Posted by:
Cold-Dodger
(
)
Date: October 21, 2020 04:00AM
[Adult Language]
Well, I guess you can, but then you're an ***hole.
I had a heated argument with my brother a couple years back -- not chief, this one is the second youngest. I sent the family a meme in a family text chat by Uchtdorf I saved from FB, the one about how apostates just forget why they even bothered being Mormon in the first place. I said something about how Uchtdorf has no idea what he's talking about, and I immediately got piled on. My father chimed in that since Uchtdorf is a prophet, he basically knows everything, and my dad reasserted that through my behavior, my combativeness and unwillingness to go to church, I've basically forgotten everything, making Uchtdorf right. I threw it in my dad's face by saying that his critical thinking skills suck and I reminded him of a time he got conned out of over ten thousand dollars by scam artist. That riled everyone up. Everyone started leaving the chat in disgust... at me. But my second youngest brother said something cheeky about "go sort yourself out" before he left the chat.
Leaving chats can feel like slamming a door in someone's face, but unless you block me I can keep sending you texts, and if you respond to me later you didn't slam the door or drop a mic or anything. I was seething, he had unofficially volunteered to take my tongue lashing on behalf of the whole family, and he took it all because he'd never heard me talk like that before. I called him a coward. I said the only reason no one wants to talk to me about the church is because they know I know more than them and so they're afraid. I've always known more than them. They came to me whenever they needed scriptures explained or needed science reconciled with the gospel, and now they just pretend like I hit my head and got a possessed by the devil accidentally. They treat me like I buggered out of the gospel business cuz I'd rather be a wanker, and they don't give me the time of day to challenge their bullshit because they know I'd fucking destroy them.
I told my brother (who is married) that if Joseph Smith was alive today and he demanded my sister-in-law to bed her, he would just give her to him without a fight. He admitted he didn't know much about that stuff, "but..." and as he started to wind up into testimony mode, I stopped him by saying something to the tune that his incuriosity comes because he was always the stupidest brother, not much into books or school or anything. He was hurt, and he accused me of saying that I didn't care about him or anyone and all of this was just so that I don't have feel bad about myself... as if I feel bad about myself by default for leaving the church. Maybe I look and sound and act like I feel bad about myself, but it's actually a mixture of complicated emotions about my time in Mormonism, its aftereffects on me how it always intertwined with my family relationships and made them complicated too, and these feelings are further exacerbated by extreme frustration with these people who won't help me work through this shit with them by talking to them about it like we used to be able to talk about anything. In fact, I don't know that I ever had a deep relationship with this brother, but I always wanted one.
That's not what I said though. I said I don't want anything from him, and he has nothing to offer me. There were some things I wanted from the family early on in my faith transition, things that are hard to articulate, but I'm clearly not going to get them so to hell with the whole lot of you.
And that was it...
until I texted back the next day and said I said some things that I didn't mean and that I regret saying. He offered me lunch, and we tried talking through that horrible exchange. I wonder if the conversation we had didn't make it sound like his accusation about me was right -- that I'm just a sinner who is miserable because he can't be happy in sin -- but what I was trying to do was open up to him about what the church has done to me psychologically, the pain I've been through, the effort I put into it, and the epiphanies I had that lead me to atheism, since he's not going to listen to the material case against the church's claims.
The status quo has a miraculous way of restoring itself in this family. It's weird. I can't stand it. I want things to feel different around them, but they're always trying to keep things in that house feeling like it always has since we were kids. It's hell, but I keep going back over for family dinner. I might take a seven week break citing COVID as my excuse. I might grab a pillow and start hitting the same brother with it trying to get a reaction after a whole day of everyone smiling through their teeth at me and pretending like nothing is different. I can't stand the phoniness when we all know what's different. I hit him with that pillow telling him to have a genuine emotional reaction to me, reminding him of the terrible things I said to him, and he said, "but we made up... you'll figure it out." Meaning, of course, that he and everybody else are waiting for me to come to my senses and come back to the light and in the meantime they think that they can kill me with kindness to hasten the transition, which is why no one has said hardly a thing to me about the church or called me out on my occasional jerkwad behavior for two or three years now. But I'll be a jerk, or just annoying, because I know they're playing games with me, and I can't stand it. I don't know what I keep agreeing to be around them, but I do. It's the food I guess. I wanted relationships with them like we used to have, but these half fake relationships they're offering me instead -- I don't care for them. I guess instead of our relationships progressing towards anything, they'll just be damned in place as they are, and I will go over for dinner and silently resent everyone for all the big things and all the little things that bother me about them as they take notes on me and my life and use whatever they see or don't see as evidence that they must never let their guards down around me, even while they pretend to include me in the family.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/22/2020 01:55AM by Tevai.