Leaving Mormonism and Depression Behind.
Thinking about how I exited from the LD$ Church made me realize that it was incredibly important for me to write down the reasons for my exit. I’ve been very frustrated with trying to explain to my family why I left and the utter disregard for which anything I’ve discussed with them seems to mean to them. So, here goes….
I was born in a small Idaho farming community, into what I would now consider a totalitarian Mormon regime. Church was mandatory and my earliest memories of attending church were doing my best to sleep through it. It probably was the genesis of my nearly lifelong habit of sleeping through church.
Many people probably don’t understand what growing up in not just a devout Mormon family but a devout Mormon community is like. I’ve had the opportunity to come to know a number of fundamentalist Mormons over the last few years and I am, in fact, now living with a lovely woman that was formerly a second wife in a polygamous marriage. I’ve observed that the only real difference between my family and the Idahoan community that I grew up in and a Utahn fundamentalist polygamous community is that my family and community didn’t practice polygamy and the fundamentalist community wasn’t quite as religiously intense as mine.
My mom and dad tried hard to be good people and to raise their children the way they were, which meant going into periodic rages and beating the shit out of my siblings and me anytime we stepped out of line. My mom was particularly bad about losing her temper and whipping (usually me) with a two inch wide black belt. In fairness to my mother, she was badly abused when she was growing up, and she eventually changed. I’m not sure what triggered the change but I do know all of my friends during my youth were terrified of her. In today’s world, I have a very good relationship with her, and was able to forgive her years ago. The only reason I mention it here is because it had devastating impact in my life and coupled with the totalitarian rigidity of my religious upbringing, eventually resulted in a suicide attempt.
I progressed through the usual steps most young men born into a devout LD$ family do, becoming a deacon at age twelve, serving in the deacons quorum presidency, being made a teacher at age 14, serving in the teachers quorum presidency, becoming a priest at age 16 and doing all of the priesthood obligations. I was pretty obedient since being beaten regularly tends to reduce one’s willingness to incur an authority figure’s negative attention. About the only sin I was really guilty of during my teenage years was masturbation, a “problem” that I didn’t even know was a sin.
When I was about 15, my bishop called me in and asked me if I had a problem with masturbation. I was a little confused as I’d never heard the term before. I remember sitting in his office, feeling absolutely terrified, and not knowing how to answer. I guessed (correctly, I found out later) and told him “No, I don’t have a problem with that.” For decades I felt guilty about lying to him for that. Now I realize it was one of the luckiest lies of my life. This incident became a major problem for me, because up to this point I never considered masturbation a “problem.” Now that I knew it was a “sin” I was racked with remorse every time I engaged in doing it and began to loathe myself for my weakness. I seemed powerless to resist and yet did everything I possibly could to stay away from it. Looking back on it now, I realize that was when I started to have serious problems with depression, although I successfully hid it for almost another 15 years.
I turned 18 and later that year was ordained to the office of an Elder, and began to seriously prepare to serve a mission. I’d done as the “prophet” had said and decided to go on a mission when I was a small child so there never was a question in my mind about going. My 19th birthday was in March and in August of that year I sent my papers in. I was genuinely excited about being called to the Taiwan Kaohsiung Mission, especially since my older brother had served his mission there five years earlier.
Upon entering the MTC, I resolved that I would not masturbate during my mission, and I’m actually proud to say that I made that goal. It came, however, at a very high price. Unlike most males, I don’t have wet dreams. Getting up every day with “blue balls” so painful there were days I could hardly walk, made each day torture for me. I hid it the best I could and “soldiered on.”
I must admit, that my mission was in many ways a good experience for me. I really learned to love the people, the culture, and the food. I learned how to bargain, as it is an expected way of purchasing goods, including food. I got over my fear of meeting people and came to know some terrific people.
After I returned home from my mission, I did the usual “must get married” and after about three months became engaged to a sweet, very devout, young lady. Nine months later we were married. Unfortunately, this sweet young lady was taught that sex is “wicked, bad, and a sin next to murder in its heinousness” during her youth and she was extremely sexually inhibited. Any kind of discussion resulted in these huge fights. I finally learned to accept the little she was willing to give, quit talking to her about sex or anything sexual, and settled down to raising our brood. We eventually ended with five lovely children, of which I am inordinately proud of each one.
Because of the lack of intimacy in our marriage I eventually went back to masturbation to satisfy my sexual needs. I supplemented masturbation with looking at porn, and watched as the distance between me and my wife continued to stretch. I was experiencing more and greater depression each year and after 20 years of marriage, I was starting to experience health issues related to the stress in my marriage. I went in for counseling for looking at pornography and at that point when I finally let my wife know about it, I believe she divorced me emotionally.
Around this time my oldest son was raped at age 16 by a young woman about 5 years older than him. The bishop of the Ward was newly sustained in his calling and frankly botched his handling of the situation. My son was severely punished by the bishop and blamed for the entire thing. For two years my son was forbidden from even participating in quorum activities, until my son left for college. While at college, he walked away from the church, and frankly I didn’t blame him at all, even though I was still pretty TBM. It was at this time that I began to really question the church’s motives. I began to question doctrines and to ask myself if they really made sense in the “real world.” My cognitive dissonance had reached a point where I could no longer accept “we don’t need to know that right now, it’ll all be explained after we die.”
After 23 years of marriage, with the last four being an emotional wasteland, I began to experience chest pains on a regular basis. I finally went in and preliminary testing showed signs of a mild heart attack, likely brought on by the emotional depression and the family marital stresses. I finally came to the difficult decision to separate from my wife. I moved in with my sister and my depression became even blacker. The marital stresses were substantially reduced but my religious upbringing was resounding in my ears with the continual whispering of “you’ve failed, you’ll never be good enough, you’ve lost your family,” etc.
Christmas that year was particularly difficult for me. My wife was practicing parent alienation and I was not seeing much of my children. She was desperate to keep them away from me, because by this time she knew of my doubts regarding the church. I’ve often referred to her as “being so devout a member as to be almost incapacitated.” It was my doubt that was the final straw for her and she filed for divorce. Early in the morning on December 27th, I loaded my gun, climbed in my car and headed for a local canyon, determined to take my own life.
Upon arriving in the canyon, I hiked a ways up into the woods, racked a bullet into the firing chamber of my gun and put it to my head. I was in the process of saying a couple of final mental goodbyes, when my cell phone rang. Since it was 2:00 am, I was startled into answering the phone. It was a very good friend of mine, who talked me down long enough to get the cops there. They hauled me off to the hospital and checked me in for psychiatric examination. My friend let my family know what was happening and they got together, confiscating my guns and other objects with which I could hurt myself.
During the next several months, through counseling and earnest self-reflection on what had pushed me to that dark and dangerous place, I slowly began to realize that it was because I truly believed at my deepest levels that I could never be “good enough.” As soon as I acknowledged that core belief, I also had to acknowledge that it was a combination of the abuse as a child, the teachings of the church, and the rigid belief by my wife that by attending to church first, she could somehow fix our marriage.
That was the day I walked away from Mormonism. A few days later, my son whom had seen a billboard for PostMormon.org suggested this site to me and I began to post here. About two weeks after that, I came across the reference here for the “Lost Book of Abraham” video on YouTube.com. That was when I finally understood. That lying, son of a bitch, Joseph Smith, had made the whole thing up.
The “Lost Book of Abraham” video marked the beginning of the end of my depression problems. Just knowing that Joseph Smith made the whole thing up loosened the chains of Mormonism from my mind. With continued counseling, being able to post my innermost feelings on postmormon.org, and the support of a very lovely woman, I pretty much feel happy all the time. Yes, I still have problems to deal with, but somehow they don’t get in the way of my happiness. I no longer have chest pains and I’ve not taken any anti-depression medication in many months.
I have my life back.
Max