EPTI left off telling you about my seminary teacher from freshman year, who was in all senses of the word, a hag. I honestly think that if she was into witch craft, and I wouldn't really be that surprised
She got replaced at the very end of the year with this bad ass teacher who actually understood how to reach out to kids. Cool guy.
Sophmore year of high school. Sometime during junior high, we will call Ted, who is to become a pretty important person in my life, moved down the street. Some other kids lived down the street also, and I was friends with them. Let's call them Joe and Bob. Joe was a year younger than me, and Bob was three years younger than me. They both moved in down the street from me around 4th grade or something? maybe earlier? I don't remember exactly, but I became their friend.
Ted came later, and moved in across the street. I became friends with Ted's little brother, then realized i had more in common with Ted, and hung out with him. See, the weird thing about these friends is that my family lived right next to the school district line. Ted, Joe, and Bob all lived on the other side of that line, so I hung out with them after school only. Sort of a weird friendship because i was the odd man out in a way. These people are important, because i started hanging out with them after school a lot in high school. Since I was the computer geek out of all of us, I was the first to show them some true LAN classics, such as Starcraft. Oh, do I remember massing archons and rolling people over. Then they got better than me, and the game became a lot less fun because I was a poor loser.
Anyway, because i only hung out with them not in school, I usually hung out with them on weekends also. Their parents let them hang out on sunday because they weren't mormons, they were general christians - but my parents would stop me sometimes. I never could figure out why either. They would let me hang out sometimes on sunday, then randomly would not let me. They started poking fun at me eventually, saying that it's ridiculous that I couldn't hang out on sunday. I usually agreed, but I never stopped being mormon. I would swear when I hung out with them and shit, but it wasn't THAT big of a deal. I still had my faith.
It's time to explain the average mormon sunday meeting, and you'll understand why i wanted to go out and play. You spend about an hour in sacrament meeting listening to people talk. On the first sunday, there is testimony meeting, where people just get up from the congregation, and go up and tell everyone about how and why they believe in the church. Little kids would go up there, then their parents would whisper words into their ears about what to say.
This idea now strikes me as so odd though, and makes me realize how well they brain wash people. I'm going to go ahead and say brain wash because they have parents whispering these words that these kids remember later on, and repeat as they get older. Then it just becomes second nature to say such a thing while you're up there. I use to literally go up there myself, and do the SAME. EXACT. SHIT. because i felt a "burning in my bossom" What I've realized as I got older is that said "burning" is simply placed in there from all the discussions about it all the time on sunday. Think about it - once a bunch of people start using a word, what happens? MORE people use that word. I've seen this happen so many damn times especially with phrases. All it takes is a few people to like it, then it spreads.
Anyway, now that I've gone off tangent - after sacrament meeting, you go into sunday school. It lasts about an hour, then you go to your.... well, for men it was priest hood. for women, it was relief society if you were 18+ and young women if you were between 12 and 17. Both of these time slots though teach a lesson of some sort in both, where they pretty read through the same lessons every 4 years. Everyone in the church follows the same lesson manuals - so if you're a young woman who is 15, a\nd you go on vacation and visit a church meeting at another church, you would be around the same lesson. Extremely convenient in all honesty. Pretty good idea to come up with.
High school, I took seminary all 3 years (3 years where I live, because freshmen year is part of junior high). I had a teacher who had lived in my area and had been my bishop at one point. I had him 2 years in a row, then had this other teacher. They were both pretty good because they knew their shit. Sometimes the lessons were boring, but they made it interesting for the most part. I was stead fast in still being mormon.
That is, until I met Jenny. Not her real name, but we'll go with that.
Jenny first introduced me to the idea that my beliefs may not actually be correct. See, it wasn't what Jenny said to me, but instead of what happened to her. I won't go into details, but she had a less than pleasent trip on a religious trip with one of the leaders on said trip. The point is that she first started expressing this doubt to me. Her and I started dating, and things got more interesting as she started talking about what she knew about the church. She probably knew more than I did because her friend was mormon for awhile, but stopped. I talked to her friend about it, and a few other of Jenny's friends about atheism. That summer, my mom challenged me to fast about my beliefs because she wouldn't accept that I wasn't mormon.
Jenny and I broke up because she was my second real girlfriend, and I didn't have the courage to kiss her. I ended up going after this mormon girl who convinced me in some way to follow through with mormonism and go on a mission. Jenny ended up wanting to get back together, and if I had the chance to go back and change what I did, I would have. Jenny was really cool, and I ended up hanging out with her and trying to get her back a few years later, but it never happened. I was too foolish.
I didn't graduate high school. I'm pretty fucking smart, but I failed because I was lazy. I honestly did not give two shits about anything. I was too busy writing music, talking to girls, and playing video games. Do I regret failing high school? Not really. It helped me realize how terrible some people can be when they think it won't matter. I ended up getting my GED the novemeber after I got out of highschool, and ended up playing World of Warcraft from novemeber till about march. I went to church with my parents every once in awhile, but i faked going with my friends for the most part. My parents knew what I was doing, and they brought it up once, but sort of gave up eventually.
I ended up getting a job being a grocery clerk, which I stopped doing after 3 months. 2 months after that, i started delivering pizzas. Then I got another job while delivering pizzas to work for the government. I'm not really sure what I signed, so I won't got into too much detail about what I did, but it was basic IT support call center stuff, except I got paid exceptionally well, and had great coverage. All I had to do was take a hair folicle drug test which I passed with flying colors since I had never done drugs. I got my security clearance,a nd thought my life was finally starting to have meaning. Moved out of my parents house into a house with my brother and his (now)wife. For the first time in my life, I was living alone (sort of), and it felt fucking great. No parents to boss me around, stayed up doing god knows what however i wanted. I sort of had these freedoms already, but i felt bad sometimes because i was afraid of waking up my parents. But THIS - THIS was freedom.
That's it for now. The next part is going to go into more about my freedom and the even that changed how I viewed religion for ever. Actually several events now that I think about it. Thanks for reading!
