Hello everyone. This post is to announce an identity change; I'm not the person I used to be! Frequent lurker, infrequent contributor, I hereby offer a name more appropriate to my profession, from which I am now retired. The more clever among you will have no trouble making the connection. My former sobriquet, rattledaysnakes, was chosen as a frivolous word play to safeguard my identity. Water under the bridge allows me a bit more daring in that regard, but not quite enough to reveal my ACTUAL name! Gawd forbid! However, one might consider this an intrepid move in the direction of fuller disclosure.

The new name, by which I shall be known upon this board, and which requires fewer keystrokes at a ratio of 3:2, and as you can see in the upper right-hand corner, is "billdorgan."

In the biography I submitted a few years ago, which has long since fallen out of the bottom of the queue, I resorted to all manner of embarrassing, convoluted crypticisms attempting to clarify my rationale for leaving Mormonism, while simultaneously muddying the water for the sake of identity preservation. Not sure even I understood what I was saying, except for the crystal clear memory of being pissed and OFFENDED! Many negative statements have been offered up against leaving over offenses, but I proudly declare being offended as my primary justification.

Welcome to the club of the missing and wounded. I hope you enjoy your time here.

Best to be a moving target. I think everyone should change their names every so often.

It is good for your recovery to do some self-reflection. Mormons are against you, and keep you either busy, frustrated, confused, or bored into a stupor. You are an individual, and we will be happy to know all about you (except for your real name).

Whether or not anyone else accepts you, you can accept yourself. Stand proud for what you believe, and what you don't believe. I live among the Mormons and I get offended almost every day. We have all been there. Probably most of us would have stayed in the cult, and stayed in our TBM families, and worked things out. I tried this for many years. Ultimately, though, it is the lies that bite you in the end. The lies about women, gays, the races. I never did believe JS and the temple rigamarole, to begin with.

How can anyone say that a group who believes that they are better than you, that only they get to be with their families in the hereafter, only they deserve God's blessings (the Atonement means nothing to these people) only they have the only true church. They believe that select Mormon males will someday be GODS and will have multiple wives, and a planet full of spirit children someday. Is that not the epitome of arrogance? Is that not offensive?

--Alice, my real name. Offended, and proud of it.

Yes, be yourself, at last.