But...I think I need it now.
First, nothing has changed. I still don't believe and my TBM family still doesn't know. Though things on that front will probably come to a head sooner or later because I don't think I can keep dodging my mom' s questions about when I am going back to church much longer. I will explode or she will get up the guts to ask me directly how I feel about the church. At this point I really don't think I could lie. I have this gut feeling that they know something is amiss but just don't want to know. Denial and all that good stuff. I mean, what could they be thinking? That I am so shy that I don't want to go to church by myself. Please, I have done it before. It wasn't all that hard. Why didn't I chime in when my nevermo dh was asking questions about church stuff and kind of baiting my parents last summer? Surely they wondered why I wasn't more vocal. I just sat there listening and saying nothing. Oh except once I said "He knows how I feel". But that meant something different to them than it did to dh and me.
Then the whole Prop 8 thing has really made me angry. I wanted to resign over it. But there is no way I could do that if there was even a smidgen of a chance my parents would find out. Prop 8. I haven't said much about it since before the election. I signed for something and I felt really great about it and I was so sure that all of our signatures and stories would help. I risked being found out by signing that. I didn't care. Then we lost and my TBM family and friends cheered and felt sure that God was on their side. The side of righteousness and all I could think was, why are you all cheering for something as despicable as treating fellow human beings like shit. I am still pissed about it. My family doesn't know how I feel about it. I am sure they would think I had sold my soul to the devil if they knew how vehemently I opposed Prop H8. So I just keep quiet. Other than the huge disagreements I got into with TBM friends online. They thought I had taken the popularity route. Whatever, I was the ONLY one on some of those boards who was against prop 8. Yeah, that made me REAL popular. It's hard being the only one against something. On one board I had people telling me that I shouldn't be mormon if I felt that way. (they didn't know that I am an apostate). They told me I was going against God. They told me I was supporting evil. C'mon!! Yeah, TBM's aren't nice people when you aren't agreeing with them. They can get downright nasty.
So after all that(not to mention all the Obama hate from TBMs and their, "Quick, grab your guns because the end of the world is here" nonsense, which I won't get into because I have rambled too long as it is), I really, REALLY do NOT want to be mormon anymore. It is so the opposite of who I am now that the very THOUGHT of being mormon is just so foreign to me. I think I finally see that religion the way I used to see other religions while I was LDS. Not. For. Me.
Then I get an email from my mom telling me she hopes some of my neighbors are LDS so I can make friends at church and start attending again. That was 2 weeks ago. I completely ignored that email. She asked my sister to ask me why I hadn't responded to her email. So I dashed off a quick email, totally ignoring what she had asked me in her email. How long can I keep dodging this?
Sometimes I think it would be easier if my TBM family were jerks. Then I wouldn't care about hurting them. But I don't want to hurt them. I just don't have it in me. Because I am not an evil, uncaring apostate. I am their daughter and sister. I am the same person I always was. I still have a great sense of humor, I still cry easily over movies, books, and music, I am still the champion of the underdog, I even still believe in God. Why won't that be good enough for them? It is for everyone else on the planet.
This is so long and rambling and I doubt it makes any sense.
All I can say is thank God I have my husband to vent to or I probably would have exploded by now. And not in a way that opens the line of communication with my family but in a way that would cause hurt feelings and resentment on both sides. There is no way I would get any kind of understanding from my family if I just blew up at them.
The next couple of years should be interesting. That's how long I give me before I finally breakdown and fess up. I might start dropping hints here and there. If I can think of some that are subtle enough not to bring the wrath of my dad down on me. I love my dad but he does NOT like it when I (or any of us) disagree with him. He takes it very personal and, well, let's just say, I had to get my temper from somewhere!
So my hopes for the future are:
~Gay marriage legalized EVERYWHERE!
~A resignation
~Understanding from TBM family and friends.
~Hell freezing over because that is what it will take for the understanding from TBM family and friends to happen.
Okay, I am done not making sense for now. Until the next time I need to vent.
