First, you should probably understand that I am an Engineer, and I’ve always had a sort of logical mind. “If this, then necessarily that.” When looking back, I also realize I was extremely bright and smart, far more than I ever let myself have credit for (an oppressive church setting tends to do that do you.) In addition, I’ve never been that adept at social maneuvering: after all, when people say something, aren’t you supposed to mean it?

The second thing you need to know is that I grew up smack dab in the middle of Mormonism, the northern end of Utah Valley. As well, I grew up in an upper-middle class neighborhood. All this compounded into an area full of self-righteous people that had enough time to worry about how important they are, but not actually be that important. And so, the “Holier than thou” game ran rampant: “Oh, so much awfulness on television these days!” “I know! I don’t let my children watch hardly anything these days!” “Well, I make sure to restrict them to only when I’m home.” “*tsk* only your children? I gave away our Television ages ago, we’re not having that trash in our home.”
It got ridiculous pretty quickly, and I doubt a lot of the claims that were made. But this sort of environment was rampant in every aspect of the neighborhood, in particular anything to do with the youth. After all, you were judged on how effective a mother/primary teach you were on how well your kids acted (and yes, sadly, it was very much more prevalent with the women. I blame the culture.) This was a problem for me for one simple reason:

I didn’t like to sing.

Yes, my “fall from grace” can probably be all attributed to this one thing, or rather how people reacted to it. I’m not sure anymore why I didn’t like to sing in Primary; I was shy, I was a kid testing out rebellions boundaries, those hymns were made with people with no musical talent and no appreciation for the actual range of notes people can actually hit. Probably a combination of all that. But the important thing is that I wasn’t fitting in their plans. How dare a child be antsy and not fit in the mold for their perfect primary!

During all of this cajoling and dancing around to get me to do what they wanted, I discovered something very important: the literal loophole. You see, every time they would ask me if “I wanted” to do this or “I wanted” to do that, and I realized I could piss them off by saying “no!” and not get in trouble; I was being honest. I didn’t want to do it, and they couldn’t punish me for being truthful, but I could still rebel!

Obviously this was not taken kindly, and I was marked as the stubborn and difficult child. When you give a kid that label, you’ve only yourself to blame when they take it to heart and think that’s how they’re supposed to act. But I was absolutely adorable as a kid, so I got away with it.

Fast forward a few years, and I was starting to lose that “adorable kid” protection, but I was also becoming more confrontational and more brazen: I was falling asleep in church. Now, keep in mind that I have never said anything about rebelling against the church. No, I was rebelling against the people, who I already knew were the fanatics of the church. Plus, my gods was it boring. I liked school, they made things interesting and we were always learning new things! This so-called Sunday “school” just repeated everything we’d gone over again and again, in probably the most boring way possible! And they’d be wasting time with these stupid stories about their lives that went nowhere, or worse, about somebody else’s life that sounded…dubious in their sources.

It was about this time that I started to get punished for my “lack of religiousness.” My dad is a firm believer of the church, and also a control freak. So when I was clearly not into the religion (again at this point I was never even questioning the validity of it. I was just complaining about how boring the meetings were!) He would punish me. Ground me, yell at me, say I was being bad, that sort of thing. For the first few times it worked, and I tried to be better. But he was always so inconsistent, and it didn’t seem to matter if I tried to do the right thing, because I had “attitude problems” I would get punished. Eventually I just gave up on trying to be good in that manner.

Now, let me clarify and contrast this with my secular experiences: in school, I was the prize jewel. I got straight A’s, read at a College level in 6th grade, and was invited to go to accelerated learning programs/private schools. (I declined, I wanted to be with my friends.) I paid rapt attention and rarely ever fell asleep, and if I ever complained about something, the teachers would listen to me and give me respect. I never had “attitude problems” there; whenever I was chided or scolded there, it burned because it meant something.

As I got into High School, it got even worse. For most people, it’s because…you know, High School. But for me school was my refuge. After all, I was adored by my teachers and constantly challenged. And I got along with most of the students; I was just too innocently charming to pick up when I was being bullied, so they picked other targets, and I easily made friends with all the other over-achievers. (Part of the society in having perfect children is having smart children too.)

But no, for me it was because of missionary prep. What had once been fun youth activities with a “…and the church is true” appended on the end as an excuse to make it a church activity (The men leaders tended to be more fun than the women) turned into full-blown “religious” experiences all tailored toward making “every member a missionary.” And I hated it. Sob stories, emotional manipulation. And I was bright enough to see through it all. I literally pulled out the dictionary when some general authority said to “repeat your testimony until you knew it was true” and told my dad it was the definition of brainwashing. (That was a bad idea. I think we’ve established that I was extremely bright but socially inept.)

I was also starting to have real troubles with depression. There’s only so much a person can take before it starts taking a toll on you, and my family has bad genetics for that sort of thing. Something about clinical depression: you don’t just get “sad.” You start developing a lot of other things along with it. For me, it was anxiety, paranoia, OCD, and even slight schizophrenia. Anxiety and paranoia that people were whispering and judging me behind my back (more than they were,) OCD rituals that would help calm the anxiety. The schizophrenia started because I tried to turn to the church for help. Before this time, I really hadn’t paid attention to the church or religion—it was just that boring thing you did. But it promised to guide you and make you feel better if you listened to the still small voice. So I forced myself to make up a “Holy Ghost” to listen to, which started to get more and more…weird. Take different paths home, do laps around the school, flip that light switch three times… Who was I to question the Holy Spirit?

So, yes, when turning to the religion to help with my mental problems caused by the religion (and genetics), I started developing more mental problems. It started to wear at me, and while it would take me a long time to admit, I knew something was wrong, and it wasn’t all my fault.

The years started to get closer to my “mission,” and I started to panic. I didn’t want to go around teaching people of the “peace” and “tranquility” the church was bringing me when it wasn’t doing anything of that sort! I mean, I realized I didn’t even “know” the church was true, how could I, I was a teenager, I didn’t “know” anything at all!

Well, not surprisingly, the church leadership and your ultra-conservative father don’t take it too kindly when you start switching your testimony from “I know the church is true” to “I think it’s true? Maybe?” And so I started getting pulled aside for “concerns” about how I needed to “get off the fence of the holy battle,” and pressure me to get a testimony of the church right there and then.

With all that pressure, something had to give, and it came with a badly worded brainwashing movie. “I was scared, my brain kept telling me that going on a mission was wrong, but then I stopped thinking and I realized it was right for me.” I was disgusted. “Stop thinking.” Urgh. I know what they’d meant to say: “I let my heart/holy ghost speak instead.” But that phrase: “Stop thinking” pretty much summed up everything I hated about all the pressure I was given. “Stop thinking and do what I tell you, don’t question me.” Isn’t that what the devil would say? Wasn’t it free thinking that got Joseph Smith to look at the bible and ask God which church to join, instead of the pastors? If that’s all that’s required for God, can’t I just do that?

So, after waiting a few days to cool down (it’s not good to go to God with an angry and hard heart, after all,) I sat down and desperately prayed to God to help me show the church was right. I had cleared my mind as best as I could, made everything quiet so I could hear that still small voice and not my own overactive mind.

And I got nothing. More specifically, I got every answer. I tried again and again, and every single time got a different answer, and they all had the exact same feeling associated with them. I didn’t stop, I tried it another day, and again got whichever answer just happened to be floating through my mind moments before. I could manipulate the feelings and emotions I got with complete ease. And I got mad. Because in my most honest moment, despite all my “sins” (*cough* masturbation *cough*) With the purest heart I could muster being a sinful mortal…I got nothing.

I knew I couldn’t tell anyone my issues, because they’d just read the standard issue problems that I was being prideful, or that God would reveal himself in his due time. But I just got angry and started to look at everything with clear eyes and see all the horrid contradictions and logical fallacies of the church, first being the “Why does the Holy Spirit leave the unworthy—the ones that need it most to guide them?”

Things just kept clicking into place, and I applied and got accepted to an Ivy League school out east (Cornell University,) and started finding happiness and my own personality. I found out why I never had any problems with premarital sex—I was ~fabulously~ gay. Not really, I'm just normally gay.

It’s been a bumpy road, considering I went to college and lost all of my support system at the same time, and I still had to deal with that horrid depression, which especially became a problem when my family nearly disowned me when I came out to them as gay. (Again, I’m bright, but socially inept. You’d think all I’d gone through would have clued me in to the idea that even though they kept saying “we will always love you—even if you are gay” they didn’t actually mean it.) And the resulting cutting off of tuition that happened.

But I’m happy, and just this week I mailed in my formal resignation. (I would have done it a lot sooner, but I needed to be financially stable. It’s… I finally feel like I can stand tall and be free of all this awful church has thrown at me.