u/FreshLiterature6536

I "served" in Taiwan. No, forget that, I didn't "serve" anybody. I was exploited. But I digress.

I used to only think of how my mission hurt me. I'm only just realizing how it hurt others.

One of my converts killed himself by drinking a bottle of pesticide, believing he would see his dead mother in the next life.

I converted a lesbian and taught her she was a sinner. She hoped God would make her straight.

Another woman was cut off from her family because I baptized her. They tried to warn her that she was joining a cult, but she wouldn't listen because of me.

I truncated centuries-long traditions of incense burning, tea drinking, and ancestral reverence by promoting the word of wisdom and the 10 commandments.

The list goes on and on.

Beautiful lives, invaluable people, and priceless cultural expressions that had previously survived all kinds of oppression, against any configuration of odds... upended by a white kid with a Mormon's naivety and an American's ego.

I wouldn't say I regret my mission, per se. I didn't choose to be born Mormon, I didn't choose to be brainwashed. I had an incredible adventure. And frankly, my mission was the beginning of the end for my testimony, so in a weird way I'm kind of grateful for it.

But on the other hand... damn, there is also some really poingnant grief not just over what I lost, but what I took from others. I don't want to make a mountain out of a molehill, I know that any destruction I did was insigificant at scale. But on an individual or personal level, I can't help but think there's a certain amount of gravity to what I did. And that hurts.

My LDS heritage stretches back to the founding of the church. I left about 6 months ago, so I'm still pretty new to the ex-Mormon community, and there has already been a lot of premarital sex and drug use in this short duration (gasp!). I'm even planning my first tattoo. It's been a blast, but there has also been a lot of destruction in my personal life (not from the sex or drugs, ironically; its all come from Mormons trying to ruin or control my life).

Back when I first started leaving the church, there were comments from some Mormons that I was just "in a phase", and people (especially some of my family) didn't seem to understand that this was a permanent decision. I'm not "lost", I'm not "deceived" by the devil, and I'm not a wayward prodigal son. There's not going to be some treacly 11th hour "spiritual awakening" where I satisfy their arrogance and magically confess how right they were all along. There will not be a melodramatic reconversion story for them to performatively gush about during a mawkish sacrament talk. My life story will not be fodder for their effusive, condescending testimony meetings.

So, to drive the point home, I had my ordinances anulled, struck my name from church records, tossed out all of my scriptures, and stuffed my garments in a dumpster. Yet even after all the "sin" [sic] and renunciation and drama, an active LDS friend of mine recently told me that I'll "always be Mormon". That comment definitely ruffled my feathers. The church as an institution is evil, I hate the cognitive dissonance and passive aggressiveness that make up the very fabric of its culture, and I hate the insipid sentimentality of its canon and traditions. Being continuously patronized by the Mormon community, despite everything I've done to distance myself from it as much as possible, feels really inconsiderate and kind of violating. I know my friend didn't mean anything by it... but that's the problem: Mormons don't see an issue with adopting other people against their will.

I don't know, it just bothered me, so I figured I'd share. Mormonism is the insult that keeps on giving. Even after you legally terminate your association with them, they won't grant you your freedom. If there was one bad trait that all Mormons shared in common, it would be their tendency towards disrespect. To be clear, I love my remaining LDS friends. This one friend in particular has gone out of his way to be supportive, kind, and non-judgmental in my journey. I wouldn't trade my relationship with him for the world, and I'm super grateful to have him in my life. But his words still nettled me.

About a month into my mission, I was in a freak accident where I got knocked unconscious. I remember waking up on the ground and seeing a puddle of blood in front of me as I was rolled onto a stretcher by medics. I tore up my face, got a severe TBI, had my arm in a sling, and almost a decade later I still have numbness from the nerve damage to my foot and carpel tunnel from the bone in my arm being set wrong.

I got bitten by a poisonous insect and my foot swelled up to twice its size, it couldn't fit it my shoes. Due to some flooding from tropical rainstorms, I got a necrotic fungal infection that ate away the flesh between my toes. I had an ingrown toenail which had gotten so bad I could barely walk. I went to the town doctor to get it treated, but he didn't have any local anesthesia. So he bisected it with a pair of scissors while I was fully sensitive. I blacked out.

One day late at night, bullets whizzed past my head. I never saw the shooter, I just heard the report and the sound of bullets. Maybe he was shooting at us, maybe he wasn't. I didn't stick around to find out. My mother was diagnosed with stage 3 triple-negative breast cancer. My mission president never suggested I go home, he simply said "focus on the work, it'll make you feel better." He then sent me to white-wash train in the hardest area of the mission, with a bishop who hated Elders no less.

I got chased by a pack of feral dogs while cycling through a rural part of town. I remember kicking at one as it snapped at my feet on the pedals. I remember having a panic attack on exchanges with my zone leaders. I didn't know what was happening to me, I just knew I couldn't breath and my whole body felt like it was being stretched and I had a horrible headache and my blood felt on fire. I curled up in a ball on the floor and my zone leaders just sat there and waited for it to pass.

I'm just the tip of the iceberg, by the way. That same zone leader who watched me have a panic attack would later have a grand mal seizure. As far as I remember, he had no history of neurological disorders before, or since, but one day after a morning jog he simply collapsed and started seizing. He wasn't sent home. One of my companions broke his back and still wasn't sent home right away. I had to look after him for several weeks until the transfer finished up. We lived in a cement box, with a hose that we used to shower. Another Elder's brother committed suicide, he wasn't sent home. The list goes on and on.

But guess what? One of the best Elder's I had ever worked or lived with, a truly nice guy who I remain friends with to this day, looked at a picture of a naked woman. And you know what happened to him? Sent home right away. Go figure. None of this is even that bad compared to other truly dangerous missions. I know one guy who watched a cop get executed in the street. The church abuses its members in a lot of ways.

Anyways, the aftermath of my mission was brutal. Rage, nightmares, more panic attacks, suicidality, self-harm. You get the picture. People pretend the mission is "just" two years and anywhere from $10,000-$15,000. But it costs more than that. It often has lifelong mental and physical effects, and it comes without any guarantees or promises.

I (28 M) won't go into details, but I credit my therapist with saving my life. In our almost two years of work together, she never once spoke of religion. She simply provided me with a space to be completely authentic, and gave me tools to regulate my emotions. It changed everything.

When I left the church 6 months ago, my family cut me off. My mother told me this would drive a wedge between us. My grandfather told me I was too stupid to be making these decisions on my own. Eventually, my dad called me and told me how stupid he thought I was, and how nobody wanted anything to do with me, and that I wasn't allowed to speak to anyone except with his permission via text on major holidsy (e.g., Christmas and Mothers Day).

So I obliged, but within a week, my parents did a complete 180. They kept calling me, texting me, sending me emails, writing me letters. I had moved to Europe, and they still somehow showed up to my house uninvited and unannounced. It was surreal.

During this visit, they didn't even apologize or talk about the situation. They just acted like nothing had happened. But they'd still pick fights about random shit, tell me what to do, and rebuff any efforts I made to try and make amends. So obviously, I wasn't vibing with all this attention.

Probably half-a-dozen times, I stated in no uncertain terms that we needed space. And even after I told them to back off, they wouldn't! They completely ignored all my boundaries. It was like they were trying to force me to cut them off, so they could pretend they never did it in the first place!

So I blocked them on every social media platform. I changed my phone number. I moved addresses again. But even that wasn't enough! Without knowing any details about my therapist other than her first name, they somehow located her contact information and sent her an extremely long email.

They told her she wasn't even a real therapist and had no right to treat me (she is a licensed therapist, idk wtf they are talking about). They took issue with her approach to my therapy. They blame her for my departure from the church. And they demanded - without my knowledge or consent - that she terminate me as a client.

Now, obviously, my therapist thought this was hilarious and didn't bother responding. When we talked about their email, she said it was the first time in her entire career that she had ever seen the parents of an adult patron try wresting control of their child's mental healthcare from a provider.

But I mean wow. What a Mormon thing to do, am I right? The complete disrespect for boundaries, the egotism, the total lack of self-awareness, the violation of privacy and autonomy, the poingant misunderstanding of mental healthcare policy and even of their own child's needs; I don't even know where to start. The whole thing is just... insane!

Anyways, just a crazy story. Figured I'd share.

I left the church almost 6 months ago now. And I seem to remember this inexplicable exhaustion whenever talking about the gospel. It started small, when I came home from my mission, maybe? I don't remember feeling it before that point. It snowballed over the years until it was simply too tiring to belabour any religious point more than necessary.

I never really questioned what that feeling was until I left (partly because I was too focused on repressing my emotions).

Now that I'm out, I realize: it was the exhaustion that comes from constantly lying. Sitting around, pretending to get breathless at the first sign of a coincedence, drumming up insincere fervor over horrible Bible fan fiction, constantly jockeying to share the latest morsel of embellished trivialities and misrepresenting them as miracles, acting as if the manipulative and redundant sermons of fickle old men were inspiring and instructive...

Now that I'm free, I don't have to carry that weight anymore. I don't have to put on a show.

I don't have to march up there once a month and say what I "know". I don't have to pretend the Pearl of Great Price is somehow super wise and mysterious. I don't have to pretend the endowment is actually sacred or profound. I don't have to pretend that priesthood blessings or garments or taking the sacrament actually ever did anything for me (asides from give me scrupulosity and make me extremely self-conscious).

Life is still exhausting. But at least its not exhausting the way it used to be.

I was always taught growing up that I had the Gift of the Holy Ghost, and that if I didn't "offend the Spirit" with things like worldly indulgences, I would receive "constant guidance".

Guidance for what, you may ask? Nobody ever really bothered to say. But what they did tell me in no uncertain terms (quite constantly, in fact) was all the horrible things that would happen if I lost the supposed companionship of this particularly fickle phantom.

So, I made sure to never risk hurting the feelings of what would later turn out to be the most one-sided friendship I had ever experienced. Any song with the word "hell" or "damn"? Nah. Rated-R movies? Nope! Dating beore 16? Not for me. Masturbation? You must be crazy!

To the surprise of exactly nobody outside of the church, my mental health steadily declined for well over a decade. Self-harm, suicidal ideations, compulsions, and self-destructive behaviors followed me into my mid-to-late twenties.

It was in those later years that I first seriously encountered Grunge. A girl I had dated on-and-off over the course of two-years (never seriously) ended up coming with me on a trip abroad where she played Nutshell by Alice in Chains in the car. I was floored.

I felt alive. I felt seen and heard and comforted and understood in ways I had never felt before. A cousin who had left the church years ago was inspired by Grunge to learn guitar and join a rock band. He ended up helping me navigate the 90s Seattle music scene. I fell in love with it all.

I was living at home at the time, and it was very unhappy. Our home's history was colored with screaming matches, fights, people storming out of the house and slamming doors, disappearing for god knows how long, extreme passive aggression... you get the picture: Love at Home.

But in those couple of months before I officially left the church, I remember listening to Man in the Box... and all my troubles melted away - especially during the chorus where Staley screams "JESUS CHRIST". If any song were to "offend" the Holy Ghost, it was that one.

But unlike any scripture study session, hour of prayer, or temple date night, listening to these explicit and blasphemous lyrics gave me a great catharsis. How could this be? I thought the Holy Ghost was supposed to comfort me. But I hadn't felt a damn thing in church for the past 8 years.

Concurrently, the more I learned about the lives of Eddi Vedder or Demri Parrot or Mike Starr, the more media I consumed (like Montage of Heck), the more I became dubious about the plan of salvation. How could God knowingly put His children into households with so much abuse?

It didn't make any sense. Within a couple months, I formally resigned from the church. Other factors played a much larger role in my departure, but I'd be lying if I said Grunge wasn't one of the first dominoes that initiated what would later become a cascade of reasons for leaving the church.

Thank God for Kurt Cobain.

Why do I get the impression that this is exactly the kind of ad that would have worked on Dallin H. Oaks back in his day?

These poor girls have no idea.

The thought of breaking the Word of Wisdom felt like an event to me. After all, it is the quintessential Mormon commandment. I wanted it to be a memorable, positive, and liberating experience. So, for my first time breaking it, I decided to have a Taiwanese bubble tea. I had served my mission in Taiwan, and I hoped the sentiment would be comforting. Anything else - like alcohol or coffee - felt too fast and scary.

I was shocked by how utterly depressed I felt immediately after my first sip... I was horribly ashamed and lonely. It wasn't breaking the commandment itself that made me feel bad, but rather that I hadn't shared the experience with anyone. I knew that for next time, I wanted to be with trusted friends who could give me social support. After all, this is a huge deal for me!

A short while later, one of my best friends was visiting, and a waiter surprised me with a complimentary limoncello shot. I felt safe and adventurous, my friends were right there, so I knocked it back and loved it! It was very pleasantly warm, and tasted like candy! I tried an aperitif with him later and hated it...

A couple weeks later, after a day in the office my boss/mentor spontaneously invited me to have drinks with her and some friends at a German beer hall. After only 2 pints, I was absolutely sloshed, I couldn't stop laughing, and everyone was so kind and fun. I had great drunk conversations. It was a ton of fun!

But probably one of the best so far has been when I went clubbing for the first time, and I had my frist shot of vodka. Another friend was visiting from out of town, and our hotel receptionist let us know they offer a party bus/clubbing service. We got a great deal, so we accepted! I had 9 shots... 5 or 6 were vodka, the other 3 or 4 were whiskey. I love vodka, whiskey not so much. I also had a beer and something else that I can't recall. Remember: this was on an empty stomach, and the most alcohol I'd ever consumed at once was two pints of beer. So I got hammered.

And holy shit. That was fucking awesome.

I danced like a maniac, people were buying me shots (the bartenders gave me two free shots just for giggles), I laughed and cried uncontrollably and made friends and talked to cute girls. At one point, I got my ass kicked at a drunken dart throwing contest. I remember already being like 7 shots deep and totally plastered when somebody handed me that metal dart, and I felt like the dread pirate roberts. You should have seen how fast people were falling over themselves to get out of my line of fire.

Lastly, I fell asleep on the couch with a golden retreiver. I was taking a video because I thought it was really sweet how snuggly the dog was but when I watche the video the next morning um... well, the dog wasn't exactly cuddling, it was doing a lot more if you catch my drift. anyways.

I discovered I love clubbing and shots. Everyone was so friendly, I had so much fun, and I wasn't even hung over. No headache, no photosensitivity, I was only slightly nauseas but that wore off by evening the next day. Can't wait for the next time.

Anybody ever watch Mobster's and Mormons? The title is a line from that movie, but I've heard it echoed in other corners of church life so I'm not sure who said it first.

The reason I bring it up is because when I was in the church I used to think this perspective of disregarding membership behavior as a valid indicator of gospel impacts was so profound.

But now that I'm out, I realize just how backwards it is. I used to think I would be nothing without the church, but now I know the church would be nothing without me.

Everything about myself that I thought I got from the church was actually what I provided to the church the entire time. TSCC wants us to believe we'd be nothing without it, but the truth is: its nothing without us.

I left the church and decided to start trying coffee.

A lot of things caught me by surprise... how expensive Starbucks can be, how drinking two Venti banana lattes in a row makes my eyes feel like they're being squeezed out of my skull, how I'm more motivated and focused when I drink my morning brew...

But what I didn't anticipate was coffee literally fixing my gut. Our family has a history of GI problems (Crohn's, IBS, etc.). I was fortunate enough to never get any official diagnoses, but I'd have little problems here and there. Once I started drinking coffee though, it basically all resolved.

It's not a cureall, if I stop drinking coffee and have crazy foods or have too much alcohol then my gut gets pretty fired up again. But in general, if I drink coffee and have a steady diet, I stay more regular and my gut feels really good as opposed to when I was in the church. People told me coffee would give me the runs but it has had the opposite effect.

Why did I think this stuff was bad?!

I'm a government consultant. My current contract ends in 8 months, with a 50/50 chance of renewal. People are pleased with the work, its just hard to find money in federal budgets with the Orange Man screwing around all the time. We've already narrowly escaped getting our funding slashed several times thanks to some friends in high places... but I'm not sure how many more lives this cat has left.

I have zero savings, but I do have friends who can loan me money (I've been given $21k so far, I have generous friends), unused credit cards ($7.5k worth), things I can sell (mostly guns and art for a couple hundred a pop), people who have told me I can always have a place working for them if I change my mind about my career (it'll just take about 12 months to set up, and these jobs aren't exactly high paying), and I have people who have offered to let me stay with them for free if I need help getting back on my feet... So I'm stressed about being unemployed but it won't be the end of the world: I'll have places to stay, and options for renewing income streams.

However, I do have a $20,000 student loan left from an original principal of nearly $100k at 7.08% API (for my Master's degree). It costs ~$120/month in pure interest. I can reasonably set aside $2.5k/month for the next 8 months (~$20k by the time my contract ends).

My dilemma is: do I divert this $2.5k to an emergency fund in anticipation of unemployment even though I already have a few backstops in the form of friends and credit ($20k isn't nothing, but it feels really small for a survival fund so do I even bother?), or do I put it all on black by paying off the lion share of my remaining loan (and get the emotional payoff, which would be a huge source of stress relief if I do end up losing my job)?

Thanks in advance!

I've only read a couple books on the psychology of poverty, but my impression has been that subsistence often predisposes an individual to isolation, logical fallacies, and short-term thinking. None of these are exactly boons for rational decisionmaking.

Contrast this reality with Alma 32 where Alma literally tells hoardes of uneducated, unemployed, overworked outcasts that their desperation is precisely what enables them to appreciate the truth of God's existence.

Just a funny thing I noticed.

It's pretty annoying knowing the church is an extremely rich religion, and watching members justify this level of greed by pretending the apostles are comparative ascetics.

"At LeAsT tHeY'rE nOt MeGaChUrCh PaStOrS", I've heard some say (paraphrasing).

Like, you don't actually know that, do you? The church is famously and purposefully obfuscatory with its finances. As far as you know, each apostle is halfway to being a billionaire thanks to your faithful little donations.

Are we honestly expected to believe that an institution with over a quarter-trillion dollars in liquid assets, zero external accountability mechanisms, and an extensive (not to mention, at times, criminal) history of lying about and mismanaging their own wealth, isn't somehow abusing these resources for personal enrichment?

Anybody remember the whole ponderize snafu? Deseret Book is literally just brand-name priestcraft. And wasn't there some thing a while back about temple or chapel construction contracts being handed out to friends? And that's just the public stuff, the stuff they didn't manage to hide.

TSCC can't even keep pedophiles out of local bishoprics, you think they give a shit about making sure the sheets are perfectly balanced? The only conceivable argument for why high-ranking church stakeholders aren't absolutely stuffed to the gills with ill-gotten gains is that the apostles are, frankly, too incompetent to pull it off.

Seriously. There is minimal if any threat to Mormon religious freedom, esp. with a $300billion portfolio and the politics of three different states under their control and several sitting congressman assuming the identity of active LDS members.

I mean, come on, Texas is apparently forcing kids to read the Bible in school. Like, bro, calm down. You're dead in 5 years maximum anyways.

But they need to keep their members sitting on pins and needles, and they need to provide proof that the end of the world is nigh, so why not pretend to prophesy of religious persecution in the expectation that TSCC will be forced to start paying taxes?

People, and our relationships with each other, are the greatest sources of meaning in this life.

The key ingredients to a fulfilling relationship are vulnerability and authenticity.

The church raises you to believe that membership is the core of your identity. It then coerces you into taking oaths of secrecy (like in the endowment) which prevent you from ever fully revealing this critical component of your Self.

By doing so, it attempts to impede your ability to connect with other humans on a deeply personal level (especially outside the church). Without that degree of sociality, it is much harder to wean yourself away from the MFMC.

The endowment wasn't just some weird sex thing Joseph Smith made up legitimize sealings. It was (and is) a psychological trick designed to clip your wings.

Women gave healing blessings on the pioneer trails. Their prayers of faith are just as efficacious as priesthood blessings, and they can do all the magical voodoo priesthood shit that men can do when they're exalted and become Goddesses... the only thing they can't do is actually run the church in this life.

For example, women can't be ward clerks. Why not? What's so special about that calling? Women can sit in on ward councils, they can attend stake leadership trainings, they can do everything the ward clerk can do... except actually handle the money and membership records. Funny little thing, isn't it?

The closer I looked at all the callings men could hold as opposed to women, the more I realized there was only one common denominator: control over money, sex, and membership. And that was just one more reinforcing moment where I recognized: the church is the unholy offspring of a 19th century sex cult!

When it comes to the priesthood, the fact that the church makes every metaphysical concession to women on things of purportedly eternal significance while simultaneously standing on business over the comparatively trivial affairs of mortal ministry (like restricting women from conducting a ward audit) is proof that the Q15 doesn't give a damn about any part of the Restoration story.

If they actually believed the priesthood was some kind of real force made manifest through the genders with tangible heavenly consequences, they wouldn't give up any ground on how it operates. It would be like one day somebody changing their mind about how gravity works. You can't just do that.

But the Q15 knows its not real. So they'll keep giving up false ground to create the illusion of progress. They'll give women the Sunday School presidency, they'll lower the missionary age, they'll let them change their class names from Beehives to Effervescent Unicorn Rainbow Warriors.

But they'll never truly let the slaves run the ship.

Look, I'm as big a fan as anyone else of giving space for people to have contradictions, but not when an institution is doing it in defense of obscuring unflattering historical facts vital to informed consent.

Anybody ever notice how the typical conversation with a Mormon seems to center around whether or not you agree with each other, instead of the healthy mindset of working to accept each other?

I suppose that's what you get when perfectionism destroys any hope of vulnerability.

After leaving the church I realize how commandments make it hard to relate to others in the outside world. And as long as the outside world seems scary and foreign, you're less likely to build healthy relationships that could meet your needs outside the church and provide support if you ever thought about leaving. Ergo, you're less likely to let yourself question the gospel message because doing so would imply possibly upsetting your entire life.

Not drinking tea, coffee, alcohol, never having smoked, abstaining from sex, not doing shopping or chores or normal activities on Sunday, wearing strange underwear, not using foul language to express your emotions, taking secret oaths, not watching the same movies or listening to the same music as others, not dating or marrying outsiders, giving 10% of your gross income to a hundred billion dollar corporation, having adversarial/condescending relationships with all other religions, and constantly framing life events as part of some cosmic eternal plan, are all rules that the MFMC uses to make the average Mormon completely unrelatable to anyone in the outside world and vice versa.

It's like the gangster in batman: "you always fear what you don't understand!"

Their entire message is geared towards making you afraid to leave by depriving you of your ability to understand both yourself, and others around you.