Starlight, Moonlight

My siblings removed me from the facility.

Maybe that’s the best place to turn and look back, though.

My mom always said she didn't want a fourth child but my dad talked her into it. What a great story to tell your kid as they grew up, huh?

It's alright though, my dad got the revelation from God. A burning in his bosom and his loins. They often quote this story on why my existence was ordained by God and why I  should believe in Him and the Church.

My parents are Mormon. I'm their only child who is lgbt+.

Growing up I always hoped that one of my older siblings would be gay so I could support them and love them despite what Mormon leaders teach. I would daydream about in high school, before going to the Mormon religious study class. My best friend is a lesbian.

When I was 15 I harassed a boy because I thought he was my only chance of getting married like “”I should”” because he was the first of a very short list of boys I had what I thought was a crush. I envied my friend for being gay, thinking about how easy it would be to leave my mom and dad if they hated me.

If you don't know, Mormons, or as the sect I grew up in liked to call themselves, “The Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter Day Saints” are a “high demand” religion that’s somewhat similar to Jehovah’s Witnesses, as it was borne out of the same religious revolution that was popular at the time.

They believe that Jesus, and God the Father, and the Holy Ghost (Ghost, not Holy Spirit) are three separate people. They also believe that to get into heaven that you have to go to their big beautiful white buildings where you’ll enact some rituals similar to the Freemasons do, (their founder being one HAS NOTHING to do with it of COURSE) and you have to pay 10% of your gross income to be worthy to go to the temple. And keep paying after.

Also God is an extraterrestrial being that sent his spirit children to possess organic bodies.

I didn't really think about these things when I was growing up. It just seemed normal. It also just seemed normal to feel yucky in my body, and feeling like it wasn't my body because the doctrine I was taught told me it wasn't. God didn't make mistakes, after all.

I didn't realize that other people weren't in constant pain all the time and actually thought of their bodies as theirs until I was 18. I then started to pay more tithing to the church because I thought I was being punished for not being active. It was around that time I started learning about trans people and how gender worked.

I thought that questioning myself was making God angry. I tried my best to think straight thoughts and act like the “”girl”” I was supposed to be. I had to move back in with my parents because I ran out of money.

I lived with them for a year, doing nothing but being in agony about all the things I needed to do better. I had an abusive friend that told me it was okay to call myself nonbinary but not claim that I was trans. I believed him.

When he stopped talking to me, after he talked me into smutting with him, extensively, and made me worse than I had ever been in my life, I took a good look at myself. I said, well, I'm not sure what this is but it sure isn't what my parents taught me. I told myself that even if I wasn't trans, I was still somewhere in the lgbtqa spectrum.

I remember deciding on New Year’s Eve that God wouldn't actually punish me for not feeling like a girl and lucky for me!! January 1st was a Sunday!

I went back to church that day and I was so excited. I was happy, feeling like I could be a better person! I wanted to spend time with my dad, and though girls weren’t supposed to sit in with them, I sat in with my dad anyway. As Mormons pick people of the congregation to teach, he gave the lesson that day. He fired up his laptop and put on one of the old men of the church and let him talk.

The old man said that as latter day saints it was our duty to shun and destroy the lgbt movement. He said the lgbt movement was the enemy of the church.

I left. I sat outside and I stared upwards at the sky, loosening the tie I had worn that day. I had never felt so connected to my body and I wanted to get sick, but physically I was fine. All the self improvement I had done and the love I had felt for myself was not something the Mormon god wanted for me.

I went home that day. I looked up, on my family’s computer, the history of the Mormon church. I lost my faith that day. I lost my religion. Everything that I thought I was was slashed away from me as I realized I had grown up in a lie as a member of a cult.

The only thing that was me was fiction and a feeling. The feeling of how I deserved to love myself. I was 19.

I'm 22.

I wasn't able to get my feet under me for a long time, and it was only about 7 months ago did I get a job again. I still live with my parents, though it's better now that I live in the basement with a door that locks. A year ago, I thought I was going to kill myself.

Now I'm so excited to start a new life. I can't wait to start a new life and transition into the person I now realize I can be. There are so many things I want to do, dreams that I couldn't even have pictured when I was 16. I have always had trouble picturing my future, the one I had as a Mormon was with children I couldn't love and a faceless man I was afraid of.