/2016 10:07PM by cinda.
My story's very different from yours in the details and events but the same in the feelings. (I'm 64.)
The best advice I've had from anyone in the last few decades was from my daughter (now 36) last year. After my visit, before I left for the airport, she hugged me and said, "Forgive yourself, Daddy."
Do what I do about my regrets: I fantasize that I have one dollar ($1) for every single thing I've done that I think I should have done differently. With the resulting cash I can buy an island, build a mansion on it and hire supermodels to bring me drinks with little umbrellas in them. And have money left over...
Dittos from here "regretful"...i'm right there with you.
LDS Inc stole and wasted this most valuable gift and important possession from me in my young adult-hood...and that was 2 whole years of my one-and-only -life.
I will never ever ever forgive them for that.
If i could sue them to get it back i would have done it years ago.
One can only wonder what real momentum and authentic memories i coulda created during those 2 years instead of the contrived nonsense that was the day to day existence of being a missionary selling Josephs' myth.
If only i knew there was a special place in HELL expressly reserved for these lying-geriatric-loser-bastards could i maybe feel a little better about how those 2 years played out.
The ONLY upside was that i left Mormonism behind forever on my plane trip home after my 2 year sentence was satisfied.
I wish I could have mind reading as a superpower. I'd love to know which missionaries don't have their hearts in serving a mission or the church in general. I'd love to help them feel normal and safe about what they are experiencing. I feel bad for anyone who is forced to devote two years of their life to something that makes them unhappy. Unfortunately, as was your case, no one will get to know their true feelings, so they have to pretend everything is okay when it's not. That's not fair. I feel so bad for them and wish I could take off some of the edge from their burden.
My parents never gave me the "your going on a mission or else" lecture many kids got. So glad they didn't too. I knew from a very young (pre-priesthood) age that under no circumstances did I want to go, so when dad asked me when I was 18 and headed for Ricks if I wanted to go, I said no and that was the end of it. I feel bad for young people who feel their parent's love for them is based solely on their perceived worthiness and whether they go on a mission.
I was exactly in the same boat as you. In my ward everyone went on a mission and you didn't have a choice. Not going was not an option and coming home was un-heard of.
I hated e v e r y f r e a k i n g minute of my 2 years. And when I came home I never said it was the best 2 years of my life.
My only consolation was I was probably the least effective missionary ever. I didn't care, I didn't try, and I counted the days that seemed to never end.
Do I regret it? I only wish I had also grown up and had the guts to refuse to go. Would I go again? Nope.
Because my parents said "what will the ward members think" and I got ridiculed by older siblings, I am back with a vengeance. I let them know in the most simple ways how the church is false. Part of it I want to shove in their faces, but the other half is to stick it to the morg.