The Only Road Is Out

This solitude thing is starting to be a bad idea. Even though I don't always have the energy to leave the house, I think I should whenever I get bored. Yesterday I had cabin fever really, really bad. I was used up as far as all the take time for yourself to think stuff. Also, I had one of those bad episodes of being afraid of the Mormon Church, again.

I am going somewhere today, and it should really help my morale. Doing chores in the house yesterday helped a lot. When I got moving I started to shake off the depression.

I really, actually, don't need to fear that I am going back to the LDS Church. I hate it for what a it is: a pack of lies. And I agree with what I said yesterday: I will leave for my own reasons, and the bad reasons that I agree with from everyone else's negative experiences with this church.

I don't need to fear. I am getting farther and farther away. The pond still stinks, but I am sick of wondering if I am ever going to go step in it again.

I do need to make some reading goals. And yes, I will spend many days alone, but it is no longer forced. I am feeling better today and I realize that only something evil could convince me that I will ever go back. I am feeling the fear leaving. The Church is looking smaller. I am beginning to understand that it really is all up to me. Some strange fate will not get me back onto the church benches. I will prevail in what I am doing.

Yes, it will take a few years to explore the ideas I need to explore and make sure I am unbrainwashed enough to be out of danger of wasting my life or having some dreary glazed-eyed existence. But my eyes are much less glazed now. And the only direction is out.

I read a little of "Under the Banner of Heaven" last night. It is kind of entertaining because it seems so wildly improbable. And yet, I know it is probable where I come from.

Where I come from was shaping who I was. It was slowly corrupting me. If I had taken it all seriously, I would be a very bad person. The fact is, that I felt my soul corrupting. I felt cold and dark. My femininity was sucked into a black hole of self-disgust, doubt, and guilt. I was not a happy person.

Even if I have another unhappy day like yesterday, I will wake up to more happy days like today. I am reminded that I was tortured and guilty all of the time a year ago. But I feel so much less torture today. If I thought I needed to go back to church for one more second, I would be so miserable and frightened today. But I don't.

There are more good days than bad days. I will make it out alright. I'm not just leaving something. I am entering something new. I am entering something that is burdenless. I am entering something so free I could never have imagined it. I do have the freedom to choose. I can do things I want to do. I can spend my money on things I really want, not on things I don't want. I don't have to pay any church any money I earn ever again.

I was paying, the last time I paid tithing, to be tortured and corrupted. I was beginning to understand the path to evil. Before I decided to never go back, I had a realization. There is a path you can go down that consists entirely of your fake attempts to be good. You walk around looking good and acting spiritual and magnanimous and inspired. This path leads you down a road to a prideful kind of evil. You try to convert everyone else to this path. You are the leader. You are the great one. That is the path they were trying to get me to go down. You don't need a real identity. All you need is the identity of your leader. God told you to try to heal the world and prophesy. And, by golly, you are going to do it. You are chosen.

I do not have to be chosen. I have to be me. If God chose me for anything, I may figure it out by the time I am old and gray and on my death bed. Or I won't know at all. But sometime in the afterlife, a realization will hit me or someone will tell me. As far as I am concerned, I have chosen myself to be myself.