Why am I blogging?

Why commit my personal thoughts to the world wide web, and not put them in a journal, like I did when I was a good little Mormon girl?

When I finally made my mental and physical break from the Mormon church over a year ago, I went through a whole range of emotions. Heartbreak, betrayal, anger, confusion, loss. Joy, freedom, happiness, exhilaration, power. These emotions swirled around in me at an amazing pace, and it was through the support of members of the DAMU (disaffected Mormon underground) community, both online and in real life, that I could emotionally and psychologically survive.

I spent hours at a time talking, chatting, posting, and reading for months. My recovery process consumed me. After those initial months, though, I started some new work, and became so completely bogged down in it, that I didn’t have time to think or even feel about Mormonism and recovery for about a year.

That’s not entirely true. When I did have a break, holidays and the like, or I talked to a believing family member about my exit—I would feel again. And it still hurt.

Work has eased up in the past month or so, and thoughts and feelings about Mormon issues are creeping in again. Sometimes superficially, just enough to make me laugh, or be astounded about something like sexist comments in General Conference. But sometimes it consumes me again, to the point that I come to the verge of tears and I think about scheduling an appointment with a counselor. I even took a depression screening test, but my “symptoms are not consistent with depression or bipolar disorder.” But I already knew that; I function just fine. I am happy most of the time. I can do my work, I can take care of my household, I can find joy in friendship and family.

But where I thought time and distance from the months of my exit were helping to quell the emotion, I can’t be so sure anymore. I am still raw. I just didn’t have time to confront it. I thought my personal therapy was moving along quite nicely, that I was recovering really well. But maybe I was just ignoring it all. Maybe I just turned it all off for a while, put it all on the top shelf where I couldn’t touch it and it couldn’t touch me. Maybe I just deceived myself into thinking I was over the worst. Now I wonder if I haven’t even seen the worst.

I think leaving Mormonism requires a grieving process, just like when a close loved one dies. (I certainly felt like Heavenly Father was dead to me—perhaps even that I killed him. The idea of him.) One has to get past a denial phase, and then enter a grieving phase, before one can go through the recovering phases.

I thought I got past the grieving phase, but I think I’m back in. And I need to do something more than ignore it to get out of it. It may take me through some more mucky, raw, difficult emotions, but I think it’s necessary to confront it rather than ignore it.

So the online DAMU is drawing me in again. And there are so many amazing people online, so many great essays and blogs and supportive communities. I want to be a part of that, and maybe my thoughts, out there for anyone to see, will resonate with somebody. ‘Cause they’re certainly not resonating with the pages in my hard copy journal.

So, Outer Blogness, I’ve just hired you as my therapist. I hope the relationship works out.