Get Away

Today, I finally understood how hurt I was at being controlled on a "moral" level for so many years. I finally had myself a very good cry. I finally realized how the strict rules were giving me a desire to actually rebel.

Apparently, the Mormon rules did control me, but there was a healthy part of me that would have no part of it. I kept wanting to break a rule. I wanted to laugh out loud, louder than Mormons wanted me to laugh. And I wondered if it was so bad to have sex with someone I wasn't married to. I wondered why I didn't just get up and scream to the Church and the world that I didn't give a rat's behind anymore.

The fact is that I am no whore. But the idea that I absolutely could not have sex with anyone I was not married to, including anyone I was engaged to, was so repressive that I would have fantasies of having sex with persons I was not married to and would NEVER marry due to the fact that they were so unsuitable.

I never actually did have sex with one of those unsuitable people. But I now realize that that is what spiritual abuse can do to a person. The person will either fantasize about rebelling, or they WILL rebel. And some people can become victims of very bad people just because they threw way too many rules to the wind, rules that might protect them from real crimes.

I think that what happened to me is that I got more cautious as I dropped those ridiculous standards. The fact is, that in my mind, I DO need to make sure that any persons I have sex with in the future are not one of those "unsuitable" people and that the sex is in the context of a committed relationship. I am still deciding on my rules in this area, but at least I have rules I agree with myself on.

Rules that turn you into a person with more than one personality are physically, emotionally, and spiritually damaging, and yes, very dangerous.

And so, yes, the rules of the Mormon Church are very, very damaging on all levels. If a rule is too hard to keep, you have no idea who will do something completely stupid just to be able to say that they broke your lame, idiot rule.

Normal human beings don't like living in glass houses with pancake make-up on so that they can look perfect to everyone else all of the time.

Normal human beings get sick of going to church with other people who also feel like they will throw up if anybody thinks anything bad about them.

Some women, particularly in the Mormon Church, have been raised to believe that their real goal in life is to attract and marry a nice young returned missionary.

They wear make-up and make sure they have dates as many weekends as possible. They have boyfriends as early as they can possibly have boyfriends, sometime after the time they turn sixteen. Sixteen is the age that Mormon youth can start dating.

One day I was looking at the cover of a video about a young male missionary called "Return with Honor." On the back of the DVD cover was a young brunette in red lipstick and lots of eye makeup. She was posed in a shot with the young missionary in the movie. She had that "Mormon look." At that point, I realized that that "Mormon look" was the look of a young woman who was wearing too much make-up, acting much older than she was, and thinking that her only hope was to snag and influence this young man.

It didn't just look like it was from the 1950's, which it did. But it also looked like she was a very sexualized, aged person. She was the Mormon Barbie that is often termed the "Molly Mormon." It sounds so innocent to people in the LDS Church. They see it all the time, in the media and in real life, as well. But it struck me as weird and disturbing when I saw this image of this young woman. A young woman like that finds the next available man and acts like his girlfriend as quickly as she can.

Nothing about this behavior has anything to do with survival in the real world. And it was how my leaders wanted me to end up. They thought that if I and all the other women took seriously our duty to marry a "righteous" man in the temple that we had eternal perspective and were truly committing our life to the Lord.

But I have only come to realize that this is just not right at all. It disturbed me for many years, but now I know that it is not just disturbing and confusing to me personally; but it is also just plain wrong.

I didn't end up a Molly Mormon. But what I ended up as was far more disturbing, particularly since being a Molly Mormon was never my dream. Something worse happened to me. I became repressed, emotionally unstable, constantly afraid of what others thought of me, and finally, completely insane.

It turned out that insanity was really where it was at for me. There was nothing else. I was safe insane. Not many people could get close to me. And it drove away many people in the end.

Would I wish this for my life if I had it all to do over again? No, I would not. But looking back, my insanity was prettier than becoming a hardened fake. At least the insanity was real. Nothing else was.

When it comes down to it, I decided early that my salvation was important. I began to realize that acting out lies just because I was a church member was not a good course. Lying made me feel terrible. And I suppose that that is one thing that slowly began to pull me out of the Church. Removing me from the Mormon Church was worse than removing gum stuck for years to the bottom of your chair, but I slowly loosened myself. And other people had hands in this process, I am sure, but many would be surprised that complete inactivity in the LDS Church was what I was really looking for through all of my tears and confusion and feeling not good enough. Inside, and outside, all I needed was to get away.