Been Thinkin'

I have of late been doing a lot of reading and a lot of pondering, trying to figure out my feelings toward the members of the church. I think my personal feelings are tainted by some of the experiences that I've had, so that while I recognize that the majority of the members are good, honest, decent people, striving to live what they believe to be the truth, it can still be hard for me sometimes to remember that.

F'r instance, there's a family in our ward that is the epitome of mormon virtue. They have plenty of kids, all but two, I believe, adopted. They're virtuous, lovely, of good report and praiseworthy, and seek after every good thing. But the father of the household hates our family. I'm sure that he's found a way to justify it in his mind so that he's not doing anything wrong. Their oldest daughter got married some years ago. We missed the reception because it was the same time that one of my really good friends and two of her children were killed in a car accident, and I was grieving over that.  So a few days later, my husband says, "Let's go to Target and get a wedding present for [name redacted]."  When we pulled their registry, there were a fair few items that had not been purchased.  We had the same idea at the same time--let's get it all! Man, we had a blast shopping! Our feeling was that we don't have kids, so let's help spoil other people's kids. But when my husband took the gifts over to their parents' house, the father was pretty nasty to him. We don't know if it's because of his personal feelings towards our family, or if perhaps he thought that we were trying to show off how good we were, or what. But his attitude took what had been done out of genuine love and joy and turned it into a gut-churning negative memory.

Or here's another example: I was a convert. That's the first thing you need to know. And I fairly quickly learned that to fit in you need to be a Molly. Wear the stupid dresses. Do crafts. Bake bread (fortunately, I enjoy baking bread, so that wasn't a stretch). So I did. I wore the stupid dresses. I did crafts. I taught Relief Society from time to time. I even, in an attempt to follow the word of wisdom, frequently made vegetarian meals (because we're supposed to eat meat sparingly, right?). And whenever I would do a vegetarian cooking class in Relief Society, well, of course no one showed up. So blah blah blah. After the in-vitro failed, and I knew I wasn't going to have any children, I went through hell. All the stupid comments made by people at church. Being the only one sitting in Relief Society without kids, either by giving birth or adoption. Having to explain to nosy people why we were not going to adopt, even though it wasn't really any of their business.

Four or five months after the failed IVF, I was sitting in a really boring sacrament meeting (I know, I know, redundant) and trying (and failing) to pay attention to the speaker. But I sort of had this little mini revelation, and realized how much of my life I had put off because I hoped I'd get pregnant that month. And I made a little list of things that I wanted to do. And I decided that I wasn't going to put off living any longer.  Over the next few weeks, I also realized I hated doing crafts. I hated wearing those stupid dresses and stupid lace-trimmed socks with stupid white keds. I got rid of all the crafty shit and hung up prints by Picasso and Dali instead. I even changed my name, because of the negative associations of the contempt I heard when certain people said my old name.  And you know what happened? All but 2 of my church friends dumped me. That told me right then how much I mattered to them, no matter their protestations every time I showed up to church about how much they loved me and how wonderful it was to see me. It did take me a while, of course, to realize what was happening. I remember calling one friend several times a week for several months, leaving messages that never got returned, before the light bulb finally switched on.

Of the two church friends who didn't dump me, one is now dead (that car accident I mentioned earlier). And the other, well, she's the coolest ever. I can tell her anything, and she'll listen to me and she won't judge me. She loves me, and I know it. And I love her, and she knows it. She is amazing. And her awesomeness has absolutely nothing to do with the church. It's all because that's just who she is.

I've mentioned before in this blog of my loathing of assigned friends, and how hard it hit me when I realized that my visiting teacher, who's been my visiting teacher for several years, doesn't love me, no matter what she says. But I think she fooled herself into believing that she did.

We were badly betrayed, in addition, by one home teacher in particular. I don't want to go into details right now, although I probably will eventually, but it caused us enormous pain. But we were made to feel like we were the ones who were in the wrong.

So while I can objectively say yeah, there are a lot of good people who happen to be mormons, I also recognize that I've seen perhaps far more than my fair share of those who are not so good, who also happen to be mormons. As my husband said for years (up until the time I decided I wasn't going to be mormon anymore), why would you want to hang out with people who despise you?

I don't. I'm going to stick with my friends who love me, and who let me love them, and I don't give a flying rat's ass what religion they do or don't follow. And that may mean that I can count the numbers of my truly true friends on the fingers of one hand, but hey--they're truly true friends. And the number doesn't matter so much as the quality. Dude--they're quality.

Sad News

My little dog died last night. He was in my arms when he passed, right around midnight. I'm going to miss him more than I can say.

Take Note!

I'm not an alcoholic because I have a glass of wine every now and then.

I'm not a druggie because I take medications prescribed by my physician(s) as they are prescribed.

I'm not a slut because I wear tank tops and cute underwear (today? grey boyshorts).

I'm not breaking moral standards by drinking coffee and tea.

My house didn't burn down because I left the church.

My beautiful sweet lovable border collie didn't die because I left the church.

My beautiful sweet little dachshund boy didn't contract chronic kidney failure because I left the church or because I defend myself when my husband starts accusing me of being a druggie alcoholic with no moral standards who doesn't take care of her dogs. He's not eating, but he's not not eating because I left the church because I'm a druggie alcoholic with no moral standards.  He's not doing well, but that's not because I'm a druggie alcoholic with no moral standards who left the church.

I invited my husband to move out, but he laughed at me and said that I need to move out.

Then when I told him he can have the house and we can just split the money for the contents and go our separate ways, he backtracked and apologised and he's just under stress because of everything. Apparently I'm not under any stress. And I'm supposed to just let his insults roll off my back without getting upset, because our dog has kidney failure because I raise my voice in frustration.

See, it's okay for him to yell at me and accuse me of all kinds of things, but I'm not allowed to get hurt or defend myself.

I'm really fucking pissed off today.

Grrr

I was having a really shitty day yesterday, the culmination of a really shitty week.

Monday I went to the doctor to get a fill (lap band), and learned I'd gained a couple of pounds. So they gave me a pretty good fill.

My husband went out of town Tuesday, thank goodness.  I also puked a lot on  Tuesday. So Wednesday I stayed home to puke in privacy. And also to take care of my seriously ill dog, who has chronic kidney failure.

I went to work Thursday morning until I puked 3 times in my trash can at my desk because I didn't have time to run down the hall to the bathroom. Then I went back home.

I stayed home Friday.

Saturday I had a hair appointment, and thank goodness I made it through without getting sick. And I didn't vomit anymore Saturday or Sunday, although I continued to have, shall we say, digestive problems throughout the weekend.

I woke up Sunday to the beautiful sound and smell of pouring rain. And I was happy. However, all of my cooler weather shoes, my boots, and my wellies were at the house in a couple of huge contractor plastic bags. All I had at the apartment, aside from trainers, were flipflops and 3 pairs of cheap suedeish material flats. My husband has said that we're not to remove anything from the house until we get the money for the contents. So I thought I'd just go buy a pair of ankle boots or something--couldn't buy wellies because I have fat calves. They're shaped nicely and all, but they're large. I have to buy boots that are higher than ankle height online because I have to order them from specialty shops. 

I went to Marshall's, and all of the ankle boots were either impractical (too high heeled or else made of suede), too ugly (there was one super cute pair but it didn't have any heel which made it look extremely stupid on my feet), or too expensive ($99.99, which in the greater scope of things isn't all that much, but was ridiculous when I have plenty of boots at home). So I called my husband and he finally agreed to let me go get my shoes.

I went to the house and started bawling as soon as I walked in the front door. It smells musty, and there's stuff strewn from one end of the house to the other. I got the 2 bags with my shoes and boots (and some handbags) and left. Then I decided to go to the video shop to get a copy of a movie I'd read about online (Agora--it looks really good). My route to the video shop passes by the stake center, which I flipped off 3 times as I drove past.

I didn't and do not want any contact with the church. But my husband still does. He called the bishop the day after our house burned down to tell him.  Not one person has contacted him. We've had more compassion from perfect strangers and co-workers than he got from teh mormons.  So much for their claims to be service oriented.  We paid the kids (early 20's, I guess) next door to rip out the shed in our back yard and haul ut and the contents off to the dump.

My dog is still very sick, and I'll be surprised if he lasts much longer. He won't eat anything. I've been force-feeding him Ensure, but my husband called me this morning to tell me to quit giving him the Ensure because it has too many vitamins. But if I can't give him that, he's just gonna die because he will not eat. I've tried everything. He just turns up his nose at it. Stuff he'd have been begging for he'll sit there and turn his head every way to avoid even having to look at it. He ate 2 tablespoons of baby food one night, but then when I offered him some more the next day he refused to eat it. I tried giving it to him in the syringe, the way I do the Ensure, but he just blew it back out of his mouth all over the blanket.

My husband's hoping to come back home tonight. I alternate between hoping he makes it home and hoping he stays out there another day or two. My dog seemed a little better this morning, and he did, with great resistance, drink quite a bit of ensure. Hubby told me to go get a pot roast from the market, and shred that up and see if he'll eat it. He won't, but I'll try.

So this last week has just been a real shitfest. If it weren't for my friends and family, I'd be ready to run away right about now. Let me rephrase that. I'm about ready to run away. The only reason I don't is because of my friends and family.

Beliefs

I wonder how many mormons who leave the church go to other christian religions, other non-christian religions, or identify as agnostic or atheist.

I've also been wondering where my personal beliefs lie. Doesn't that sound funny? Six months ago I could have told you exactly what I believed, and to not believe it anymore feels weird, but right.

I am pretty sure there's some kind of life after death. My belief for that is based in the fact that (a) I've lived in a haunted house; (b) I saw a ghost walking through the living room of the house I own now; and (c) my best friend's son C has visited me in my dreams and told me things that I did not and could know have known until I talked with my bff about them.

The haunted house belonged to my grandparents. The entity or residual energy, whatever you want to call it, that resided there hated women, and that feeling was concentrated in a particular part of the house, unfortunately the room that my sister and I shared while we lived there. Boys were unaware of it.  It was incredibly uncomfortable, and I was so glad to leave that house when I did.

The ghost walking through the living room of the house I own now looked stunned when I spoke to him. I asked him who he was, and what he was doing in my house, and to get out. I got the impression he was surprised that I saw him there. But he left. There wasn't any feeling of hostility or unpleasantness; he was just walking somewhere and his path happened to lead him through my living room.

My bff, the last time she was over, and I discussed her son. It's been over a year since he passed away, and everyone misses him more than ever. She told me how people at church tell her that he must be such a great missionary for the Lord, and that pisses her off just like it pisses me off.  He died just before he turned 15. His illness kept him from enjoying so many things that kids should enjoy. We've talked about how we want him to just play, and goof around, and do all the things he didn't get to do while he was here.

I've been reading Sulli's commentary on the general conference that took place this past weekend, and it kinda makes me sick. And I've been reading the posts by my family and friends on facebook about how much they love general conference, and it kinda makes me sick. General conference just makes me sick, no kinda to it.

Know what I did this weekend? I spent most of the day Saturday with my sister. We sat around and talked while she worked the last hour of her part-time job. I showed her the postcard with my secret that I mailed to PostSecret this weekend. We did a blog post for a book blog we contribute to. Then we went to try on clothes and watched a movie (yes, it was R rated, I believe, Dream House, and Daniel Craig's abs get four thumbs up), and walked around the mall, and I bought a new handbag because only having one handbag is driving me up the WALL!  And then I went to half-price books and got a couple of DVDs. And then I went to Marshalls and got a loaf pan, because I'm making meatloaf this weekend, and a loaf pan was not included in the furnishings our emergency housing rep set up for us. And I picked up dinner at Rosa's because I got home too late to make meatloaf that evening as had originally been planned. And Sunday? I went and bought some tops because even if my weight's kind of plateaued, I'm shrinking, and some of the new things I've bought the last couple of months are too big. And I went to Target and bought some make-up and water. And then I sat around and read all afternoon. And I took a long soak in the tub, reading a fascinating book on my nook. And then I went to bed and read until I fell asleep. It was just lovely.

Much nicer than general conference, where I'd have heard the same old stuff that they've been saying for decades, and where I'd have gone to sleep and felt guilty about it.

None of my family or personal friends, except those to whom I've come out of the apostate closet, and definitely never my husband, know about this blog. So saying here not to bother asking me to come back to church is useless, because they know better. But oh my gosh, I'm waiting to hear it from a couple of people. Not looking forward to it.

I posted a really cool picture in favour of gay marriage (or marriage. Because I had lunch, not gay lunch. etc.), and I'm waiting to see who's going to unfriend me. I did get an interesting personal message from someone after I posted that. I have something of hers to send back, and it won't surprise me at all if I get unfriended as soon as she gets it back.

Kinda sad.

General Conference

When I was a fledgling member of TSCC, I looked at conference weekend as a vacation from church. I didn't go to the stake center to watch any of the sessions. I spent Saturday as I would any Saturday, and on Sunday I sat around home and read bad Mormon literature. By bad Mormon literature, I mean those ghastly huge volumes of what looked like typed and photocopied stories and "poetry" that were a precursor to the Chicken Soup for the Soul type books.  I've long ago forgotten what they were called, and have no desire to remember.

Then I began attending a student ward, and suddenly I was around people who actually watched general conference, so I went, too. And my friends took journals with them so they could take notes, so I did, too. I remember writing, in one of my journals back then, that I would think I was doing pretty well, and then go to General Conference and find out what more I had to do, so I'd start working on that. I tried to word it in a positive manner, but the fact remains that I was trying to be perfect all at once.

I got married, and we were active for quite some time. While we lived in Utah, we watched general conference at home, occasionally meandering down to Temple Square to watch there. When we moved back to Texas, we would go to the stake center and watch. I felt guilty, because in the dark room I always fell asleep. Usually during Saturday morning and Sunday afternoon.

And then we began watching it at home via streaming video on our computer. And I would lay in bed and go to sleep with the dulcet tones of Russell M. Nelson. Do they deliberately sound so soporific, so they can keep the Morg assimilated? Inquiring Minds want to know.

So now it's general conference weekend. I haven't gone to Deseret Book to buy uplifting church books. I haven't been listening to uplifting church talk CDs in my car. I haven't opened up the BYU streaming website on my computer, in preparation for watching it. In fact, we have BYU TV as part of our cable line-up. Did I add it to my favourites? Ha! Heck no! And when I'm not surfing via my favourites, I say "ha!" every time I pass it up when I'm flipping through the channels.

I feel like I'm awake after years and years of being asleep. No sing-songy talks by the token women to listen to. No sleep-inducing hypnotic talks by The Men In Charge of Everything. Tomorrow I'm meeting my sister in the afternoon, and we're going to go mall walking, see a movie (probably an R-rated one), have lunch, and talk about things. I don't know yet what I'll be doing Sunday. Maybe nothing. Maybe just sitting around reading the new Richard Dawkins book I bought for my nook, and eating good food.

And if my husband decides he needs to watch conference, I will be heading out of the apartment. I'll go sit by the swimming pool and get a sunburn, or else I'll go to the giant mall and walk around for exercise and watch another R-rated movie. Or I'll go sit at the bookstore near work and read.

You know what makes me just sick? Back in the day, whenever a general authority would stand up to give his talk, I would tell my husband, "Oh, I just love [name redated]!" Over and over and over.  I can't say that anymore. I don't know if these men deliberately deceive people into subservient slavery when they themselves know the church can't be true, or if at least some of them genuinely believe it. But I believe enough of them have to know they're living a lie that I can no longer say "Oh, I just love [name redacted]!" It's more like, "I wonder how much he knows about (whatever I'm thinking of at the moment)." It's, "how culpable is he?" It's, "how can you say you love the sinner but hate the sin, when you excommunicate a man who gets the courage to come out to his family of 5 children and his religion, and that man commits suicide? Because if that's love, I'll take outright hatred, thank you very much."

So now I'm going to go see what R-rated movies are showing this weekend that I want to see.

Who Said It?

• “After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn’t it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked—as I am surprisingly often—why I bother to get up in the mornings.” - I love this! Just reading his description of earth made me giddy and joyful.
• “The meme for blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious expedient of discouraging rational inquiry.”  - I spent years staying away from anything that could be construed as anti-Mormon literature, without realising that anything that says anything negative, whether truthful or not, about the Mormon church is considered anti-Mormon literature.
• “Isn't it sad to go to your grave without ever wondering why you were born? Who, with such a thought, would not spring from bed, eager to resume discovering the world and rejoicing to be part of it?”  - I've always wondered why I was born. And I love discovering the world, even on those days when I'm not necessarily rejoicing to be part of it.
• "The feeling of awed wonder that science can give us is one of the highest experiences of which the human psyche is capable. It is a deep aesthetic passion to rank with the finest that music and poetry can deliver. It is truly one of the things that make life worth living and it does so, if anything, more effectively if it convinces us that the time we have for living is quite finite." - I've never been much of a scientist, but when I learn new things, I do feel that sense of awed wonder. It's beautiful.
• "We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Sahara. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively outnumbers the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here. We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?"  - I've been far less afraid of death since realising that I don't believe in the Mormon God. I don't know if there's something greater out there, something larger, something more wonderful than we can even imagine, but I hope there is. But even so, that tremendous fear of death, fear of dying having spent my whole life disappointing God, is mostly gone.
• "Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack all supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, where's the harm? September 11th changed all that. Revealed faith is not harmless nonsense, it can be lethally dangerous nonsense. Dangerous because it gives people unshakeable confidence in their own righteousness. Dangerous because it gives them false courage to kill themselves, which automatically removes normal barriers to killing others. Dangerous because it teaches enmity to others labelled only by a difference of inherited tradition. And dangerous because we have all bought into a weird respect, which uniquely protects religion from normal criticism. Let's now stop being so damned respectful!" - And of course he is referring here to all religion, not just those with which other religions happen to disagree.
• "Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish." - Think of a newborn, intent upon survival. That selfishness innate in us from the beginning keeps us alive, and as we grow, we learn generosity and altruism, as a way to help others survive and thrive.
• "You could give Aristotle a tutorial. And you could thrill him to the core of his being. Aristotle was an encyclopedic polymath, an all time intellect. Yet not only can you know more than him about the world. You also can have a deeper understanding of how everything works. Such is the privilege of living after Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Planck, Watson, Crick and their colleagues." - The Catholic church KNEW Galileo was wrong....
• "If you want to do evil, science provides the most powerful weapons to do evil; but equally, if you want to do good, science puts into your hands the most powerful tools to do so. The trick is to want the right things, then science will provide you with the most effective methods of achieving them." - You don't have to be religious or a member of a particular group of people in order to want to do good. It's something we learn from people around us, and, as we grow, from within ourselves.
• "My point is not that religion itself is the motivation for wars, murders and terrorist attacks, but that religion is the principal label, and the most dangerous one, by which a 'they' as opposed to a 'we' can be identified at all." - I remember the people in the Book of Mormon who built themselves a tower and stood upon it thanking god for the fact that they were so much more righteous than the others around them. The Book of Mormon may be fiction (is, in my opinion), but there is certainly no lack of that "us vs. them" mentality.
• "I do remember one formative influence in my undergraduate life. There was an elderly professor in my department who had been passionately keen on a particular theory for, oh, a number of years, and one day an American visiting researcher came and he completely and utterly disproved our old man's hypothesis. The old man strode to the front, shook his hand and said, "My dear fellow, I wish to thank you, I have been wrong these fifteen years". And we all clapped our hands raw. That was the scientific ideal, of somebody who had a lot invested, a lifetime almost invested in a theory, and he was rejoicing that he had been shown wrong and that scientific truth had been advanced." - My husband still, every now and then, apologises for asking the questions that led me to the answers that ended up in my leaving the church. Me? I'm elated! Sorry to know that I spent the last 30 years believing something untrue, but delighted to know the truth at last.
• "You've just said a very revealing thing. Are you telling me that the only reason you don't steal and rape and murder is that you're frightened of God?" - I don't steal and rape and murder because I want to be a good person. That's it. I didn't need God to tell me not to do those things.

I could go on and on and on, but I shan't, because I'm going to be doing a lot of reading.

Thanks, Richard Dawkins. You're not the demon I've always heard you to be.