Thrashbrowns Loses his Religion: Pt. 4

 The Best Two Years?

It was about 13 years ago and I was sitting in my counselor's office. We were discussing my relationship with the girl I was dating at the time. She was my first girlfriend and having a girl I was interested in reciprocate that interest really fucked with my concept of reality. 

Anyway, we somehow found our way onto the subject of my mission. I told him how it was a struggle, how I felt an impending sense of dread and doom everywhere I went (so, like every other day of my life), how ashamed I was that I didn't work harder and how I'd carried the weight of being so lazy with me ever since I can home.

"I don't think you were lazy," my counselor told me.

"I didn't work hard and I spent a lot of time in bed," I countered.

"I don't think that was laziness," he restated. "Based on what you told me, I think that was your anxiety popping out to say 'Howdy.'"

Come again?...

*****

I was kinda lucky. My parents didn't push me toward serving a mission in the least little bit. I'd heard horror stories and knew people who were told shit like "If you don't serve a mission, we won't help you pay for college" or were bribed, you know "If you go be a missionary, we'll buy you a car." My folks didn't do any of that shit. They let me decide for myself and I'll forever be grateful to them for that. If I'm honest, my friends' examples and the letters I'd get from them in the mission field had more to do with my decision to go.

My friends also didn't bullshit me about what I'd face in the field. They told me I'd have days when I didn't want to work, days when I'd be discouraged to the point of despair. They told me I'd have companions that I'd hate and want to murder in their sleep. They told me that most of the residents in the area I was serving would consider us doom-dealing enemies more than messengers of the Lord.

Somehow, they still undersold how fucking difficult a mission would be.

And yet, while everything they said about the opposition I'd face as a Mormon missionary was true, they couldn't prepare me for dealing with who would ultimately turn out to be my biggest enemy: myself.

******

Here's a bit of a breakdown of what a day looks like for an LDS missionary:

You wake up at like 6:30 in the am, get showered and eat breakfast. You then spend an hour studying your mission materials on your own before spending another hour studying together with your companion. If a mission was a buddy cop movie, your companion would be your buddy cop. You might like him or you might despise him, but you have to learn to work together and hopefully you become friends by the end.

Anyway, you're out the door by like 9:30 to spend the day knocking doors, contacting less-active members and, if you're lucky, teaching lessons to people who are searching for some sort of spiritual belief system. You get a break for lunch during the day. In the evening, you get a break for dinner and in my mission, there were a lot of members, so we had an appointment for dinner almost every night. (God, did that make me put on weight.) We also did work with the local church wards and branches. We also did service, like yard work or working at food banks and stuff, which was actually by far my favorite part of my mish. We were expected to be home and in bed by 10:30 in the pm.

At least, that's the schedule they expected us to keep. My schedule went more like wake up filled with dread, like something catastrophic was about to happen. I'd fight that sense of doom all day, regardless of what I was doing. I'd get a bit of a reprieve at bedtime, but the next day, I'd wake up with the same doomy cloud hanging out over my head and the fight would begin anew.

*****

Fighting a war within oneself while simultaneously trying to function in an environment like an LDS mission saps you of everything you need to serve the Lord. You feel exhausted all the time, you can't focus and other people irritate the ever-loving fuck out of you. Your faith evaporates and your testimony dwindles. At first, you try to "fake it til you make it" and I actually did a fairly decent job of that for the first six months or so. But eventually, you crack.

I cracked. I actually asked my mission president to send me home after I'd been out about three months because I felt so weak and I could see what was coming down the road. I knew I wasn't going to be able to serve the way I was expected to and I didn't want to waste the sacrifices my loved ones were making to keep me there or drag like an anchor on the missionaries I was serving with. Prez said that I needed to stay because a mission would set me up for the rest of my life. Honestly, he really wasn't wrong there.

It got to the point where it was a pretty major accomplishment when I could force myself to go out and talk to people. Mostly, I just hung out and found ways to spend my days that didn't involve trying to guide people I didn't know to the truth. I felt like a fraud. I felt like I didn't belong. I felt ashamed that I couldn't push myself to fulfill my calling.

But that wasn't the worst part.

The worst part is that Mormon missionaries are a bunch of gossipy little bitches and wannabe political climbers who have no problem talking shit about one another and using the rule-breaking of others to advance themselves in the mission power structure. They'll talk amongst themselves about how so-and-so was lazy (in my mission, being lazy was called kicking and a lazy missionary was a kicker). They'll go to leadership with rumors and hearsay, not to make the missionary being gossiped about a better, more effective servant of God, but to make themselves look good and climb higher in the mission leadership. A mission really is a lot like high school or your job, where people are really only interested in what is a benefit to themselves. (To be fair, I talked more than my fair share of shit about other missionaries.)

I was struggling, having trouble functioning and it wasn't too long before I started hearing about how lazy I was. I remember one guy, in particular, found out I was being transferred to one of his old areas and he reacted by saying "No! Elder Forsgren is a kicker. I need to call the ward mission leader." This cat had always been super friendly to my face, but I guess he drew the line at missionaries who didn't work serving in his old areas. What a dick...

It was all around me, rumors of how lazy I was. It crushed me and ironically, it made it even harder for me to go out and talk to people. It became a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy thing, like because I was lazy, I was expected not to work and because that was expected of me, that's what I did. I just believed what they were saying. I was lazy and probably always would be.

The idea that I was lazy didn't just color my mission, it colored almost everything I've experienced after that. I didn't apply for jobs because I was afraid employers could smell the laziness on me. I didn't try as hard as I should have in college because I was lazy and it would be out of character for me to fight to understand something I was being taught. When my ex-girlfriend's dad asked her if she thought I could provide for her, I took that as a sign that he could see how lazy I was. So, yes, my mission president was right. My mission set me on a course that would dominate my life from that point on. It's just that it wasn't a good thing...

*****

So there I sat, in my counselor's office, mind blown by what he had just told me. My struggles as a missionary weren't a sign of laziness. They were my anxiety manifesting. I didn't know anxiety was a problem for me back then, so I had no way to defend myself from what other missionaries were saying about me. I just took what they said deep into my heart, where it festered and rotted away my potential to be a force for good in the world. 

After I got over the shock of this revelation, I got angry. I got really, really fucking angry. These fucking dickless little cunts in shirts and ties had smeared me without knowing what was really wrong with me or caring enough to figure it out. Even the companions I had who were all about working and following the rules never asked me what was up. They just got frustrated with me and wished I would just go away. 

Don't get me wrong, I had some fucking awesome companions who were grateful I was as laid-back as I was. They may not have known the fullness of what was going on in my head, but they appreciated me for who I was. But the fact that so much shit was talked about me by people who really didn't have any idea what kind of person I was had a massive impact on how I see not only the missionaries I served with but also Mormons on the whole. I wish I could line up every one of those little gossipy punks I know were running their mouths about me and kick them square in the nuts with spiky steel boots. Fuck every last one of them.

Fast forward and now I know. I understand what was going on with me, why it was so hard for me to teach and preach and work like missionaries do. I also understand that I didn't handle myself well out there and that I myself was guilty of a lot of the same horseshit I saw from other people. I also don't have any desire to be part of a club or organization or anything else that has the potential to look at me the way those missionaries did back in the day. I'm still dealing with the damage of hearing about how lazy and worthless I was and believing it. 

But now I understand and I see more clearly the rotted, shitty souls of the kind of people who would treat someone they claim to love like that. I still talk way too much shit, but I'm working on it. I'll never be perfect, not in this lifetime. But I can be better. Being better is my mission now. And I don't need the LDS Church in my life to do that.