Posted by:
Valium and Pepsi
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Date: April 07, 2019 03:14PM
Well...when I was a TBM, I was happiest on Sunday night, until Saturday night. Saturday night I had to get ready (lessons, music, etc) for Sunday. Sometimes there were Saturday rehearsals. Sunday mornings, it was difficult to drag out of bed, argue with the kids because they hated church, get everybody fed (we never fasted), dressed according to "code" and there on time.
What made me happy as a Mormon was ordering pizza delivery for Sunday dinner! It was my personal rebellion against the inequity of men and women, and against my Mormon ex-husband, who lived off of my income, and who bullied me into slaving in the kitchen on Sunday, and fixing him a big fat Sunday dinner, instead of resting or having fun.
Free of my Mormon ex, the kids and I would put on our play clothes, and play in the yard, go for a hike, go to a movie, hang out with non-Mormon friends, or do whatever we wanted. We would celebrate church being OVER! We had a whole great week ahead of us before we had to go back there again! We had a happy life of school, my career which I actually enjoyed, skiing, tennis, bicycling, baseball, soccer, dance, music lessons, reading, pets, family, etc. In the real world, we were treated well, and felt successful. At church, we were "the broken family". I became marginalized, because I was a divorced single working mother. It was like the Mormon ward members didn't know who I really was. I was happy to be single, but I was never immoral. I made as much or more money than a lot of the men in the ward, but I was honest, hard-working, and dedicated to my clients. At church, I was treated like dirt, and I didn't want to be dirt. Worse than dirt, I was maligned and blamed for being divorced, constantly harassed to date and marry another Mormon, and the kids and I were threatened that we would be separated in the Hereafter. We were good people, trying hard, but we could never be good enough for the Mormons.
Now I'm not Mormon, I like "not going to church" as much as ever. I still like all the good things we do in our everyday life.
Now, weekends make me happy, instead of anxious and depressed, and we look forward to them, and make plans.
When I was a Mormon, a TBM friend and noticed that most of our Mormon women relatives and friends were on some kind of antidepressant, or a tranquilizer. Our callings exposed us to large groups of Mormon women, all over the Region. We took a personal census single and married women in our SLC Region, and at BYU, over a period of years, to find out how many Mormon women were on drugs--that we knew. (This was before the official studies that showed Utah as being the #1 state for prescription drug abuse.) We suspected this to be true in small cliques of women here and there, but we were shocked at how huge this problem was! Valium, Lorazepam, Ambien, Prozac, Zoloft, Imapramine, Lithium, Depacote, Vicodin and Percocet were popular. These TBM women said their meds made them HAPPY.
The main "upper" was caffeine. It makes sense that the Mormons are accepting of caffeinated sodas, because MOST of the women admitted to guzzling diet cola all day long, to keep going. It's a difficult habit to conceal. I'm allergic to cola, so I went straight to coffee to get me through those Mormon Sundays. I would also carry chocolate in my purse, to eat during church. I needed it only on Sundays. Now I'm out, I don't take caffeine or chocolate, anymore.
I've learned to be happy just "being." Mormonism and perfectionism always made me believe that I had to always be progressing, always achieving, always serving the cult, in order to EARN the right to exist. Everything else was considered a waste of time. I had to work hard to earn conditional love from the Mormons, including my own parents. When I stopped paying tithing and quit my callings, the Mormons ended our friendships. I was of no use to them, anymore. Now, life is wonderful for its own sake.
The world is filled with love and happiness--and the Mormons are afraid that if people know this, they will leave.