Finding Faith by Losing Faith.

Growing up in Utah, finding people who aren't religious is like trying to find a needle in a haystack. This can be both good, and bad. It can be good because generally most people in Utah are friendly and trustworthy. But it can be bad when you don't believe in the ideals of those around you. You become somewhat of an outcast. This is my story. I know some people that read it are going to give me a really hard time. Especially family and family friends. But I am finally ready to talk about it. If you have read my blog before you know that when I was 15 I was sexually assaulted by someone I thought was a friend. What I haven't talked about before, was the backlash I got about it from family members, friends and the LDS Church. I was raised in a great family that lived the LDS lifestyle. I grew up going to church every Sunday, and going to LDS sponsored activities on other days of the week. I was taught not to swear, lie, steal, wear immodest clothing, and most importantly, not to have sex before marriage. I had done a very good job sticking to these standards most of my life. My ward knew me as a good kid. I would even visit ward members as a small child on my scooter just because they didn't have kids and I wanted them to know they were loved and cared for. This may give you a clearer picture of who I was prior to this event that would change everything. I won't go to much into the assault side of my story as I have written about it many times. But essentially, I was lured into a false sense of security by a boy I was friends with, and he offered to come to a house I was watching by myself to make sure I wasn't scared anymore. So, I let him come over, and he proceeded to spike my juice, and assault me. He told me when he left, that if I told anyone, he would kill me. He also told me that I wanted him to do it and that I just couldn't remember. It took a new guy friend of mine, about 2 months later to scare him away from me. At that time, he told me I should talk to an adult. So, I talked to my mom, I didn't fully know how to explain the situation to her as I was still partly convinced it was my fault. She was under the impression that I had willingly had sex, so she told me what any church member would, she told me to go talk to my bishop. I was told that I had willingly had sex, even though I told the bishop that I had told him "No" over and over, and even tried to shove him away from me, but he was stronger than I was. I was given my punishment, I was not to take the sacrament, and was to pray daily to ask for forgiveness. I also was told not to go to the police as it would affect the boy negatively and I was an equal participant. It was this immediate judgement that made me feel I was worthless. Every Sunday, the judging glances of people who once loved me, the isolation from my peers, It pierced like a knife. Most of the friends I had didn't even bother to ask what had actually happened, they just assumed, In their eyes, I could never come back from this "Sin" that I never even wanted in the first place. I had planned on waiting until marriage to have sex. I remember one time, a church teacher I had was giving a lesson on purity, and she looked awkwardly at me and asked If I wanted to leave so I wouldn't feel uncomfortable. For the longest time, I felt like the scum of the earth, I even resorted to attempting to take my own life on several occasions. I was having night terrors, and panic attacks, I forced myself to stay awake to avoid these nightmares. My method of coping was to plug my headphones in and pretend the world around me didn't exist. Luckily for me, I was able to switch schools and get a fresh start with friends who didn't know any of this had happened. So there was some relief there, but still, every time I went to church I was back in this dark place where I felt completely alone and felt like I wasn't worthy of love and acceptance. It was when I stopped going to church that I finally felt happy, and felt like the person I really was. I was finally free to be myself and feel no judgement. It was also at that point in time that I realized just how much I did not believe in anything the church stood for. I realized how hypocritical they were, how brainwashed I was, the type of hold they had on their members. They were able to take a small seed of doubt I had in myself and extort me into believing I needed to repent or that God would never love me or forgive me again. Because of how long I was brainwashed into believing it was my fault, I never got professional help to cope with what had happened. When I was about 20 and realizing the full extent of the trauma I went through I developed PTSD. I would have these extremely bad episodes where something would trigger me into full blown paranoia, and panic attacks sometimes I would even see things that weren't there. Everyone kept telling me to come back to church and that that would make it better, but the second I stepped into the church building, It got 10 x worse. Every time I would pray, or read my scriptures I would have a complete mental breakdown. So,I stopped going again, I got professional help, and it got better. I tried going back to church again, same thing, everything got worse. Fast forward to now, I haven't stepped into a church building for a very long time, I now have very few panic attacks, I am actually able to leave my house without feeling terrified, my night terrors happen maybe once in a blue moon and I am completely and totally happy with who I am and where I'm at in my life. People ask me why I don't believe in the LDS church, this among other things, very heavily attribute to it. The biggest factor in my decision to stop participating in the church is that the second I took myself out of it, I began to see the falseness of the doctrine, the faulty way the church is governed, the rules that they make up that make no sense, and the way they treat people the way they treated me and sometimes even worse, for sexual assault, who they love, the family they are born into, anyone who doesn't fit into their cookie cutter of who a person should be. It took me losing faith, to find faith in myself. And I absolutely do not in any way shape or form, regret my decision.