After finding this site and relating so deeply to a lot of the stories on here, I wanted to post my own.


All my life I have been force fed mormonism.
I am the oldest of six children, and we all attended church every sunday like good little mormons.
We moved around a lot, and I never questioned anything until I got into high school.

My freshman year, I did everything right. Every morning an hour before school started I went to seminary to learn more about the bible. Then every wednesday I went in the evening to spend more time learning bible values and how to be a good young woman.
Then, sometimes on saturday but always on sunday, we would go and learn yet more bible nonsense.
I attended seminary parties and memorized the approved bible verses. I won a competition for being able to flip to a bible passage the fastest.
But as I started to get older, my father became more and more abusive.
He would beat me for talking to people on the phone, I would be screamed at for not learning math homework quick enough.
I remember running away after a particularly nasty beating, only to have him follow me accross the corn fields in the truck, carrying a thin piece of tubing that they used to disipline us with, a switch.
I fell into a terrible depression and attempted suicide mutiple times, only to end up in the mental hospital.
It was the happiest week of my life being away from them.

After leaving the hospital, my parents decided that I was a troubled child and made me start having regular meetings with our bishop.
I told him about the beatings and being hurt on a regular basis, and he didn't do anything about it.
He told me that I needed to do more soul searching and grow closer to god. That I was depressed because I was sinning.

So I started studying more in depth, and with that came questions. Every morning during seminary I asked 'why' and was always told that I needed to read the scriptures and pray and then I would learn the answer, that my teacher couldn't tell me why.
Except I was doing that, and I didn't get an answer, I just got more questions.
I remember being thrown out of the class because I was challenging the authority of the teacher and making other people have questions.
Since I was taking the class away from the approved reading and into the actual issues.
I began to skip meetings in the morning and sleep through the ones I did attend.

My father grew more and more angry and began to beat me more and more, I went the other direction and started dating and working full time, anything to get away.

I ran away at 16 and never attended the church again, and my depression cleared away after that.

Every family gathering, I am the black sheep because I don't go to church. I am constantly called by the missionaries and my grandparents to return to it.

But I can't do that. My father beat me and my mother. The bishop knew about it and did nothing.
My father was a man who had been exocommunicated in his teen years, but because he was 'forgiven' he was allowed to be re-baptized.
He continually harassed and threatened other members of the church, but was still allowed to come every sunday and was even placed in a position of power.

Every. single. sunday. He would come home and shout and scream if my mother didnt have dinner on the table within thirty minutes.
And then in the same hour he would say that we had a christlike household and a bunch of other bullshit.


I am NEVER going back to the church.
A church that is completly against equality for women and one that brainwashes its members is something I can never get behind.