My religious experience

My experience while growing up in the Mormon church were far from healthy. As I got into my teens I could feel that it was getting worse and that my beliefs were not the same as what they were trying to make us believe.

Getting bullied, name calling, rumors and shamed, for every day normal things. Not being “good enough”, when the “good” girls were at the same parties as I was, doing worse things than me.

It opened my eyes to the hypocrisy that was shoved in my face daily. Don’t do this, then they would be doing the same thing and then be at church on Sunday hung over but just saying they were “sick”.

It’s funny to think that I am considered an abomination, but they are just the perfect person still. Despite all their “sins” because "god" has forgiven them.

They taught us “ Do unto others and you would have them do unto you.” If that were really the case, we wouldn’t be in this predicament. Of being beaten down and call it “hazing” or that you were “unclean” because something bad happened to you, but they’re doing it of their own free will.

Finding out that, the 5 years of abuse of my sister and I, by our siblings, that they were “forgiven” and that the church leader knew about it the whole time and didn’t say anything.

In an atmosphere like this, only the people that say they believe are right. Not the abused, not the victims, not the kids that are trying to do their best with the chaos going on around them.

Only the “righteous” succeed. Only the ones that “repent” will be “saved”.

It makes me sick thinking about how much abuse really goes on that these church leaders just know about and yet do nothing because the abuser has “repented”, so there is no need to care for the people being abused by them.

The first teenage program that I went to in the church was supposed to be “sexual education” type thing. When it was only a slideshow of very explicit pictures stating this will happen to you if you have sex. So as a 12 year old, after being molested for years by multiple people, you get it in your head that you are some disgusting person because the things they were saying were being done to you, and not by your choice. Do you know what that does to a psyche of a child? It made me feel like I couldn’t talk to anyone about what was happening to me because I would be considered broken or unclean. Because someone else decided to “ruin” my body.

The harassment was probably the worst part. I don’t remember much before the age of 20, but what I do remember, breaks my heart. Getting stuff sent to me as an adult telling me I was unclean, every day I would come home and there would be a lesson from one of their books taped to my door or there would be soap that they left with a message saying I was going to hell because I was “unclean” “not pure”.

The “hazing” these girls did was horrific. Being basically tortured by these girls mentally and physically. But it was “all in good fun” so it was a laugh at my expense.

If there is one thing to take away from my experience it’s this, Religion is a toxic place if you’re not going to take the abuse or blindly follow everything that is taught to you. Figure stuff out on your own and you’ll have a much better life experience. A life where you can choose for yourself what is right and wrong. Not follow an old book which every person you ask has a different perception of what it means. They bend it to justify their horrifying actions and will turn around and do the same thing that you are doing, but it’s ok when they do it because they are “saved.”

If I could go back and change my life, I would. I want a life that I can remember, I want to have the chance to have memories of loved ones without having to hear them based from another person.

Most of the time I don't even feel like a real person. I get these flashbacks of being abused, and feel like I am seeing it from a 3rd person perspective. My life does not seem like my own, my mind doesn't seem like my own. Where my mind is concerned, I only starting being aware around the age of 2o, and for that I am very sad, because I wish I could have been a kid first.

I want my innocence back that was stolen from me.

I want to live a life that didn't start with trauma.

Nothing is more hateful than a christian's love, and we see this every day.