How I Feel About This Journey

I have been reading the first blogs I posted here. Boy has a lot changed!

I went through a period of anger. I also claimed that there were reasons I am leaving the Mormon Church, and that the worst reasons I could find for anyone else leaving were not my reasons. I have decided, now, that I am going to leave for good for those "awful" reasons, too. I am leaving for many, many reasons. I am standing up for myself and anyone else who could have been hurt by this church as well. It is starting to feel like some sort of political cause, except that it is religion, not politics.

I burned off a heck of a lot of anger! I even got so mad one night that I wondered if I could ever sue the LDS Church, just to get revenge. I have dropped that idea, but I am starting to see things in a different light.

Today I feel somewhat down, as if all of this religion-dumping is starting to make me feel down in the dumps. I also suspect that one of the reasons I want to have solitude is so that I can feel better emotionally and physically before I start trying to go out of the house for much other than grocery shopping or checking out a library book.

I think that one reason I am not going out is that life has worn me out. This solitude thing is less principled that I thought it was. It is more practical. Basically, I feel really, really lousy. And I feel a kind of burden that I want to do so much more studying to prove things to myself so that I know where I stand on all of the Mormon stuff. There are times when it really bores me. There are times when I wish it would go away.

But it's not going to go away. Like I said in the last post, I am now too big for the pond, and the algae is making it stink. I found a good metaphor for my experience, and I am starting to understand why I feel the way I do. I am too big for the pond, but I am still near it. I can still smell it. It is hard to let go of it when it is still that near.

I have undone so much brainwashing so far, but I still find things in the Bible that scare me. And when I started analyzing a part of Alma in the Book of Mormon today, first I started writing critiques on the strange logic of the book. I think the logic is twisted. And I think that I understand the illogic of the doctrine in some of the stories in the Book of Mormon. But then I ended up on verses that made sense. It scared me because it seemed so real. Part of it seems so real.

I began to get scared that I would start thinking that the LDS doctrine and church are wonderful things. It just stumped me. I think that I found a part of the Book of Mormon that makes sense. I have no idea if it will make sense a year from now. That is the problem. Will I still be sucked in? How much time is this going to take? This is more than having a period of solitude to rest and reassert my boundaries and do study. This is a serious commitment to see where my truth is in a few years.

I felt today that I might not have the strength. I fear not having the strength. I fear getting sucked in. Does this mean that I don't have the strength? Does this mean that I will get sucked back in to the Mormon Church? I have gone to all this trouble, ordered books, completed a reading of some of these books, looked up things online. Am I just pushing myself too far? Am I just discouraged?

I think I am discouraged. I want to read the whole Bible, and the Bible is one big book. Also, I have two versions of the Bible sitting on my desk. Which version tells me the most truth? Which book of the Bible is best represented by which version? I am switching back and forth. The Bible is big.

I could push myself too far. I may want to have a realistic idea of how far I can go, study wise, in the next month, before I flip out. I think I just need to keep going. This whole thing is so big! I really had no idea that I would be undoing a lifetime of brainwashing when I first decided to never go back in November. I was born into it. It's like learning to play the violin after being a piano virtuoso for thirty years. It is strange and new. It could be that I'm still playing "Mary Had a Little Lamb" in my religious and spiritual mind. It will take a while to progress to a much more complicated piece.

Wow! A year ago I would never have thought that I was attempting this type of intellectual and spiritual feat.