Another instance of me just grossly misinterpreting things was when I was 12 and I had my first Worthiness Interview (my inner Rogerian therapist is crying in utter despair at that name btw) and because Mormons are fucking juvenile slopfarts who can never just say things clearly, I totally did not realize that when the guy giving me the fucking interview asked “Do you…um, haha, I mean, do you, ya know?...Um, like, ya know, engage in self-gratification?” that he meant “Hey, you jorkin’ it?” and I interpreted that as “Do you do things that make you feel good?” And I was like “Yeah, all the time!” Because of course I do! I eat food I like, I play fun video games, I spend time with my siblings, I watch T.V., I have friends I talk to at school, I am near-constantly self-gratifying. And because this little nut weasel was too chickeshit to just Say The Fucking Thing he thought that I had just confessed to The Sin Second to Murder and immediately says “Hahah, hey, that’s OK, a lot of people do that! But God doesn’t want us to, because it’s wrong to do that, so you need to stop to be temple worthy.” And my gender dysphoric ass did NOT know what masturbating was and so I fully thought he was saying “Don’t do things that are fun!” and I believed him, because a) Why would he lie? And b) The scriptures SAY that the natural man is an enemy to God, AND and c) I kept getting told that when shit was hard and unpleasant because of my faith that it was good. That God was happy when I stayed faithful and suffered immensely, because that was The Right Thing To Do. So I went from 12-15 years old feeling guilty any time I did ANYTHING I liked before we got a new guy doing the interviews who wasn’t a coward and could ask the question directly and I was like “No” and he was like “Cool, any questions for me?” and I said, “Yeah, what happened to the self-gratification question?” and he said “Oh, that means masturbating.” And internally I was screaming and crying and pissing and shitting and throwing up because NO THE FUCK IT DOES NOT mean that. And I had been saying “yes” to that for years when I didn’t even know what masturbating was because I thought Jesus hated it when I was happy.
