When I was younger I had friends from all the friend groups, the parking lot “F” dudes and “F” chicks, the “Preppies,” the “Goths,” and the “Jocks.” I was and am pretty opened minded when it comes to people. My church friends would be nice to me at face value and some of them would make my life a living hell when I wasn’t standing in their air space. I was talked about constantly and I have a doozy of a story to share. This was the last straw when I knew this church was not for me.

I went to every youth activity I could in my church community. I had some good friends there. Some I still have. These are the ones that actually gave a damn about me and have open minds. Others I lost because I wasn’t what they expected me to be and they wanted to push me down and they did very successfully.

I had this neighbor and she wanted to be popular and a cheerleader, something fierce. She finally did become a cheerleader her last 1-2 years of high school but she was extremely toxic for me and my family. Her and some of the church Mom’s and some of my church teachers made my and my family’s life a living hell for a couple years.

My parents wanted to move to UT because it was full of like minded people as it was full of others in the same church. In their minds they were doing something great as they wanted to keep us engulfed in the true religion. In their hearts and minds they were doing something loving and special and honestly it should have been that way. But the church members in UT are their own breed and don’t get out much so this ended up being the complete opposite of the intent.

I don’t know why my neighbor wanted to hurt me and my family so badly but she wanted it. Rumors started to fly big time one summer. I was  brought into our bishop’s office multiple times because the leaders were hearing all these horrible things. Here are some of them. Not all of them.

• “We had a club where we were trying to show kids bad images and make them watch dirty moves etc.”
  • My brother and his friend mooned this neighbor and I. They were teenage boys. They leaned over so far that we could see things hanging down. I told them they were gross and we walked out of the room. They laughed and that was the end of it. This girl had a meeting with my church teachers and told her that my brother and his friend were  trying to get us to do things for them and make us watch dirty movies etc. In the 80’s mooning was a thing. This never escalated to more than a 1 time teenage boys mooning and it got turned into a whole thing blown out of proportion. Our other friend also had a tent set up in his yard and he would sleep in it a lot and sometimes my brother would sleep over there. They had some dirty magazines in it and my neighbor found out about this and told the leaders that it was a club and they were trying to bring in little kids and force them to look at the magazines.,
• “I was trying to indoctrinate others to have non-member friends.”
  • I had a couple very good friends that were not members of the church. I am still friends today with them. They picked me up one evening and this neighbor’s Mom saw and started to spread rumors that I was some sort of bad person because I had non-member friends. Another Mom in the neighborhood actually told her daughter she couldn’t hang out with me any more because of it as she was afraid it would rub off onto her daughter. The husband of this lady knew that my friend had a barn with horses and within the same 12-18 months of this he called and told someone that she didn’t feed her horses and they came out and checked on them because of this call. They actually gave her the name of the caller so we didn’t have to speculate who it was. This is all because she was seen in our neighborhood picking me up to go to the library and do a school project.
• “I was smoking and trying to get others to smoke at camp.”
  • I walked a friend to the bathroom at camp when we were around the fire. She didn’t want to walk by herself in the dark so I offered to go with her. She was known to smoke, and she was a smoker, but she didn’t even smoke at that church camp. I just walked with her to the bathroom, just the 2 of us. I was called into the leadership office 2 days later to ask if I needed help because I was addicted to cigarettes and drugs. 

To my face these women and girls were nice to me. But this trash form above is just the tip of the iceberg. This kind of stuff went on for years and my family got drug through it.

There is no way I would ever believe in a God that would allow his only true members to get away with crap like this. You could argue and say that teenagers are cruel and they grow out of it but in the above scenarios the teenagers started it and the adult women kept it going and exacerbated it. When all this was going on I knew that I would not be living this when I was old enough to choose because I was not going to associate with these horrible people if I didn’t have to. You can tell me that it’s not the religion, it’s the people. I get that but this religion does teach a lot of things that are very abusive and in this case it is both the religion and people.

I will share more horror stories in the future. Writing them down is helping with my deconstruction.