This is the story of my journey through Mormonism and my escape from it.

PRE-MISSION, BIRTH to 19
I was born into Mormonism. My mother's family line included some who had crossed in covered wagons to Utah but that family line was never part of any "Mormon Royalty". They were just the Mormon "schmucks" of the day who made their way to Utah. My father's family line came to California for the gold.

From as early as I can remember, it seemed that our family activities always revolved around the Mormon Church. We never could do anything that involved more than Saturday because we always had to be ‘back in time' for church on Sunday. Every Sunday I found myself in church and I cannot ever remember being happy that I was there. Not even once.

My path of life consisted of the typical male Mormon milestones; Primary, Cub Scouts, MIA, Boy Scouts, Deacon, Teacher, Priest, Elder, four years of early morning seminary, all of which left me with no energy, time, or opportunities to pursue the things I wanted to do. No one ever asked me what I wanted to do. I wanted to learn to play the piano. I wanted to bowl in the leagues and maybe become good enough to go professional someday. I wanted to get involved in television studio productions through the high school career programs and other activities. But no, my childhood was focused on going on a mission. That was the plan and nothing else held any importance. Got educational opportunities awaiting you after high school? Got a girlfriend? Tough! Those things were not part of the mission plan as those things were to be forfeited for the mission.  Your mission is your only focus.

All throughout my childhood I was taught over and over again that serving a mission would be this wonderful spiritual experience serving with my fellow young brethren while having the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost guiding you and your companion to honest seekers of the gospel and testifying daily to you that the gospel was true. It would be an experience that, once you returned home, you would be like a saturated sponge dripping with spiritual experiences and with wisdom beyond your years preparing you for a dedicated life to the Morg collective. The very first day and every subsequent day of my missionary experience showed me that this was all a lie. A lie spoon fed to me from the time I first could form sentient thoughts.

At 18 my parents and grandparents were always saying to me how a mission would be the next thing to accomplish on the Mormon conveyer belt. I don't recall them ever asking me whether I want to go or not. It seemed like any dreams or aspirations I had was a thing of naught and had no value. All the focus was mission-mission-mission.

I had graduated early from high school before I was 18 and was fully into college. I was so happy to be out of the ‘day-care' environment of high school and to be in the college environment where I could call my own shots on what classes I wanted, when to take them, and I no longer needed to have a hall pass to use the can. It was so refreshing to be treated like an adult for once. I had my own car and an interesting Gas-price marketing survey job to supply me with enough spending money. However, the expectation from everyone that I would be serving a mission at 19 hung around my neck like a millstone. I had no desire to go whatsoever. I was on a good college path with my education in electrical engineering and I really did not want to interrupt it.

Around this time I also had fallen in love with a beautiful Japanese Mormon girl convert named Kathy that I met at a multi-area youth conference in Monterey. She was not the typical Mormon girl I was used to and I enjoyed being with her more than any girl I had ever been with. I fell in love with her as deeply as one could at 18 and I couldn't imagine myself leaving her for 2 long years. The thought of doing so made me sick inside. I felt trapped on this Mormon conveyer belt speeding me toward a mission and I could see no way to get off. I felt as though my life was coming to a dead end at 19.

MY ENDOWMENT

Another "glorious" milestone on this ‘treadmill of Mormonism' to prepare me for a mission was for me to receive my own endowment from the Grand Poobah at the Oakland Temple. This was to be the crowning spiritual experience to sustain me throughout my mission and to give me great insight and a testimony of the workings of the almighty God. The endowment ceremony was an eye opener to say the least. To say the most, bizarre, as nothing prepared me for what I was getting into and I thought I knew what the church was all about. How wrong I was!

While I was going through the bizarre experience of an endowment session, questions kept popping into my mind.

Why is this old man with PolyGrip breath touching me under my togo?

Why am I learning secret combinations and handshakes while dressed up as the Pillsbury Doughboy?

Was not secret combinations forbidden by the Lord?

There is a true order of prayer?

You mean in church we are using a false order of prayer?

I am promising to slit my throat or disembowel myself?

Oh God, that old man in front of me just passed gas and my eyes are watering. Satan is the best character in this incredibly boring movie so where are the spiritual experiences testifying that the Church was true?

Where are the angels?

Where is the burning in my bosom?

Where's the Holy Ghost to confirm my faith?

Where's the exit?

I found the exit and now I was now wearing some kind of long-johns under my clothes that were climbing up my butt all the way home.

I never did meet the Grand Poobah.

PREPARING FOR THE MISSION

I spent a week with a full time Elder at the request of the Bishop to give me a taste of the mission experience. I lived the restricted missionary life for that week and I detested it. I learned first-hand how much I hated knocking on doors but at least was able to use my car and not some damn bicycle. The moment that week was done, I ripped off my tie and suit coat, and drove to the nearest A&W for some decent food after a week of eating the crap this missionary ate. That Papa Burger combo never tasted so good. I should have put my foot down after that week fiasco and told everyone I was not going to do that for 2 years but the social & family pressures was too great for me to overcome at the time.

The Mormon conveyer belt moved on with me on it and my papers were sent in. I took the church's intelligent tests to see if I had the aptitude for learning languages. I guess I failed because the call came in January of 1977 that I would be serving in the Virginia Roanoke Mission and I was to report to the Salt Lake mission home on April 23, 1977. The prophet's auto-pen signature machine had spoken.

Everyone was so happy for me but I wasn't. I looked upon that April date with dread and foreboding. It was the date that my life as I knew it would end and that I would end up forfeiting everything that made my life worth living. I say forfeited and not sacrificed because to sacrifice means to give up something good for something better. But to forfeit means to give up something good for nothing.

That April date felt like a death sentence. Little did I know that this date would mark the beginning of the end of any belief I had in the divinity of the Mormon Church, the beginning of the end of my belief in the Church leaders inspiration, and the beginning of the end in any belief that the Lord loved for me.

THE DAY I LEFT FOR THE SLC MISSION HOME

I had to get up early in order to get to the airport to catch my flight to Salt Lake City. I was very depressed inside as I looked around at my home knowing that I would not see it again until I was 21. I would not enjoy our pool; enjoy Christmas, or other family events for 2 long years. It was hard to comprehend that I would be gone for 2 years doing something I already knew I would hate. I had only a Pop-Tart for breakfast as I was in no mood to eat.

In addition to my family, my girlfriend, and our other friends came to the airport to see me off. It was a very tearful and gut wrenching feeling to kiss my family goodbye and especially to kiss Kathy goodbye. I hoped in vain that this day would never come. I then walk down the jet way alone and found my seat on the plane and just sobbed.

The flight attendant did notice my anguish and did come sit by me to ask if she could do something. I could not really talk but somehow was able to ask her for a soda. She was kind enough to get me one and I thanked her for it. Little did I know that this would be the last act of kindness I would receive from anyone for two more years.

I sobbed for most of the journey. Fortunately, the plane was only a third full so I could be somewhat alone in my grief. Somehow I just knew that this 2 year experience was not going to be a good one.

THE OLD SALT LAKE MISSION HOME (pre-MTC)
The start of my mission in April 1977 pre-dated the existence of the MTC in Provo so it began by spending a week in the mission home in Salt Lake City before going off to Virginia to be a door to door salesman for Joe Smith. It turned out to be the worst week I have ever experienced in my life.

While there, I saw manifested from the mission home leaders many acts of incredible emotional cruelty. I was not sure if I was at the right place. Some of the emotional cruelties included witnessing the scene of missionaries being separated from their families and girlfriends. I had never seen so much anguish and sadness erupt in so many people all at once when the families & girlfriends were told to say goodbye to their missionary and to get out and that they would not see them again for two years.

Since I was from California, I had already experienced my own tearful goodbyes to my family and Kathy two hours prior and I was still reeling from that. How gut wrenching it was to witness again people having their hearts broken, and while this ugly scene was transpiring, watching the mission home leaders smile with a sanctimonious glee of sick satisfaction that it made me want to punch them. This scene looked like a WWII movie where families are ripped apart about to be sent to Nazi death camps.

Families are forever...yea, right.

The mission home nightmare week progressed with the mission home leaders attempts to brainwash me with their non-stop scripture memorization, temple sessions, endless boring meetings, horrible food, and sleep deprivation. It was like a week-long Sunday with everyday being not just a 3 hour block of boring meetings and nonsense, but an 18 hour block of boring meetings and nonsense with no breaks.

Being a cynical person by nature, I inquired at the front desk of the mission home one day and asked if this was really the LDS mission home. They said "yes, why do you ask?" I replied that I have yet to witness any manifestation of Christ-like love from anyone. That raised their eyebrows and after that I seemed to be watched more closely than before.

This SLC mission home experience was becoming more and more of a ‘Bad Boys Reform School' nightmare. Daily, I was being trashed and condemned for any imperfections I had, being reamed constantly by the mission home leaders or GA's that I did not or could not be worthy in any way to God, and endured unjustified chastisements for asking some tough doctrinal questions.

I remember one particular day when everyone was gathered in the main meeting room. The GA speaker asked what our jobs as missionaries was to be. Some poor elder raised his hand, stood up and said "...to teach the gospel of Jesus Christ and bring people into the church." The response from the GA was, "No Elder, you are totally wrong. Your job is to not teach the gospel but to be obedient and tract out people and baptize."

That elder was so humiliated and stunned. I was stunned. Everyone else was stunned. I sat there and thought, "This is not what I came here for. This is not what I was taught since my early childhood of what a mission was all about. I must have been lied to all my growing up years." This was a major damage moment to whatever testimony I thought I possessed. It seemed like I could almost hear that testimony fracturing like a glass window under stress.

From that moment on, I kept thinking to myself, "I left behind Kathy, the love of my life, scuttled my college educational opportunities, sold my car, and gave up my good life for this?" Oh how I wish that I possessed the courage then to just get up, pack my bags, walk out the door, hail a cab back to the airport, and fly back home But at 19, I was too much of a coward to do so. To this day, I regret not flying back home before suffering two more years of similar shit. During the remainder of my week at that Salt Lake Mission Home I witnessed many other incidents of cruelty and ugliness toward the Elders.

NOT DRINKING THE KOOL-AID

 At that SLC mission home, if I learned anything at all, it was that the leaders of the Mormon Church were compassionless pin heads. My respect for them had evaporated. I saw that they had no more inspiration than that of a fence post and no more compassion than someone enjoying dripping hot wax into your eyes. I now understood that the next 23 months and 3 weeks of my mission was going to be pure hell.

I was able to stay above the brainwashing but by the end of that god-awful week, I was exhausted and shaken from what I experienced. I still had my self-respect and identity intact after all the ugliness I endured and witnessed. I was still "Flash" and did not turn into a mindless Morgbot named "Elder Flash". I would not drink their Kool-Aid. Others around me were drinking the Kool-Aid, and heavily, and it was scary but interesting to watch as people became brainwashed and changed before your eyes into mindless Morgbots.

Where was the brotherhood in this nightmare? Where were the spiritual experiences to confirm my testimony as promised? Where was the Christ-like love and appreciation from the Church and its leaders for their "volunteers" that gave up so much to be here? Where was any ounce of compassion for the Elders still shaken from being separated from their loved ones?

Whatever testimony I thought I possessed had now crumbed to powder. All that I was taught prior to this experience of what a mission would be was now obviously false. I had been deceived.

Well, one week of the mission was now completed and 103 weeks were left. Life was going downhill exponentially. Now it's off to the Virginia hellhole.

On the cross country flight from Utah to Virginia, feelings of great emptiness, deep sadness, and foreboding overcame me with such intensity that I did not speak to anyone the whole way there. My thoughts only consisted of saying to myself, "What have I done? How did I end up here? Why was I such a coward for not putting my foot down and telling everyone, No, I do not want to serve a mission? I don't want to be here. How could I have been so foolish to get succored into this shit? I miss Kathy so much."

THE VIRGINIA ROANOKE MISSION (Hell on Earth)
The Virginia Roanoke mission was nothing more than a tracting mission with few, if any people there, wanting to know about Joe Smith and his silly church.

If there is anything I hate more than going door to door selling something, I don't know what it could be. I hated tracting with a passion and that is all I ever seemed to do. The drudgery of spending all day, every day, weekends and holidays, knocking on doors and being told to "get lost" drove me into the ground. The degree of being told to get lost varied widely from a polite "no thanks" to having guns shoved into my face, but rejection is rejection no matter how it is dished out. A person cannot receive daily non-stop rejection and be immune to it.

Coupled with this daily drudgery was the constant harassment of the mission leaders with their false sense of urgency for higher baptism numbers, more tracting hours, and more teaching appointments. The quarterly Zone conferences provided no relief from the mission drudgery as they turned out to be nothing more than day-long reaming sessions by our "numbers-pushing" clown of a mission president or by whatever pin head General Authority that came to speak. "Work harder" they would always say, "Tract more hours and don't waste any time". If you're not finding people to teach, it was because of your unworthiness". The gospel really took a back seat in favor of just getting higher numbers of tracting hours and baptisms.

Did I ever receive any encouragement to keep going and just hang in there?

Not once!

Did I ever receive any praise for my efforts, or encouragement for enduring daily rejection, or gratitude for giving so much of my time from my young life to bring souls into this church?

Never!

All I got ( and all the other Elders too) was unjustified condemnation for not working hard enough, for being slothful, or being nit-picked on the way were dressed, or condemned for random bad luck, or for breaking mission rules; rules that often contradicted each other so you were damned either way.

I found out the hard way that if you ever let it be known that you were having a bad day or that you were tired or depressed or just needed a break, it was always because of your lack of having "the spirit". The responses received for feeling down or for feeling depressed were "You don't have the spirit, Elder." "You must have some grievous sin in your past, Elder." "Are you worthy to be here, Elder?" "Are you masturbating, Elder?"

Empathy and compassion toward one another were foreign concepts in this mission especially to the MP and the Elders that came from Utah or Idaho. They were the most intolerant, arrogant, selfish, compassionless, and ignorant bunch of oxygen wasters I have ever been forced to associate with. The Elders (or Sisters) not from the Moridor of Idatah (Utah-Idaho) felt the same way, I found out later.

On and on and on did the days of being a missionary drag on. I found myself just merely existing to get up in the morning and going tracting, maybe eating some lunch if I could afford it, then go do more tracting, have some swill quality dinner, then doing even more tracting and then maybe, if I was lucky, go to a teaching appointment that, almost without fail, fell through. The next day I would do the same thing, and the next day, and the next day, and the next day, and the next day...all week...week after week...month after month. Work without end, toil without reward.

The yearly holidays would come and I would find myself out tracting. It's my birthday and instead of celebrating, where am I? I am out tracting. It's Thanksgiving Day, and where am I? Out tracting and interrupting someone's family gathering. It's Christmas time; that depressing time of year deserves its own section.

THE DEPRESSING MISSIONARY FLAVORED CHRISTMASES
Christmas time was the most depressing holiday for me as a missionary. Knocking on door after endless door in the December bone chilling Virginia air, I was always thinking that another Christmas is coming and going by and I am still stuck here as a missionary saddled with a smothering religious duty of endless tracting to perform. I was always thinking of my family buying gifts for each other and thinking about being with Kathy.

When people would open their door during my endless days of tracting, I would see their lighted Christmas trees with presents under them and see them enjoying the holiday time. These scenes would make my heart almost stop from the flood of depression that would wash over me. How I longed to be with my family and Kathy. How I missed the fun of Christmas shopping. How I missed watching NFL football while a fire burned in the fireplace. How I missed listening to Christmas music and enjoying all the fun things of the Christmas season that were now, as a missionary, considered evil, taboo, slothful activities, and a waste of time.

No one, and I repeat, no one who answered their door at this time of year were ever interested in knowing about Joe Smith, especially from two depressed 20 year olds who didn't even want what they were selling. I remember some people wishing us a "Merry Smithmas" because they believed Mormons worshipped old Joe and looking back now I understand why due to all the emphasis on Joseph Smith, Joseph Smith, Joseph Smith, and more Joseph Smith.

What kind of church sings a song like "Praise to the Man" at Christmas time? And don't get me started on the un-Christmas like services the Mormon Church has. I was always grateful that no investigators ever showed up at church at Christmas time.

I did call home a few times at Christmas and also called Kathy. I was so happy to hear their voices that I cried and cried and could hardly talk. I did not want to hang up because I knew I would sink even further into depression (if that was possible). When the calls ended, I sat there and cried until there were no more tears left thinking to myself over and over again how could I have been so stupid in my choices to end up in this god-forsaken place and condition? The first mission Christmas I experienced was worst of all because I knew that when Christmas rolled around again a year later, I would still be trapped in Virginia doing the same exact stuff; more endless mind-numbing tracting.
 

THOUGHTS AND PLANS OF TERMINATING MYSELF
The mission drudgery dragged relentlessly on and more & more lonely thoughts would swirl around endlessly in my mind with ever increasing intensity. "I could be in school now finishing my degree", "I wish I had my car instead of this damn bicycle". "I am so cold" or I am so miserably hot." "I am so lonely and I miss Kathy so much; her kisses; her soothing presence." "How could I have been so stupid to allow myself to end up in this hellhole place?"

In a desperate attempt to deal with the pain of my loneliness and hopelessness, I just shut myself down and just did the physical motions of the job to get the tracting hours to go on the weekly report. Some people did comment to me that my countenance had become so joyless but I had run out of energy to fake it anymore. I just didn't care. My prayers were never answered. My leaders just constantly condemned me unjustly and my family seemed oblivious to my suffering.

I found myself with no hopes, no dreams, no joy, or any real reason for living anymore. How down and out I was. "Could I do anything at all to change this hellish existence?" I said to myself. Was there any way to put an end to it? What could I do? What options are open to me?" A solution slowly crept into my mind; a solution that would definitely put an end to this miserable existence.

For the first time in my life, I considered suicide as a sweet and practical way for ending my joyless existence. To part of me, it was such a shock to even seriously consider such a course of action but I had reached absolute rock bottom and I truly felt that I had nothing to lose.

Here I was a missionary of the Lord's supposedly true church, who was supposed to be blessed by the Lord for sacrificing all to serve him, who was promised the blessings of success for following all the ridiculous & uncountable amount of double-bind rules, who was promised the ministering of angels for support and encouragement.

Here I was, a missionary, planning to murder myself as a way to end the pain generated from the drudgery of missionary life and to end the lonely horror of having nowhere to go and escape. I had reached the point of having no tears left to cry, having no one to talk to, and of being unable to produce the courage or money or family support to just leave. ...."My yoke is easy, my burden is light...".  The Lord was apparently out for lunch when the missionary program was enacted.

Several circumstances offered me the chance to end it all but I never fulfilled them. For example, one day I was riding my bike on a narrow busy road against traffic and I saw a large semi-truck approaching. Without any sense of self-preservation, I found myself on a collision course with that truck.

Thoughts of how quick and sweet the end could come, kept me there in the lane. Some people slowed down and yelled at me to get out of the way and the horn of the truck was blaring loudly. But I did not care. Sweet relief from the horror of being a missionary was coming fast. Only when the thoughts of the sadness Kathy would feel upon hearing of my death entered my mind, did I swerve back to the shoulder and barely in time. What a bizarre feeling it was to not have anything to lose or where even your own life means nothing to you.

After this event, I actually heard in my brain a loud snap sound and I think my brain was saying "enough of this mission bullshit." I had reached the point that I was not going to take shit anymore or from anybody. My fear of anybody left me and this experience gave me a strange sense of empowerment and courage that I never had before. Unknown to me, I would use this new courage at my next Zone Conference.

THE DROOLING ANGRY MISSION PRESIDENT
Four months before I was to go home, at a Zone Conference, I had the usual interview with the MP as every missionary did. But as the usual "blame the Elder" one sided interview commenced, the MP became unusually hateful and vindictive toward me because this time he stood up from behind the desk and proceeded to yell into my face saying point blank that "I was a failure as a missionary" as he pointed out my lack of baptisms and the low number of investigator discussions indicated on my weekly report. Every Zone conference always produced a similar tirade from him but this time was the last straw for me with this GA-wannabe pin head.

Too many times did I sit through similar interviews and said nothing, but now, with my new found courage, I fired back at him. I stood up from my chair, leaned over the desk and yelled back into his face, using several colorful metaphors in the process, that he was a ####### failure of a mission president for blaming me for things I had no control over. I continued yelling into his face saying that if he was incapable of offering any kind of encouragement, support, or compassion for me or any other missionary who gave up everything to be in this armpit place, he should pack his bags, take his clueless wife and his dumb-ass children, and get the hell out of our lives. This man was not the kind of man used to being put in his place by anyone let alone a lowly elder.

In all my days there, I have never seen him madder but I did not care anymore. He went beyond red faced to purple and began to drool onto the desk. He was so angry he could not speak anymore and I had run out of colorful metaphors to continue. I turned and began to walk out the door, my last words to him, before I left the room, were that I would never speak with him again for any reason. I walked out and left him and his puddle of drool and I never did speak to him again for the remainder of my mission.

After that exchange, I went outside the church building for the remainder of the Zone Conference and fed squirrels from a jar of Planters Peanuts. That was the last time I ever took lip from him or his assistants again.

That day, any belief I had of the divinity of the Mormon Church and any belief that God cared about me ended. I now saw with high clarity that the whole Mormon Church was a bowl of excrement and that I had been swindled out of two years of my life, tricked into laying on the fools "Alter of Forfeit" my girl, my education, my car, and my freedom. Now what do I do? I have 4 months left. Should I end my existence? Do I have the strength see this hell hole through? I did not know at that moment.

I decided to finish the mission so my parents could at least have their bragging rights in the ward of having an RM son. That last 4 months was the hardest time to go through but my thoughts and desire of suicide did slowly evaporate. I knew I was going home soon and Kathy was still there.

I do wish to say that had it not been for Kathy's love and her weekly letters & tapes, I would have gone over the edge and terminated myself. Unknown to her, she was the only anchor that kept me tethered to the world of the living.

My day of release from the "best two years of my life" was coming fast but not fast enough. I just did the mechanics of the job for the remaining 16 weeks.

RELEASED FROM THE MISSION PRISON
At long last the happiest day I have ever known came. It was the last day I had to spend in the Virginia Roanoke Mission. That day was Friday, April 13, 1979 and for me, it is a date that lives in infamy. My time in this mission hell-hole was over! That Friday the 13th was a lucky day and I have celebrated every April 13th since then as a personal holiday.

I remember so clearly how that wonderful Friday the 13th day started. I woke up at the usual 6:30AM, had my shower, dressed, and sat down to a bowl of "Captain Crunch" while my companion showered. Sitting there alone, looking around, and seeing my bags packed lying on my bed, it finally hit me with full force that I would never have to sleep on that bed or wake up to another morning of going tracting from this or any other Virginia cockroach infested dump again. With each spoonful of Captain Crunch, a mental list grew in my mind of things I would never have to do again. The list included the following:

1. I would never have to go out and knock on another door and try to convince already happy people that they could become happier if they gave up 10% of their money, sacrificed their weekends to perform smothering religious duties from endless callings of useless make-work, alienated themselves from family and friends, and eventually act out disemboweling themselves while dressed up as the Pillsbury dough boy or Mother Teresa on a regular basis. (Talk about a tough sell)

2. I would never again have to ride a bicycle in a suite sweating like a pig in the summer Virginia heat and humidity or suffer frostbite in the bone chilling winter. (I now hate bicycles and can never bring myself to get on one again.)

3. I would never have to eat starchy and pasty crap for food because of no money. (Pasta dishes of any kind are no longer a block in my food pyramid.)

4. I would never again have to endure undeserved ridicule and reaming from any church leader and especially from a pinhead GA-wannabe insurance salesman mission president named Frank A. Moscon. (I am so glad he is dead and I could not be less sad. I hope his death was painful & slow).

5. I would never again set myself up in a situation that would produce overwhelming suicidal depression and loneliness.

6. I would never again spend another Christmas away from loved ones. (I only worship Santa now.)

7. I would never again allow myself to be shackled to someone 24/7 that I did not want to be with.

8. I would never again allow myself to be deprived of the enjoyment of music.

9. I would never again live trying to follow a set of idiotic and double-bind rules while performing a smothering life-sucking religious duty.

10. I would never again allow myself to be deprived of the love, the touch, and kiss from a woman.

11. I would never again respond to anyone calling me "Elder Flash".

12. I would never again..........

You can fill in the rest, my fellow RM's. You know this list is almost endless.

Oh, what joy and happiness I felt as I thought about the things I would not have to do anymore. I sat there relishing the thoughts of being home again, restarting my life again, being with Kathy again, and being called by my first name again. I was so happy that as I poured myself another bowl of "Captain Crunch", half of the cereal ending up on the table. Oh well, I might as well let the kitchen's cockroaches celebrate with me. When I finished, I just threw the empty bowl in the sink thinking "let the next sucker Elder clean it. I am outta here."

MY LAST BUS RIDE IN VIRGINIA
This particular morning seemed so fresh and alive. I had not had such a wonderful morning for 2 years and I almost forgot what it was like to live again. I was free now. My escape from the Virginia Roanoke Mission was beginning right now. I carried my 2 bags down to our car and started singing to myself that song by "The Who", "....No time left you, on my way to better things...I got myself some wings...."

I had to go to the mission home to get my plane tickets so I booked a seat on the local Greyhound mini-van bus to Roanoke. At the bus station, I said my goodbyes to my companion and the other Elders in my district. When I got into the van, I looked out the window at my fellow Elders for the last time, waved at them, turned away, and never looked back. The looks on their faces as I waved was of envy and jealousy. I knew they were wishing so hard to be in my place because their Friday would be another lonely day of mind numbing tracting but not mine. I would never have to knock on another door again. When the van finally started on its journey, a huge wave of relief rolled over me as I let out a huge audible sigh. My escape had begun.

The early morning ride to Roanoke took about an hour. Passing through and out of the Martinsville/Collinsville area and on to the main highway, I mumbled to myself a quiet ‘good riddance' to that cesspool and also mumbled ‘good riddance' to some particular members of the branch there who had caused me so much unnecessary pain. Never again would I have to put up with their nonsense.

I spent most of the journey relaxing and watching the countryside go by. Being the only passenger made the journey even more relaxing. For the first time in 2 years, I was enjoying all of the green foliage of the area without that feeling of dread of having to start tracting in another new area once the journey was through. Every transfer, I always dreaded starting over again with knocking on doors that I know previous Elders had knocked on and were told to get lost.

The thought of knowing that this was my last bus ride in Virginia and the start of a journey that would end with me at home and free from this mission hell hole made me feel giddy inside. I felt like a little boy going to Disneyland for the first time.

I tried starting a conversation with the driver to end the silence and this was proving difficult. The bus driver knew I was a Mormon missionary by the way I was dressed and the tell-tale nametag. At first, he was reluctant to talk with me as he thought I would start talking Mormonism to him. Seeing this I told him that I was going home today and had no intention of discussing any aspect of religion or Mormonism. I said this as I took off the name tag and put it in my pocket as he watched. Hearing & seeing this he relaxed and began to open up.

We had a fun conversation all the way to Roanoke. We talked about his job and the unusual cargo he was carrying (10 gallons of horse cum) and about his poor experiences with other missionaries he had bussed around. He commented to me that I was not like any of the other Elders he met before. He said I was genuine in my demeanor and well mannered and was glad I did not try to convert him. We finally rolled into the Roanoke bus station around 8:30am. Waiting there for me was a couple of office Elders to drive me to the mission home.


IN THE BELLY OF THE BEAST FOR A BLESSED LAST TIME
My plane was to leave Roanoke for Washington DC at 11:30am where the next day I would hop on another plane at Dullus International and fly to California. I had made previous arrangements for someone to pick me up and give me a condensed tour of the Washington DC area.

In order to do this, I made up the story to the mission home a month before saying that I wanted to go through the Washington DC temple before departing home and for them to create an itinerary for me to do this. Little did they know that my real goal was to only see the nation's capitol on the church's dime while at this end of the U.S. It felt good to know that I was able to scam them successfully and it proved to me once again that the mission leadership had the inspiration and discernment of a fence post.

At the mission home, it was so nice to sit around knowing that I did not have to do any sort of missionary work or answer to anyone, not to a DL, or a ZL, or the AP office elders, and best of all not to that pinhead mission president. I now only answered to me.

I found myself a nice La-Z-boy chair in the mission home's common area to pass the time until I had to leave for the Roanoke airport. I began reading several magazines such as NewsWeek, Time, and National Geographic. I was 2 years behind on news and events and it was so refreshing to read something other than some damn shallow church publication. After a half hour of reading, I noticed six new elders had arrived from an earlier flight fresh from the MTC.

They looked so depressed, sleep deprived, and downcast. They reminded me of how depressed I felt when I first showed up at this mission home 2 years earlier. Seeing them, I felt a wave wash over me of bitter sickly sorrow and pity for them. However, those pity feelings were washed away by the delightful tidal wave size rush of knowing that my hell hole was over but their hell holes were just beginning and that I WAS LEAVING IN JUST 30 MINUTES!!

Those new elders saw me reading "unapproved" reading material and asked me why I was there by myself with no companion, I told them my mission ended today and I was going home. Hearing this, a few of them looked like they were going to breakdown on the spot judging from the glassy look of their eyes. Two of them looked at me with such jealousy it was palpable. If they could somehow know the depths of depression, loneliness, and hellish living that awaited them for the next two years, they would probably go into the restroom to slice each other's wrists. To think that they would have to put up with that pinhead President Moscon and his idiocy made me smile knowingly at them but I did not taunt them about going home. I had at least that much civility left in me after my two years of hell.

I refused everyone's attempt at me to go and have the customary last interview with the mission president. Because of the falling out that I had with him that I mentioned earlier, nothing anyone said to me would change my mind about talking one last time with that bastard. Any communication with him had been fatally terminated four months prior, and while there in the mission home, I did not even acknowledge his presence.

His clueless wife, Loya, tried to order me to talk with her MP husband but looking up from my NewsWeek magazine, I gave her a look that would have shriveled a rock, said nothing, and went back to my reading. She huffed off and was probably thinking "how dare this lowly elder brush me off." I didn't care anymore because, to me now, they were persons non-grata.


ONE LAST ROUND OF OFFICE ELDER ARROGANCE
Time was getting close for me to be at the Roanoke airport so I asked one of the AP elders for my plane tickets. A family from my last area had come to drive me to the airport and see me off plus I no longer wanted to spend any more time in that mission home. Being there was serving no purpose and I would rather be elsewhere.

This AP elder spouted off to me that only the mission president could give me the tickets (that he held in his hand) and that I did not have his or the MP's permission to leave the mission home yet. Oh, so arrogant to the end, I thought. But I, being of large stature, pulled him aside into an empty hallway, and in a still small voice, told him that if he did not give me my plane tickets pronto, this would be his last day as a fully functional human being. I told him this as I was "helping" him tighten the knot of his tie. Needless to say, he loosened his grip on my tickets as I pulled them from his hand.

With my plane tickets in hand, I walked out of that mission home with my two bags, got into the backseat of the car of the family that came to see me off, and we drove away toward the airport. Breathing a huge sigh of relief as we reached the airport, I reached over to my nametag and quietly slipped it into my coat pocket.

I was finally done being a missionary.


THE FLIGHT OUT OF THE VIRGINIA ROANOKE HELLHOLE
At the Roanoke airport, I said my goodbyes and gave hugs to the family that brought me there, and after they left, I checked in my bags and walked up to the gate boarding area. Once there, reality really hit me that I was finally alone to do as I please. It was such a thrill to be alone and not be watched over and after being tied to someone 24/7 for two years, it felt sooooooooo good to just be alone. I always cherished my alone-time and to have it stripped from me for 2 years proved to be very hard on me.

It may seem hard to imagine why being alone was such a wonderful experience. But when you have someone around you 24/7 for 2 years watching where you are, what you eat, what you say, who you talk to, what you are reading, and what you are wearing, being alone and accountable to no one is so refreshing its beyond words. Only Mormon missionaries or people in prison would understand.

While I waited for the call to board the plane, I decided I should purge my Mormon missionary looks and accoutrements so I collected together my nametag, the missionary white handbook, and a big envelope of mission completion papers I was given at the mission home. Looking around and finding the nearest trash bin, I walked over to it and tossed it all in creating a big thud noise as it hit the bottom of the bin.

Watching that crap disappear into that bin brought on another wave of relief. I stood there by the bin for a few moments letting it sink in that I was finally done being a missionary. I realized I now had a first name again. I was now ‘Flash' instead of ‘Elder Flash'. I had no more tell-tale nametag, no more "white" handbook of smothering rules, and no more of anything to remind me of being a missionary. The only papers I had left were my tickets. I jokingly imagined how these tickets were the "papers" I needed to enable my escape from this iron curtain country called a mission.

To finish the purging my missionary look, I went into the restroom with my carry-on bag and found an empty large stall. Once inside, I removed my suite coat, vest, and tie and stuffed them into my bag. I took out of my bag a nice blue colored dress shirt that I had been saving for a year for going home and changed shirts. I literally ripped off that old white shirt popping off most of the buttons in the process. It felt so good to get out of that white shirt. The white shirt I took off I just threw into the garbage in the restroom. I did think about flushing it down the toilet but refrained myself from such amusement. From that moment and to this day, I have never worn a white shirt again.

Now wearing my non-missionary attire, I was free to sit next to anyone without making them feel uncomfortable. I found myself a seat and happily noticed that the people who I sat next to did not even care who I was or look at me funny. I was just another fellow flyer. It was so liberating and refreshing to be a normal person again after 730 days. I quietly celebrated my new transformation by imbibing in an "evil" can of Dr. Pepper I got from the vending machine.

About 45 minutes later, the call to board was made and I found my window seat. With everyone boarded and the hatch shut, the plane began pulling away from the gate. It seemed like it took forever for that plane to taxi down the runway to get ready to take off. As it did so, I mumbled to myself, "Oh please let there be no mechanical problems." I could not bear the prospect of returning to the gate. I wanted so badly to be out of Virginia and as far away from Roanoke as I could get.

When the plane roared down the runway, lifted off, and its wheels no longer touched Virginia soil, I felt this feeling inside me like poison was draining out of my body. Two years of missionary poison that cankered my soul was draining away. The higher and faster the plane went, the faster the poison seemed to drain. What relief I felt being whisked away from that god-awful place. For two miserable years I longed for this day to come. I felt like I was dreaming but I realized I was really on my way home! "Is it really true?" I thought.

From my window seat, I looked down at the Virginia countryside and thought about how two precious years of my young life were forfeited and wasted there; Two whole years, where instead I could have been in college getting my electrical degree, enjoying time with Kathy, and just living happily. I thought about the missed Christmases, the missed birthdays, my brother's wedding I missed, and the long separation from Kathy. Sitting in that airplane trying to comprehend all my feelings of relief, joy, and happiness of knowing that I did not have to care about missionary work ever again was beyond words.

I was given a complimentary can of Coke on the plane, and as I sipped the blessedly caffeinated drink, I amused myself with the thought of some poor new Elder below looking up at my plane as he endlessly tracted wishing with all his heart to be on my plane. I thought of how I was mocking him by staring out the window at him and knowing I was the one here and not him. I was the one rising higher and higher and escaping. I was the one flying away leaving only a contrail behind for him to see. Today was my day. I was free. I also thought about the last time a flight attendant offered me a soda 2 years ago when I was so depressed and sobbing as I left for that Salt Lake Mission home. Such a contrast, I thought.

THE MINI-TOUR
In less than an hour the plane landed at National Airport in Washington DC and I found the person who I previously arranged to meet. My plane to California would leave Dullus International the next day so, according to our previous arrangements, he provided me a mini-tour by driving around the Washington mall area in his TR7 showing me the White House, the Lincoln Memorial, and the other mall monuments.

He was very nice to me and treated me to McDonalds. We got along great and he said to me that he knew how I felt being released from the ‘mission prison system' as he called it. He also was an RM and he said he could see the relief all over my face. He told me he understood how I was feeling inside. What he did not know is that I was also reveling in my joy of knowing that I was successful in pulling the wool over the AP elders' & MP's eyes to set up my itinerary to allow for this mini-tour while they thought I wanted to go through the Washington DC temple. I got the last laugh on them.

After the Washington Mall mini-tour, we got on the DC beltway to go to his place for the night. We approached the Washington DC temple and when I saw it, I felt nothing inside. It had no significance to me as it was just another symbol of an ungrateful church. I was asked if I wanted to see it up close but I politely said no. Puzzled by my reaction he passed by the exit and I did not give the place a second glance.

Soon we arrived at his place. He gave me the use of one of the spare bedrooms of his luxury apartment. That night I had a nice long hot shower where I scrubbed off two years of missionary dirt and disgust. I soaped myself up several times just to watch the water rinse the disgust away over and over again. I must have stayed in there for over an hour.

In bed, I laid there pondering over the day's experiences. What a day, I thought. I woke up in a hot & humid, cockroach infested dump for the last time, brushed off the MP and his clueless wife, bodily threatened an AP Elder for my plane tickets, transformed from Elder Flash to Flash, flew away from the hellhole known as the Virginia Roanoke mission, toured the Washington DC mall, and ended up in this nice place for the night.

It was so wonderful to have this day and night for myself after slaving for two years with no time off and no diversion. I no longer had any desire to say nightly prayers anymore. They were never answered anyway so done were the useless personal nightly prayers and done was the rigid schedule of sleep & wake up times with tracting to dread in the morning. I felt so refreshingly free.

That night was the first night in two years that I got to watch the "Tonight Show" and have a radio sing me to sleep. An air conditioner droned in the background keeping me cool all night as I slept. Gone forever was the nightly ritual of trying to find sleep while in the silent & relentlessly hot and humid air of Virginia. Life was really looking up.

THE FLIGHT TO CALIFORNIA AND HOME
Early the next morning, I arose with great anticipation of being home at the end of the day. I dressed myself in "normal" clothes as I was not about to sit for 6+ hours dressed in a suite. I was driven to Dullus International to catch my flight to California. I thanked my friend/tour guide graciously at the curb, checked in my bags, found my gate, and sat down to wait for the boarding call. Again, it felt wonderful not wearing the telltale nametag or the clothes that screams Mormon Missionary; No suite, no vest, & no tie, just comfortable clothes. Nobody called me "Elder" or avoided sitting next to me. I was just another traveler.

About an hour later, I boarded my plane to California. It was a large TWA with relatively spacious economy class. Way better than the cramped Piedmont Airlines I showed up on 2 years ago. I found my window seat and settled myself in for a nice long journey. The plane was only 2/3 full so I had 2 empty seats next to me where I could stretch out my legs and sleep if I wanted to. I glanced over at the cabin door when they closed it and thought that when it opens again, I would be in California and home.

The plane pulled away from the gate, taxied to the end of the runway, straightened out, and then its four engines came to life. Faster & faster did we roll down the runway and near the end did the plane slowly lift off and began the 6+ hours journey west toward California. What a wonderful day.

I gazed at the countryside passing underneath the plane for hours while music flooded my brain from the in-flight music selections of "The Bee Gees" to "Bread". The music seemed to scrub my brain from all the mission gooey that was in it. Oh, how happy I was and how relieved I was to know I would be home by the end of the day. I made a point to assure myself again that I was really there and not in some dream that would end with an alarm clock waking me up in Martinsville to go out tracting again. I shudder and Puke at the thought.

I did convince myself that I was really there. The delicious thoughts of putting distance between me and Virginia at a rate of almost the speed of sound while at the same time getting closer to home at the same rate filled me with so much happiness. Could this plane go a little faster, I thought?

For the 6+ hours it took to fly home, I simply decompressed by listening to music and watching two movies that 48 hours previous were considered "evil", and thinking that life was good. The food on the flight tasted quite good probably because it was so much better than the crap I had been eating for so long as a missionary. I finished both meals completely plus 4 cans of Dr. Pepper and other various sodas plus whatever cookies I could persuade the flight attendant to steal for me.

As the plane went over Utah, I looked down and briefly thought about that "Bad Boy's Reform School nightmare" week I spent in the Salt Lake Mission Home two years previous. During my mission is when the church started up the MTC with the domestic Elders spending one month there. How lucky I was to avoid that. I could not imagine spending a month in that nightmare.

I also thought again of those poor Elders back in Virginia just starting out. How was their 2nd day in the Virginia Hell hole? What dark thoughts do they now have about their "called of God" pinhead of an MP? A wave of pity for them occupied my mind for about two seconds but those thoughts were washed away for good with a tsunami of happy thoughts of being home where I would be loved and wanted. Those poor new Elders and the Virginia Roanoke Mission felt so far away now and of no importance and the relentless roar of the jet engines seemed to magnify that feeling.

Later I looked out the window again and saw Lake Tahoe where the California/Nevada state line is. The plane began to slow & descend. Oh God, is it really true? Am I really almost home?

FINALLY HOME AGAIN
When I walked out of the jet way, all my family was there to meet me. I cried seeing them and hugged them more than I ever had done before. It was the first time I ever cried because I was happy. I could not believe I was with them again. The two year nightmare was over.

Kathy was also there to meet me. To see her standing there after two long years brought another rush of tears to my eyes. Was this real? Is it really her? How much more beautiful she was in person. At twenty one now, she was a very pretty woman. I rushed over to her and we gave each other a very-very long hug and a deep kiss. I did not want to let go of her. I missed her so much. I kissed off (pun intended) the bullshit that I was still a missionary until being released by the Stake President. I was threw being a missionary the moment I left that goddamn mission home and nothing was going to keep me from Kathy any longer.

The hugs and kiss I received from Kathy, after missing her for two miserable lonely years, poured peace into my soul in such a way that I cannot find adequate words to do justice in describing how I felt. Only those who have gone through this can understand what I am talking about. The English language is just too inadequate to paint a proper frame of reference for someone who has not gone through the trauma of a Mormon mission and returned.

No event in my life has ever produced such an intensity of relief and happiness as the day I came home from my mission. For those who had the courage to not succumb to the pressures to serve a mission; coming home was not like coming back from college or summer camp. It was like coming back from the dead.

Before my mission, I attended a speech given by a former Vietnam POW and he said basically the same thing when he described how he felt when he was released from his captors after 7 years of being a POW and arrived at a US base. When I first heard him say that, I could not fully appreciate his words but I do now. I will NEVER say that serving a mission is ANYWHERE near equivalent to the horror of being a POW as I could have found numerous ways to escape the mission.

I will only say that I now have a much deeper appreciation of his POW nightmare.

I did report to the Stake President and High Council on Sunday where I was officially "released"...yeah, right. I was asked if I would like to speak in the other wards to encourage the young men to serve missions. I had to refrain myself so hard from saying "####, NO" to his face that I thought my teeth would shatter. I politely declined.

After I left the high council room and began driving home, it occurred to me that I did not even get a pat on the back or even a thank you from the Stake President or High Council for making it through this hellish mission. It was just like I got released from being a Sunday school teacher or some other useless make-work calling. It was one of those WTF moments when you realize that nobody cared or gave a damn or even acknowledged any of your efforts, sacrifices, or pain in completing a horrendous task.

WHAT THIS MISSION EXPERIENCE DID TO ME

Allowing myself to be coerced to serving a mission turned out to be the most damning decision I had ever made. Looking back, I saw how serving this mission short-circuited my dreams and aspirations. I lost two precious unrecoverable years of my youth being a salesman for Joe Smith and his revolting church. I was now 21 and two years behind in college.

I did not come home a "saturated sponge" dripping with the spirit, instead I came home feeling like an old dried out chamois. Spiritually, I was wounded fatally. For those two years I was stagnated. I did not grow financially because I was not paid. I did not grow socially because I was not allowed social interactions and I did not grow academically because I just read the same four books for two years. I did not grow spiritually or emotionally because I had been used, abused, stepped on, lied to, humiliated, and condemned constantly by my leaders for any imperfections no matter how trivial.

The Lord never answered my prayers in any form or even provided me a warm feeling that what I was doing was true & worthwhile. I was now worn out and fed up with God, the Mormon Church and everything about it. The whole missionary experience left me extremely bitter and I am now convinced that the Mormon Church is the only church on Earth that persecutes its own missionaries.

The Mormon Church has a love/hate relationship with its missionaries. They love them when they accept the call but beat the crap out of them mentally & emotionally for the two years they serve. I never could understand why the Mormon Church would treat its missionaries with such contempt. What are they afraid of? If it were any other church, they would have fallen down at the missionary's feet for being so generous with his time and money and efforts.

THE WARD FOOLS
Now at home, it took about four weeks of spending some time alone, listening to lots of music, and spending as much time as I could with Kathy to get back mentally where I left off two years prior. In today's computer parlance, I needed four weeks to completely reboot my system back to its former self. I did not need drugs or therapy. Kathy was my drug and being home where I was loved was my therapy.

I could never bring myself to give some glossy rosy answer to people when they asked me how my mission was. I would tell whoever asked that it was the worst experience I have ever had and regretted going. People who never served a mission were stunned that I would say that because that kind of talk is so not allowed in the church. Others that asked me, who had served missions, just replied back that they understood because they knew where I was coming from. They knew the unspoken truth of what a mission is really all about and the lonely misery that attends it.

I told the Bishop point blank not to bother asking me to speak to the younger boys about my mission because I would tell it like it is and I would not whitewash out the bad experiences. I also informed him that I could never, in good conscience, encourage anyone to serve a mission, and if I ever had a son, I would discourage him heavily from wasting his time doing so.

He was very irked to say the least but after telling him these things, he never gave me any calling that had anything to do with the youth of the ward or any calling at all. That was fine by me as I was already on my way out the door from Mormonism and I needed to get back into college and finish my degrees in electronics so I would not end up some dumbshit unable to feed my face for the rest of my life.

LOSS OF KATHY BUT BACK INTO COLLEGE
After being back for about four months, I lost the love of my life. Kathy drifted away from me toward someone else and ironically, it was a non-member. It was a very bitter loss to me as I loved her more than I could ever express to anyone. For those two years, she was all I thought about, dreamed about, and was the only thing that kept me from committing suicide as a missionary. I can only speculate that I loved her more than she loved me or maybe being away for two years was just too long for the relationship to withstand the changes in each of us. I will never know but it became evident to me that I was gone too long and it was everlastingly too late to make up two years of lost time.

I have often thought of what could have been if we could have been together. I know I would have loved her and cherished her with all my heart, given her a very good living and lifestyle, and would have supported her in all the things she told me she wanted to do. It pains me to know that she married a man that, from my observations of him, does not even love her. But Kathy made her decision and where we are with our lives at any given moment is the sum of all our decisions. I wish her the best and hope she found happiness with him.

When I accepted she was truly gone, I felt I had lost a soul mate and someone of priceless value. I felt I lost someone so precious to me, I did not know if I could ever find someone else to fill the void in my life created by her absence. I was deeply depressed for many weeks. I was not able to hide my depression very well and several people asked me what was wrong but I could not really tell them as the loss was beyond my ability to put into words. I attempted to get close to a few other girls later on but none of them ever seemed to measure up to Kathy. She was one of a kind and not replaceable.

I did restart college the following fall semester after returning from Virginia in April, eventually obtained my electrical engineering degrees, and was hired by a major electronics manufacturer in Silicon Valley.

INTO A LOVELESS TBM MARRIAGE COLOSSAL MISTAKE

Somehow, a little over a year after I came home from Virginia, I found myself in a marriage to a TBM "white but not delightsome" woman. At the time it seemed the right thing to do, but a few years and two children down the road, the woman changed for the worse and I could see that I had made yet another very-very bad decision to marry so young because of the pressures from the Mormon Church.

Bitter quarreling began early in this marriage and it always revolved around the church whether it is tithing, church callings or not being home because of excessive church meetings. I also could not earn enough money in her eyes because she wanted and bought on credit many material things immediately that normally take years of work and savings to get. However the thing that caused the most arguments in my first marriage was the non-payment of tithing.

I was fresh into my new electrical engineering job after graduating college and the pay was not that great. My new wife and I barely made it every month and it was because I did not pay tithing. My budget showed that if 10% went away, the choice before us was eat or have a place to live with utilities. I chose to eat and have a place to live with electricity and running water.

When my "white but not delightsome" first wife found out that I never paid, she was furious and abusive to me and railed on me to pay it. I showed her the budget and told her that the math does not lie and also told her to choose tithing or eating and having shelter. This made her even madder and she insisted that I pay tithing and stop paying the mortgage because we would be blessed to be able to pay our bills. However, she would never agree to go without food or her credit card shopping for her frivolous things.

So I paid the tithing and not the mortgage and waited for God to invoke some new math on my budget that somehow the numbers would all work out. One month went by, then 2, then 3, and my budget's math remained the same. No sack of money fell from heaven and no hidden cash bonanza materialized. Soon I got a notice from my mortgage company saying my house will soon go into foreclosure if I don't pay up.

I confronted her with the foreclosure notice and said that tithing would no longer be a budgeted item. I also told her that her frivolous credit card spending days are also ending so we can make up the delinquent mortgage payments. She blew a gasket at that and then said that I should not pay the credit cards back and use that money for tithing instead. I then asked her what's the difference between shoplifting or not paying for the charged items? I got no response and she stormed off.

In the 6th year of this "Celestial" marriage, she began to involve herself with a group of LDS women that were into the "Recovered Memories" fad nonsense of the late 1980's. This group, which was run by a mormon convert con man in our ward, met weekly to share whatever so-called repressed memories that surfaced that week and would "process" them together to try and "heal" them.

This con man passed himself off as a licensed therapist and was billing these women's insurance in order to get money. It was later learned that he never was licensed or trained to be a psychologist and had been fired from LDS Social Services for lying on his application.

Each week my ex-wife would come home after these sessions and start saying all kinds of horrible things about her family and how they sexually abused her etc....I knew where this would eventually end up, and that would be on me. But I still tried to salvage the marriage the best I knew how anyway.

Frequently I would do things for her such as clean the house myself or volunteer to take our children for the day so she could have a day to herself and many other similar things that would make the other wives in the ward jealous. It did get back to me that my wife would complain about me publicly in the ward and they could not understand why she would feel that way about me because their husbands would do little if any of the things I did for her. No matter what I did for her, or how much I showed that I loved her, she would brush it off as phony meaningless acts of bribes for her love.

I tried countless times to build up our relationship but you cannot build or repair a relationship with someone who does not and never considers you as a human being with feelings, wants, and rights. To them, you are an inanimate object and the only purpose you exist is to serve them and in their thinking "how dare you complain to them" about how you feel or if your needs are not being met.

To make a long and bitter story short, I reached the end of my rope with her arguments, her ungratefulness, and her spending us into near bankruptcy. I was giving all and doing all I knew how to do at the time to make her happy and receiving nothing in return from her but disgust. After 8+ years of this hellhole ‘Celestial' marriage, I decided I needed to divorce this female as quickly as possible.

It was a terrible and bitter divorce and compounding its bitterness was the Mormon Church supporting her financially and paying for her attorney while never offering me a penny for any of my legal expenses. Once again, I was experiencing firsthand how ungrateful the church was to me for being a faithful member & missionary. In order to conclude my divorce process, I threaten the Stake President and the Mormon Church with a lawsuit in order to stop the church from providing her cash to use against me as I found myself in the position of my limited funds vs the unlimited funds of the Church.

The Bishop of her ward attempted to pressure me into paying back the money they spent for her welfare needs ( even though I was still paying all her bills ) saying that it was a loan from the church I was responsible for. When I asked that Bishop to provide me with the Truth-in-Lending documents and loan note with my signature for this money, he quit hounding me.

My ex-wife became such a nutcase that her own family encouraged me to divorce her as quickly as possible. A few of her siblings had to move across the US to get away from her because of her false accusations of abuse. I even received at work a couple of death threats from the ward members. Are the Danites back?

Several times during the divorce process, her own lawyer would scold her because of her unreasonableness to conclude the divorce proceedings even after I gave her everything. Her lawyer could not believe that she wanted to drag on and on the process after I gave her everything and her half of the equity of the house. I kept the house. I guess her lawyer told her to end it or she would cease to represent her because the divorce process finally ended. I was now free of that female for good. What a relief it was to not have to deal with such an unbalanced person ever again.

My ex-wife was also very successfully in poisoning our two children against me and so I have not seen them for over twenty two years. To bring closure to this bitter chapter of my life and for keeping my sanity concerning my children, I have declared them dead and moved on.

I learned later from others that my ex-wife had privately told them, before our divorce, that she never loved me from the start of the marriage and only married me to get out of her poverty and that maybe she could "learn" to love me. Hearing this made all the pieces fall together for me as to why she never returned my love. She had none to start with. So that Spencer W. Kimball nonsense that "two people living the gospel could make a marriage" is a bowl of shit and I have in front of me the divorce papers to prove it.

After going through all this and losing my children forever, any smoldering embers of faith I might have had in the divinity of the Mormon Church or faith that God cared about me in any way where now extinguished, never to be re-lighted.

Families are forever...(yeah, right.)

THE END OF THE MORMON COMEDY FOR ME
After my divorce was final, my mother wanted me to find another TBM woman to marry, but looking at what my choices of TBM women were, knowing I would most likely end up on the same old endless Mormon treadmill with a good chance of ending up with another bipolar, high conflict woman, I told her "NEVER AGAIN!"

I did humor my mother's wishes just once by calling a TBM woman in her ward that was in her late twenties but had not married yet and still lived at home. I asked her out and she told me to wait a moment so she could check her calendar. But as I waited for her reply, she forgot to cover her end of the phone and I could hear her mother in the background telling her to not get involved with me because I was divorced with baggage. Needles to say, she declined my offer for a date.

After she hung up the phone, I now knew that in the eyes of the church, I was "damaged and unclean." As a divorced man, no one in the Mormon Church wanted anything to do with me.

For those who have not married yet, don't be in ANY rush to marry. If I could do it over again, I would have waited until I was 30. It seems that any mental illness that someone will acquire manifests itself in the early to mid 20's. I wish I had known that then but at least I was able to escape from spending the balance of my life with a Bipolar, High Conflict female.

MAJOR LIFE RESET

I cannot think of a more damning yard stick to hold up to the Mormon Church than the scripture "By their fruits ye shall know them". This one verse summed it up and confirmed to me that I had to jettison this toxic religion from my life or I was going to be forever miserable and be unable to find a woman worth anything.

Now that I was living alone again, I decided that I needed to perform a major reset on my life if I was going to be happy going forward. I sat down on evening and told myself that I needed to take care of me.  I needed to come first now for I had spent too many calories on the Mormon Church's needs or programs before my own and never gotten any positive ROI. The two year mission investment returned nothing but anguish and the investment into eight plus years of a loveless ‘"Celestial" marriage produced nothing but heartache & hopelessness.

I began looking back at my whole life, studying what went wrong for the first thirty years, and concluded that every major episode of unhappiness, strife, emotional trauma, or poor decision making I experienced was directly connected to the Mormon Church; every single episode. I concluded that I would no longer allow any of the nonsense of Mormonism to ever cloud my judgment again or taint my happiness in any way or come between myself and any other friend I might make or come between myself and any woman I want to attempt a relationship with.

One of the first steps in my purging process started when I decided to rid myself of anything Mormon. One night, I collected together all my Mormon books, all my missionary pictures, my patriarchal blessing, my priesthood ordination certificates, my baptism certificate, my seminary graduation diploma, my Institute graduation diploma; anything I had that was Mormon and stuffed it all into my fireplace to the point of overloading. I then soaked it all with carburetor cleaner, lit the fireplace gas pipe, and quickly shut the glass fire doors.

Oh what a fire! The fire just exploded into an inferno and flames started coming out from around the fire screen scorching the bricks. The fire burned real hot and began warping my fire screen doors but I managed to keep it under control and not burn my house down. When the fire finally died down, and I sifted through the ashes, I felt cleansed, refreshed, and new. I took my first steps out of the Mormon bog. There were many other steps that followed this first step and I found that with each step I took away from Mormonism, my happiness greatly increased.

A REAL MARRIAGE TO THIS DAY

With Mormonism purged out of my life, I began entering the dating scene again shortly after my divorce. I did not realize how awkward this was at thirty as I was out of practice but I found it fun to associate with women with whom I wanted to be with, and perhaps find a woman to marry. I was in no hurry. I would do it my way and would have a relationship with a woman I wanted. Not what the Mormon Church always said I should have and not what those 15 geriatric men that were weeks from death in Utah always said I should have. Gone from me were those stupid teachings about marrying in your own race or class or to avoid dating an "evil" non-member woman. I promised myself that I would never again date or marry any white American woman, Mormon or not, because the domestic product had failed me. I decided to try some imports.

From the first days that I was interested in girls, I always wanted to have an Asian wife. To me, Asian women are more attractive than Caucasian women. I can't explain why but it has always been my preference. I always felt more at ease around Asian women. I now had many opportunities to meet and seek after Asian women through my friends and my peers at work since my high-tech company employed many people from the Asian regions of the world.

I dated a couple of India women, a Japanese woman, and a couple of Chinese women. One thing that I did notice about these Asian women I dated from my place of work was that all of them never exhibited any bipolar, high conflict type behavior as Mormon women did. They had their act together. They were genuine, intelligent, highly educated, knew where they were going in life, and acted their age. They were very unlike the Mormon women I knew who acted like children, had no high education, and were clueless as to what they wanted out of life. It was so refreshing to not be around clueless Mormon women anymore.

 One day, I was introduced to a Malaysian girl who worked in Penang. Our long distance relationship worked quite well because we had access to the company phones and to inter-company email & chat capability. This was before the internet was available as we know it today so we had in essence then the equivalent of today's email and Instant Messaging. We were ahead of our time in 1990.

Over the course of a year we phoned each other every day, wrote email, and posted snail-mail to each other. I took a month vacation to Malaysia to spend time with her and later she came to the US to spend a month with me. We fell in love with each other & we both felt we were made for each other. A lot of her interests were similar to mine and we both enjoyed each other's company tremendously.

Being very cautious to not make a marriage mistake again, I made sure that she really loved me as much as I loved her. I determined that she did. I felt I found a soul-mate again and we married a year later. I am still happily married to this Malaysian girl and how wonderful it is to be in a real marriage where real love is returned for real love given from both of us to each other. I can say with conviction that there is nothing sweeter than the love from an Asian woman.

We now have a beautiful daughter who is an academic genius now attending one of the most premier engineering universities in the world, and I have gone out of my way to keep her and my wife untarnished by any facet of Mormonism or its nonsense. I have a beautiful home and a career that pays well into six figures. I am richly blessed and I know it and I owe none of it to old Joe and his revolting church.

A few years after I married my Malaysian sweetheart, I formally resigned my membership in order to stop any effort to "reactivate" me. I will never go back, because to me, it would be like going back to your dinner plate full of vomit and trying once again to down an unpleasant meal.

I can truthfully say that I have never been happier having Mormonism and all of its painful baggage out of my life. Of course, in life there are bad days here and there. Nobody is immune from that but the vast majority of days have been very happy ones.

In a perverse way, I am grateful for my mission as it drove in the wedge that opened up my eyes allowing me to see from within, the rot of the church, enabled me to find the escape hatch from Mormonism. I feel like I escaped from living a horrible, meaningless, and hollow existence.

I now know what the Mormon Church really is; a money-making corporation pretending to be a church. Always remember that the Mormon Church is only interested in three things: their image, hanging on to their money, and finding any way to get a hold of your money. Anything else it appears interested in is phony.

HOPE YOU ENJOYED THE STORY
I hope I have been able to show you how Mormonism created and delivered so much unneeded misery into my life. I was most miserable from 19 to 30; the years where instead of setting myself up for life, getting a good education, and enjoying my youth, I was knocking on doors, and being persecuted by my own church leaders. And then made the colossal mistake of heeding the council of 15 out of touch old geezers in Utah to marry young at 22 and found myself in a loveless marriage reaping the daily hate of a bipolar, high conflict woman whose professed love for me was a lie from the beginning.

It has been over 22 years since I have left the Mormon church and I have not missed it at all. I am grateful to be done with it. My Mormon experience is nothing more than a grave now. Sometimes I go put flowers on that grave but I walk away with happiness in my heart and pride in myself that I found the knowledge, courage, and strength to escape from Mormonism intact.

TO YOU MISSIONARIES READING THIS
To you Elders and Sisters on your missions reading this secretly at the library while your companion is off at another computer, I say to you escape, go home, and restart your life with the love you left behind and spend your time getting the education that you need and want. Don't waste any more of your time and money on this thankless church doing a thankless job.

If the Mormon Church leaders really wanted you to succeed as a missionary, they would provide you with all the tools, support, and things needed to do the job right. Be honest; do they do that? Do you think the Church leaders really care about you? The answers are No. In fact, the church goes out of its way to make your life as miserable as possible for no reason. Look at the place you live in. Look at your budget for the month. What do they spend to help you? NOTHING! However, the church is spending with impunity over $5 Billion of your tithing money and your parent's tithing money renovating a shopping mall. Said in another way, that is $5,000 million dollars.

NO MORE GHOSTS IN VIRGINIA

Have I ever returned to Virginia after the mission? Yes, I have. For those living in Virginia who think that I am dissing their home, I am not. Virginia is a very pretty place. Since my mission, I have visited there a few times with my wife and each time it was in the fall when all the colors are changing. My wife and I are always overwhelmed with the beauty.

Just being there as an exmormon, the missionary ghosts from the past were slain and the ugly memories of pain are now in graves never to be given new life. The Roanoke Mission Home has been torn down and I visited a few places where I was a missionary. In those places, I felt those old familiar feelings of dread try to come alive again. But being in those places with my Malaysian wife at my side, those feelings of dread were crushed forever with her help.

I am free now of any mission ghosts and I look forward to visiting there in the future.

My fellow PostMormons, adieu.

                                           Flash

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