Thrashbrowns Loses his Religion: Pt. 3

 

The Cracks Appear

I am no more than 10 years old, playing Star Wars with my siblings and my cousins in the weeds out behind the house. Somehow the subject becomes how much everyone's allowances are. My cousin, who was probably 8 at the time, tells me that I get too much money for too little work and that because of that, I am unrighteous.

*****

I am around 14, hanging out at a friend's house watching MTV countdown the Top Ten videos of the day, hoping like hell a band like Poison or Whitesnake takes the top spot. In the kitchen, my friend's mom is talking some shit about how guys with long hair are all scumbags and how she doesn't want my friend to turn out like that. Then, she turns to me and tells me I'm a bad influence because she fears I'm dragging her kid away from the church and his family and toward a future of boozing and being a degenerate. (Note: This friend now does IT for the LDS Missionary Training Center in Provo, UT. So no, I didn't turn him into an alcoholic metalhead.)

*****

I'm now around 17. My best friend and I are hanging out in his room, listening to Faith No More or some shit like that. He tells me that his dad worries about him hanging out with me and how, while I do some good things, I'm not a good kid. Was that because your kid and I, along with a couple of other people, used to sit on a bench on Main Street in Rexburg, playing Body Count really loud on a boom box and yelling obscenities at people?

*****

Three unconnected, unrelated incidents that have a number of common threads. The obvious one is that most of the adults I interfaced with thought I was pretty worthless. Perhaps less obvious is how being told this kind of stuff as a young person caused damage and how that damage was an important factor pushing me away from the LDS Church.

As kids, we are all trying to figure out who we want to be and what kind of people we are. An important element in that is the feedback we get from other people. We all use what other people think of us to steer us until we, hopefully, develop a sense of self and validation that comes from within ourselves and not from external sources. 

With that in mind, what kind of effect do you think being told you're unrighteous or a bad influence has on a young person who's trying to form their identity? It can be devastating to said young person, causing them to withdraw or lash out or have no sense of self-worth. It can lead the young person to embrace destructive behavior later in life. Destructive to both themselves and to others around them. And sometimes the damage is such that the person isn't even aware of what they're doing to themselves or their loved ones. It can take years and years to straighten those issues out, if they can be straightened out at all.

It's bad enough when that shit is coming from kids. It hurts but it can be more easily dismissed because I think most people have an understanding that kids are fucking clueless when it comes to the kind of long-term damage unkind words can do to a person. But adults fucking know better. They have enough lived experience to know that while they may not hurt physically, words carry the possibility of causing long-term damage that completely derails a kid's journey into self-discovery and becoming a functioning adult.

That's not the only way unkind words can hurt young people, either.

One thing that kids need to grow and develop in a healthy manner is a feeling of belonging and acceptance. Kids need to feel safe to try new things out without fear that they'll be alienated for doing so. When they don't have these feelings of belonging, safety and acceptance, it can spin them and lead to acting out, lack of connection and despair.

Again, I believe adults have enough lived experience to understand this. Yet, too many Mormon parents decide to hurl degrading and invalidating words at kids. Ok, maybe they're afraid for the well-being of their children, but do they not think about the well-being of the kids they're putting down? Or does being religious and having children just make you into a paranoid dickbag whose focus is so myopic, you can't see the pain and hurt you're causing?

Cuz I'll tell you, that shit can really mess you up.

Though I didn't get the full meaning of what these jackasses were telling me, I understood enough to know that they were saying I was less worthy than their kids and that I didn't belong with them. Anywhere, but especially church. My sense of belonging and worthiness was shattered and re-shattered, over and over again because the LDS adults around me didn't care enough to try to understand me.

It is any wonder that I started moving away from the church? Is it any wonder I stopped going when it was more comfortable to skip Sunday School to go get nachos and soda and drive around town than it was to sit in class with a bunch of dicks who I knew hated me? Is it any wonder I have trouble making friends with Mormons when so many people who I looked up to didn't think I was worth shit and were vocal about it? Is it any wonder I don't feel like I belong anywhere near an LDS meeting house, even all these years later?

Look, I know everyone goes through this to one degree or another. I also know that a lot of people who suffer this kind of bullshit aren't destroyed by it and go on to be perfectly functional, active members of the church. Or maybe they're just better at hiding it.

I also know this isn't strictly a Mormon thing. It seems to be human nature to try to find some way to lift yourself above your fellow man and this is especially prevalent in homogenous populations where everyone has the same personal beliefs, like in the Mormon Corridor where I grew up.

But the point is that this shit needs to stop. Kids are forming the foundations of who they will be well into their twenties. Hearing this kind of shit when they're young puts cracks in that foundation they're trying to build. It leads to all kinds of problems later in life. And, as I said before, ADULTS. FUCKING. KNOW. BETTER.

Let me put this another way. The leadership of the church is constantly advising the whole of the Mormon church membership to avoid gossiping. I'd classify this kind of down-talking to kids and this kind of shit-talking when the kid isn't around to hear it as "gossip." The reason is because this shit builds up and eventually drives people out of the church. It can ruin friendships and families and destroy the very fabric of individuals. Your leaders, whom you hold to be prophets who converse with God on a daily basis, are telling you this. So, why the fuck aren't you listening and doing what they say? Maybe you're just as lost as I am, eh?

So, if you're the kind of Mormon who finds yourself calling kids things like unrighteous, unworthy or a bad influence, stop it. Right the fuck now. Although you probably should understand, you have no idea how you're hurting those kids. You don't know those kids well enough to judge them and sure as fuck don't have the right to. 

As for myself, I'm in the process of recovering from growing up around adults like this, adults who took no care for the damage their words might cause me. It still hurts. But removing myself from that fucking pack of jackals has done wonders for how I feel about myself. Who knows. Maybe someday, I'll even be able to look at myself in a mirror without hating the worthlessness of what I see.