exiting emotions: anger

When my Mormon world came crashing down around me, I felt angry. I still feel angry sometimes, even to the point of a rage that wants to burst out and break something, burn something, destroy something. I don't often feel that, but it comes from time to time. I've never actually acted on it. I've saved some Mormon-related books so that next time that anger comes about, I'll have something to burn. Sometimes I think it would be cathartic; sometimes I think it would be empty.

I was always really dismissive of "angry apostates," wondering how on earth they could be so angry at something so benign and wonderful. Now I understand. The church took something from me; it hurt me. I have a right to be angry. Dwelling on that anger forever would be unhealthy, but so would ignoring it.

I wrote the following when I was in the thick of aftermath emotions:

I feel angry at the idea that I've had, over the years, many problems with Mormonism--culture, church, doctrine, theology. I know I'm not unique in that; I even talked to my parents about many of these things (place of women, polygamy, blacks and the priesthood, etc), and tried to sort through them, work them out. They are things I see as immoral, not in line with a moral God--so how could they be part of the church? I did some major mental gymnastics to fit it all in--and a lot of putting it on the back burner as "not understandable."

But what if the church isn't true? Then all that mental gymnastics was for nothing--and even worse, all that pain resulting from polygamy, racism, sexism, etc, etc that people since 1830's have known--it was all for a man. Not for God. I can't even comprehend a God that would ask that of us. That is not God.

And I believed it all, from Joseph Smith was commanded by God to marry 33+ women, down to not grumbling about the young women's softball coach because I had sustained her as God's servant. And my family believes it all. And their parents and their grandparents, and ancestors back to 1830. And if it's not true, all of us have been betrayed, and duped. That makes me angry.