Child of Mormonism
Well. I wasn’t expecting to move anytime soon, but a room opened up in Craig‘s house and—it’s done. I moved out of my old apartment over the weekend, and now I’m slowly starting to settle into my new place. It’s weird having a roommate, and it’s especially weird not knowing where to put any of my stuff. I may not have tidied up my old apartment much, but I usually knew more or less where everything was, and now… let’s say that the move was extremely chaotic, and all my things are currently living in piles, boxes, bins and heaps all over my room and all over the house.
While I was going through some old things before the move I ran across my Mormon Trove, a box where I had shoved all my Bibles and Book of Mormons and hymnbooks and mission stuff years ago and forgotten about. The scriptures and Sunday School study guides I have no use for, but as soon as I started leafing through the mission papers and letters and notebooks and journals I was sucked right in. I didn’t really keep a journal when I was a teenager, so my mission writings are a fascinating glimpse at a young me who was very earnest, desperately conflicted and working very hard to reassure himself that GOD EXISTED AND THE CHURCH WAS TRUE DAMMIT. Besides my doubts and shaky faith, my mission was incredibly stressful and almost proved too much for me emotionally, and the journal entries provide a picture of a young man continually on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
But my mission was also an amazing experience. I lived in Italy for two years! That still isn’t real to me, especially since traveling and seeing foreign countries is so far from my current life as an impoverished quasi-librarian. I learned to speak Italian, I learned how to cook Italian food, I got to know a procession of interesting and diverse Italian, European and African people. My journals and notebooks brought all of those wonderful things back to me just as much as the bad.
Over the past few days I’ve also reconnected in a small way with other parts of my Mormon past: BYU Men’s Chorus, the BYU ballroom dance teams, the BYU Math Department and Math Lab… all were major parts of my life at one point. I no longer consider myself even culturally Mormon, but Mormonism made up a huge part of my upbringing and a significant portion of my college experience, and a large percentage of my friends and an overwhelming majority of my family are still Mormon. And maybe I’m finally ready to stop being embarrassed by that fact and accept the formative influence that Mormonism has been in my life, for ill and good.
Like
January 6th, 2009 at 7:59 pm
I understand how you feel, It has taken me some time to put my Mormon era in perspective in my life. Parts of it did shape who I am now and there are memories I do cherish from that period. However, I have grown so much since then. it was simply a step on the way to here and now.
January 6th, 2009 at 9:11 pm
I hear your new landlady is a real bitch.
but it’s a good thing you’re coming to terms with your old mormon ghosts because your new apartment is FULL of mormon ghosts. it’s an old polygamist’s house. Brigham young was the first person on the deed. the next two owners were polygamists, too. t
mostly they’re nice ghosts, though. ;-)
January 6th, 2009 at 11:27 pm
I’m happy for you.
Finding the strength to accept and recognize your past as a part of who you are now is not easy.
And as we all know, learning to accept and love ourselves is greatest love of all. Whitney Houston said so.
January 7th, 2009 at 10:39 am
This is awesome. I know once I got past most of the anger, I was really glad for the upbringing I had in the Mormon church. I guess what I eventually learned was to take the good and leave the bad. Now and then the anger bursts out of me, but normally only when my civil rights are threatened.
I kept several journals in college, and read them years later. I ended up throwing them out with the trash because they were mindless ramblings of a sheep with no thoughts of my own. That is probably why I get angry when I see my friends and family blindly following without any personal thought involved. I am not mad at them, I am mad that I used to be them.
January 7th, 2009 at 11:30 am
tasithoughts, that’s a nice way of thinking about it. Takes all the menace and tension out of having a SECRIT MROMON PAST.
Kerry, that’s AWESOME. I already know my bedroom door likes to open itself spontaneously. Or is it THE GHOST OF WIFE #17????
Also, re: The Landlady, I hear there’s an entire website devoted to her and her crazy family. ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOS! I’ll track down that link for you sometime.
erinannie, if reality television has taught us nothing else, at least we know that Whitney’s life counsel is always better than anyone else’s.
Daisy, I was going to throw my mission journals out unread because I assumed they would be mindless and depressing–and there were parts that I skimmed over, rolling my eyes and shaking my head. But they turned out to be surprisingly revealing: for instance, I didn’t remember all the doubts and struggles with faith I had during my mission, and I had forgotten the stories of a lot of the wonderful people I met.