Thrashbrowns Loses his Religion: Part 10

 

Just okay?

It happens without fail. I'll be out at a wedding reception or a funeral or getting groceries or anywhere else where I might find my way into social interactions. I'll run into some LDS church member I know who'll be way too friendly to me for comfort. After the greeting, the question of questions will be asked.

"How are you?"

I fucking hate this question. I often wonder if the person asking me actually cares how I am or if he's asking cuz it's part of a programming subroutine that downloaded at baptism. 

I also never know how to answer. If I say I'm feeling like shit, I usually get probing questions into subjects that are none of other person's business. Ugh. If I say I'm doing good, I feel like a lying sack of shit cuz most of the time, I'm not doing well enough to say I'm good with any degree of honesty. 

Usually, I'm not feeling shitty or doing good. I'm somewhere between blah and meh. I'm not happy, I'm not despondent, I'm just ok. But 95% of the time, if I say "I'm okay," I get this response. The person who approached me will get a half-amused, half-concerned look on their face and ask "Just okay?"

Yeah, I'm okay. Which is a lot better than I could be. Am I supposed to be all fucking shiny and happy everywhere I go? Even if I'm suicidal and wanting to blink out of existence? Do you want me to lie to you? 

And what about you? Are you as fucking chipper and cheerful as you act all the time? Do you ever have bad or even mediocre days? What the fuck is wrong with being real about how I'm feeling and do you really think giving me shit about not being a fucking ray of sunshine is gonna put me in a more acceptable mood? If so, you better lay off whatever you're smoking cuz it's affecting your brain.

*****

I have anxiety and depression. I once described battling depression and anxiety like being stuck inside a locked car with the radio blasting Nickleback and you can never reach the volume knob. The anxiety has been there at least since my mission, but probably way longer than that. The depression settled in about twenty years ago, when my little brother was murdered. Since then, I've withered away to a husk of my former self. I'm scared of everything and so hopeless, I've never been able to mount a sustained effort to change my life for the better. I have good days, good weeks. Hell, I even occasionally have good months. The depression and anxiety are always lurking right around the corner, waiting to knock me off track every time it seems like I'm starting to find my way.

It's pretty fucking hateful. I've been in counseling off and on for like fifteen years. I've been on meds. I've been hospitalized because I told my parents I was gonna kill myself. I've felt a near-ceaseless stream of guilt and shame for being so dysfunctional and such a drag on my family. 

But even though I'm struggling, I'm not struggling nearly as hard as I was when I was going to church.

You how there are some morons out there who are science deniers? Idiots that refuse to believe anything that's incongruent with their personal beliefs, no matter how many of the facts prove that what they don't believe is true? Well, I think that Mormon culture is a culture of emotion deniers. They refuse to acknowledge that emotions like fear, anger, sadness and hopelessness exist. They seem to believe that everyone's natural state is to be happy and if someone isn't happy, all they need to do to change things is fake it.

Ok, maybe that's a bit hyperbolic. Most LDS folks I know understand that negative emotions exist. They've probably even experienced them. But their framing of the world doesn't allow them to take mental illness very seriously unless the person suffering the condition is locked in a rubber room muttering psychotic nursery rhymes. Anybody who might be in the grips of anxiety or depression is merely under the influence of Satan and Satan can be overcome if your faith is sufficiently strong. See, there's your problem. You don't have enough faith.

It's the same kind of "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" bullshit you hear from morons who don't understand that sometimes forces outside of your control are what's crushing you. They don't get that you ARE trying to pull yourself up but it's damn near fucking impossible to pull yourself up by your bootstraps when your bootstraps are fucking broken.

*****

One of the attitudes the church tries to drive into you is the idea that if you're a member, you have the truth and if you have the truth, you have so much reason to rejoice. Every negative, painful thing in life should be swallowed up in the fact that you have the restored truth. If you can't be happy in light of that fact, it's because there's something wrong with you morally.

I guess I could have faked being happy but I'm not a fan of the kind of dissonance that comes along with faking contentment when I'm miserable. As time rolled along I began to wonder how many of the Mormon folks around me were in the same boat I was. How many were sad or miserable behind closed doors only to bust out the fake plastic smiles when they were out and about? Kinda reminds me of this quote from the Steve Buscemi movie, Trees Lounge:

There's a lot of phoniness in LDS Church culture. Phony smiles and fake hellos, as Zakk Wylde once sang. People pretending they have it together so much better than they actually do. I used to think that every church member I knew was functioning better than me. As I got older and slightly wiser, I realized they ain't doing shit better than me. They're hiding all their issues in a closet like an old long box full of comic books that never get read. The difference between them and me is the I didn't play the shiny, happy people game.

But it does make you wonder, why do so many Mormons feel such pressure to fake how they're doing? Is there something so wrong with just admitting you're a mess, that the effortless perfection you pretend to have attained is just an illusion? Is there something wrong with doing what Jesus asked us to do and bear one another's burdens? Is that just an artifact of conservative personal beliefs that if you can't make it without a little help from your friends, you're fucking worthless?

Beyond that, why do you have to hassle people who are clearly struggling? If life's all fucking peachy for you, why can't you live and let live? Why does everyone have to be all grinning and psychotic like you? I can't tell you how many times some jackass in church has told me to smile or count my blessings when I was barely holding it together. They don't have any idea how insulting it is to be told the shit you're battling doesn't matter and you should don't worry, be happy. I have an idea. If you're not gonna try to be helpful or can't offer anything that might help, then have a Coke and a smile and shut the fuck up.

*****

The worst part of depression and anxiety is how it makes you question and devalue yourself. You constantly wonder how you got so broken, what got broken, and why, despite your best efforts, you can't seem to fix yourself. When someone accuses you of using your mental illness as a scapegoat or an excuse, it tears you apart, because even though you may actually do exactly that, that doesn't lessen your condition at all and it just makes you wanna tell anyone throwing that shit at you to go fuck themselves. After all, it's super awesome when people who don't have any understanding of what it's like to have depression and anxiety tell you how fake your condition is or how easy it is to fix. 

Add in a belief that the knowledge of "the truth" eliminates any reason to be sad or in pain and you've got a recipe for depressed individuals to feel like they aren't valued because they aren't living up to the culture's expectations.  This is just another aspect of church activity that got to the point where it felt like I was slamming my head against a brick wall, trying to find acceptance for who and what I was and not succeeding. That's some exhausting shit and only a true idiot would continue doing it when it becomes obvious that it's a Kobayashi Maru of a situation. 

I am slightly smarter than a true idiot so I took my ball and went home. I threw this data in with the rest of the data that told me the LDS Church wasn't for me and I walked. I have no desire to be part of an organization that can't deal with the reality of depression and anxiety in an appropriate manner. I can't handle being told I have every reason to be happy when there's a chemical time bomb ticking away in my brain that might explode at any moment. 

I can't handle any more cheese dick Mormons telling me that my problems all come from Satan and to overcome my obstacles, I just need to church harder. To be honest, I feel like if God made me how I am, gave me all my strengths and flaws, then he made me this way so it's his fucking fault, not Satan's. Satan just does orgies and death metal. Then again, I'm not convinced God exists anymore, so maybe just maybe, there's an actual medical, scientific explanation for my issues. 

*****

 

A few weeks ago, around the time I started writing these posts, I had a weird conversation with my mom. She came to me all teary-eyed and just started apologizing. I told her she didn't have anything she needed to apologize to me for. She argued, telling me she'd just been to a workshop the church put on about depression and anxiety. She said she never before truly understood what my issues were or what I was going through. 

That actually raised my opinion of the church a little bit. Maybe they're actually making an attempt to understand conditions like mine. Maybe in the future, LDS church members who are struggling to keep their heads above water will be treated with the compassion they need, not like someone whose faith isn't strong enough to conquer chemical imbalances in their brains.

That won't change the fact that there are plenty of fucking boneheaded douchebags in the church who won't be convinced that depression and anxiety are real unless God himself shows up in their bedroom and tells them to pull their heads out of their asses. They'll go on believing that depression is just Satan getting control over the minds and souls of people suffering these issues and that if they could just believe in the Gospel enough, their issues would drift away like dandelion seeds on the wind. To those stubborn fuck buckets I'll just say you better thank your God every fucking chance you get that you don't have what I have cuz it would kill you. 

As for my depression, anxiety and HSP fam, I want to say I hear you. I understand how hard it is just to be a functioning adult every day. I understand the pain of some dumb shit stain telling you that it's all in your head and you just need to try harder. My own dad pulled that shit with me for YEARS. I guess that's what happens when you spend your childhood watching John Wayne movies. Anyways, I got your back if you need anything. People fighting depression and anxiety are so much stronger than we're given credit for and we need to share that strength with one another. Because one thing I know for sure is that all we have is one another.