This story is much too long to tell in detail without turning it into a novel, but I'll hit the basic points.
When I was a little girl I wanted to know everything, and for whatever reason, I wanted people to know that I knew everything. I was, what one might coin it, a sass. I told my mom what was what, I pestered people with millions of questions, I shared random facts picked up from Magic School Bus with even more random strangers, and I never, EVER, admitted that I was wrong without some good strong evidence. Sometimes not even then.
As I grew older I realized that I would never know everything, but I still felt the need to try. I became rather proficient in the art of inference, and I often came to the correct logical conclusion when it came to simple natural processes I observed in nature. I found-and still find-the natural world around me incredible.
However, I ran across a lot of things that I couldn't explain, and no one could explain to me. I wasn't phased by them though, because I knew that someday, when I died, I would find out. Whether it was sooner or later, I knew that I would meet my heavenly father and he would tell me everything. Or maybe I would suddenly just understand? Or maybe there were classes for the things science hadn't been able to tell us in this life in the one after. No matter which way, I knew that I didn't need to worry about the questions that were unanswered because someday I really could know everything.
That was my life for a very long time. About 75% of it, actually. When I was 16, things started to become shaky for me. I caught myself making excuses for my beliefs or writing off what seemed like perfectly sensical research, just because it didn't quite fit with what I had been taught from the very day I was born: That I was a direct spirit child of the one true god, and that one day I would meet him and be judged for my actions in this life. I was very good at making what to me were sound rationalizations for denying people rights, ignoring emerging data from legitimized research, and thinking harshly of other people to name only a few. I couldn't honestly bring myself to ask the all important question: "Am I right?"
I graduated high school with scars. I was confused and exhausted and why couldn't people just get along, why were we fighting wars that slaughtered droves of innocent people and how come my friends couldn't just be happy their own way and how was it right that god could have put people I love--put me even-- down on this earth with seemingly uncontrollable desires and passions that, if not painstakingly controlled for the duration of this life, would damn them to an eternity without the ones they love? How was it fair that habits that were ingrained in me as a child, before even the age of baptism, condemned me to an eternity of disappointment from my mother. I couldn't reconcile this in my head anymore as week after week my desire to control myself strengthened and week after week I failed at doing so. I couldn't tell my mother, I couldn't bring her more pain than life and I had already brought her. I kept it between myself and a bishop for years because I absolutely could not hurt my mother.
I left for college. I learned that the LDS church had finally come up with a way to reconcile evolution with my deepest religious convictions, and I was so incredibly relieved. I had kept it secret for years that I leaned toward believing the theory of evolution was true. I led the music in my singles ward. I tried to fit in, to get past the insufferable immaturity of some of my roommates, and to uphold relationships with the roommates that genuinely cared for me. But again and again I failed and I failed to control myself. I prayed and I prayed and I wanted with all of my heart to change. I didn't go to my bishop at BYU-Idaho. I couldn't face failing anymore to another human being. I thought that it could be, this time, between my god and I. He had allowed me to become this way, this horrible horrible wretch of a person, before the age of accountability, and I thought it was his responsibility to help me change. I failed. I couldn't do it anymore.
I came home. Home to beautiful Lehi, Utah and the cemetery to sing in like the failure freak that I was. I had failed to be friends with everyone in high school. I had failed my family at being the mediator they needed after the remarriage. I had failed myself and god and my mother time and time and time and time again and again and again. All I had was singing like a freak in the cemetery and going on lonely walks. Dramatic, I know.
I found a job. I was hired on the spot at my interview for Payless. I rose quickly and within six months was making 1.50 more than I had been before. All the while I was talking and connecting with people from different walks of life, realizing that these girls whose lives were ripe with mistakes similar to my own were, in fact, incredible people. I wore tank tops once in a while, guilt only manifesting when I was spotted by my mother. I felt free, like I was finding something real. Something that made sense. My church attendance declined.
I prayed, though. I prayed and read the Book of Mormon and asked and asked for help. I wanted to be clean. I continued to fail as I always had. When I prayed, repented, I felt dirty. I tried and tried to forgive myself, but you can only forgive someone so many times before forgiveness grows tiresome.
I got a new job. The Red Balloon Toy Store was opening again, and my favorite manager of all time wanted me to be her assistant. I jumped at the opportunity for a multiplicity of reasons, one of them being the guarantee of surrounding myself with people who were LDS. I was too close to falling away out of doubt and pain and the thought that there was goodness outside of the church.
I reconnected with Jonathan. Jonathan and I had always had fantastic conversations. I looked up to him. He inspired me to research and to push myself, to prize fact over feelings and truth over emotions.
This is when I really took a look, from the outside, at what it was that I'd believed my entire life. All it took was another person like me who wanted to be perfect, to know everything. I found that my beliefs, while beautiful and comforting, were built upon a foundation of deceit. The founder of the church I revered was shown time and time again to be a con man, no matter how I tried to dismiss these accusations as slander and hatred. Hatred is rarely borne of nothing. There was such obvious proof that the text I'd bound my life to had been falsified, even so obvious as the way in which the text was expressed. It wasn't even in the correct form of English for the time period, it was written to sound like The Bible. I tried to work my mind around that as well with thoughts like, "Maybe the Lord wanted the books to be similar in that way," or "Maybe this is just a test of faith." But then my research led me to The Book of Abraham and it's resource, a common funerary scroll that had absolutely nothing to do with Abraham, that had been translated from the Egyptian by those who could and which made absolutely no mention of the prophet. Again my heart turned to the possibility of Joseph simply using the scroll as a medium for the contents of the book, but my head knew that was quite a stretch. As counts of racism and plundering and polygamy and slavery came repeatedly to my attention, I realized just why my leaders had always warned me against seeking out these things: The farce was too plain. Some may be able to turn a blind eye and continue on in the church faithfully, but I knew that I could not. I could no longer ignore or reconcile the role of women according to the LDS gospel, either, nor could I bypass the research bringing to light the incredible power of the human mind to fabricate and believe false stories and events. To feel power and comfort from its own imagined sources. It was almost too much.
If I had not had Jonathan beside me, confused and hurting himself, I don't know that I could have gone on with my life. My entire family, millions of people, had been conned. I wanted to scream, to shout, to riot! I wanted to shake my mother, tell her she could be free of the burdens she carried. It was okay that she hadn't been sealed for eternity to a man, her dearest wish, even though she'd married two return Mormon missionaries. She could go and live her life and be free from all the hurt that reconciling her life with the church had caused her. I needed to apologize to my best friend for telling her I forgave her for having a girlfriend. I needed to let my dad know that I forgave him, that I understood that his life was hard and that it wasn't entirely his fault.
For a while, I couldn't. I couldn't tell anyone anything, because I couldn't bring myself to disappoint my mother, my friends. I couldn't admit to anyone that I'd been wrong my entire life, and I'd hurt people because of it.
I continued to research and to seek knowledge. I began to feel that not only my religion, but all devotion to and belief in deities or higher powers had the potential to harm. I apologized to Panda, reconciled with my father, married my best friend. I began to live.
I still cannot bring myself to talk to my mother about it. She doesn't understand that her love isn't enough. I need her to understand that I'm happy because I found the beauty in this world, this universe. I don't need god to dwell on Kolob, I don't need to feel like a monster because of things that happened in my childhood, I can be human. I don't need to become a god. I can't stand the thought of her suffering over me because she believes she will have to "come down to visit me" in the afterlife. Eventually she'll have to know, of course. Eventually she'll see me being my irreligious self and feel the pain of a mother who has lost her child.
This is why ex church members are angry. We are angry because we have been conned and tricked. Because this seemingly well-meaning church has torn our families away from us on the premise that we have apostatized and cannot live with them together forever. They believe we are spiritually dead, and the pain that our deaths causes our loved ones is unbearable. This is why I am angry. Of course I can't leave this alone! It would be irresponsible and unfair to my loved ones. This church, while it tells a seemingly love filled narrative, is the breeding grounds of judgement, pain, and hatred like any other faith. Because if you don't conform, you are damned by those who have. My mother, my beautiful, kind, intelligent, loving mother, is going to feel pain because I cannot deny myself the truth of the inconsistencies that I have found. We are not angry at god, we are angry at men and the pain and suffering they have caused by conning millions to believe that they are naturally dirty and vile. One cannot be angry with a being that one does not believe exists.
When I was a little girl, I wanted to know everything. I never will, but I can at least try to stand by what I do. I know that I love my family. I know that I want to be a good person. I know that this world needs work, and that I have to do my part to make it a better place. It's the only one that we've got. I know that, so far, there is no evidence for a god of any kind in this universe, and that major religion as it is practiced today has hindered the progress of our species. I know that animals deserve kindness, that they do not deserve the treatment we have given them. I know that all humans are equally valuable, and that discrimination based on race, sex, or orientation must be equally warred on. I know that whether or not there is god, I want to spend the rest of my life trying to make this world a better place for everyone, every creature, than it is right this moment. I know I will no longer lay down and hope for a better afterlife. I want to move forward.
I am agnostic and, for all intents and purposes, anti-theist. If there were a higher power, I think they'd be pleased with me. Not because I discriminated against minorities, went through archaic rituals, and prayed my entire life, but because I am trying to do good in the world and to make it a better place for everyone to be.
This life is all I've got. I'm going to do all the good that I can.
