I originally posted this on the biography board in Jan 2010 under my old moniker "confused"...

It was the first week in January 2009. It was cold and it was dark and gray, and there was ice over the water. I had come to my favorite place to think and to ponder my life. I walked down the hill and was stood by the edge. It was terrifying and it was exhiliarating as I stood there, and it seemed like the most natural thing in the world to walk into the water and drown- I knew the ice would fold and break around me and I would lose my strength and it would be the end. Witnesses would probably later say that the man had been standing there and just walked out onto the thin ice and disappeared without a struggle...

What brought me to this terrible point? It was a letter from my Bishop. Leading up to that letter was May or June of 2007 when I watched the tape of PBS' The Mormons that my wife had taped while I was at work. I did not know who the Islamic Studies Professor was on the show, but he was telling the old antimormon lie about Joseph Smith using a seerstone to translate the Golden Plates. I saw the whole show over the next few nights and saw the antimormon lies, But wait! they were being admitted by church people- Mountain Meadows, Temple Blood Oaths, Polygamy...After a few days I saw the Islamic Professor was actually a head spokesman for FAIRLDS, a proLDS explanation (apologetics) organization. So I watched that tape again-stone in a hat again and again Multiple vision stories- stone in a hat. So when nobody was home one morning I googled 'seerstones' and the floodgates of information burst open. The first thing I rermember was coming across the evidence of the Book of Abraham. It was undeniable that the papyrus and the facsimiles had absolutely nothing to do with LDS theology. Everything in that book was a complete and total fabrication. Before noon I had discovered also the truth about Post-Manifesto Polygamy, Zina Huntingtons tragic story and seerstones. I vomited over and over again.

Several months of obsessive study and long sleepless nights would follow. My house of cards had fallen flat and I was frantically trying to put it back together again.
The fear and confusion were terrible. Bitter pain and fear of damnation were in my every waking moment. I desperately wanted the church to be true, but every true documented account pointed away from the church. It would be nine months of solitary despair before telling my wife and four more of attending different churches while attending to my calling at church. I did it out of duty. My Bishop and I went the rounds many times. At first he was understanding and very supportive. As my faith dwindled and my assertiveness in standing by the truth grew, our relationship deteriorated until he was yelling at me, and at my wife. Finally, I and my wife resigned our callings and stopped going for good. The shunning began, former friends would avoid me on the street, and my wifes friends would belittle her in the store.

Now, in the last week of December the Bishopric Christmas card arrived in the mailbox. It contained a letter- a form letter obviously ordered from a company in Philadelphia. It called on us to hear the words of the living prophet Thomas Monson to come back (actually he used Pres.Hunters talk) . The letter invited me to cast aside whatever sin or offense afflicted me, and come to the Bishop who would make for my easy transition into full fellowship with the saints. I was heartbroken. My Bishop, who was also a personal friend had slapped me in the face with this letter, which intimated that I left due to laziness, fear, sin, and indifference. None of these were true, and he knew it. I left the church because of the things the prophets wrote and did.

So here I was, standing at the edge of freezing water with no reason to live. My only regret was that I should have brought the card and letter in a ziplok baggie taped to my chest. The news and police would be all over the church and I would be vindicated. It was so inevitable, I even began to run my toe over the exposed water. It was ice cold. Suddenly I snapped out of it and walked very rapidly up the hill to the car. I was shaking, and I was terrified- what had happened? Should I go to the hospital? I could barely drive.

That night I told my dear wife what had happened. She was furious. She cursed the church with a vehemence that frankly scared me. But she was right- the church had driven me, a faithful saint to the edge of suicide, and there could be no further allowance for its influence in our lives.

It has been a full year now since that day, and a year and a half since I last set foot in a Mormon building, and in that time I have discovered that despite all my fears, all that I was taught from childhood, and have proclaimed to others, and despite that I would never give another blessing, or teach from the pulpit, or be sustained by my peers, that truly the pathway to happiness lies in the opposite direction of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

Thanks for posting. I am amazed that always, these Bishops etc., claim you have sinned or been offended and they are the only reasons one would stray or stay away. They are so in the dark about their own religion. Glad you are out and did so the right way- with research.

I know this was not your point, but this is a great read, and very well written! Thanks for sharing your story! It will help and inspire others who are now in their dark time.

have endured. I wish that TBMs would TRY to understand what it means to leave the church . . . that it's not laziness or evil nature, but a commitment to truth at all costs that leads someone out.

You are so lucky that your wife came along and you had her support.

I really appreciate your posts.

Dude, I had no idea. I for one am glad the spell broke as I enjoy your comments very much.

I don't remember being suicidal, but for three weeks I was a complete mess. The three months around that point were rough, but the three weeks were ... well, the closest image that I can come up with were from an old missionary scripture ... "wracked with the pains of a damned soul" paints a picture of how I felt, but it was not being in a state of sinfulness, it was from being damned from the comfort of my formal world view.

I have not talked about it with anyone but my DW, but I actually have memories of heavenly visitors (three sessions) that had conversations with me. Basically explaining how the world and universe really work. And I was specifically directed to break from mormonism, because they did not capture the nature of god or the divine, and was referenced to a long forgotten dream I had as a little kid. Hehe, I even remember grasping forearms before they left the last time, and he had forearm guards (he must have been an archer Ha). I wish I could remember the conversations that my mind created in my despair, but all I know is that when my head cleared over the next week I found myself very skeptical, with hard atheist leanings, and completely at peace in the core of my soul.

I find it interesting on what my mind had to do to preserve itself. I also found that my fear of facing the possibility of the brink of nothingness when I die went totally away. It also helped me understand that my values and morals belong to me, and were not on loan from some other person or organization.

I still had some strong anger issues to deal with (against morgdom), but even those faded quickly. Now I just deal with the moral dilemma of how far do I go in helping people escape from the matrix, knowing how painful it is when it happens. Oh well, it is all good.

And once again, I am very happy you were able to make the mental adjustment in time to prevent a tragedy.

I was ill and sleepless for weeks, and missed several days of work. I was never suicidal; rather I had a will to survive the cult and rescue my children from it, not matter what they, or their MorGod, did to me.

Even in the darkest night, I felt that unusual "Peace in the core of my soul" that Luminouswatcher describes. I realized that the Mormons did not own God. They couldn't tell God what to do. God--whatever he is--was still with me and my children.

It was as though I had faced down my worst fears, and had come out the other side. I wasn't nearly as afraid of death as I had been as a Mormon.

I can live with ambiguity better than I can live with lies!

When I left, the Sunday depression and the pervasive sense of failure left me. I'm a divorced single mother, and I realized that there is no place for women like me in the Mormon church--and it is nothing personal. The people who harrass, bully, and shun me are not and never were my "friends," and certainly not "brothers and sisters", but brainwashed Morgbots who were after my money and time and children. Predators.

It makes me sick to think that idiots and con-men would cost people their lives--good people like Confused/JOD. I have loved seeing him grow, as I have read his posts from the beginning. I also have been mourning the suicides of gay teens, and youngsters who's lives are ruined by church missions.

Smug, closed-minded Mormons have no idea what some of us have had to go through! My and my children's trials all happened while we were active fathful Mormons, however. After leaving, we have been threatened, bullied, manipulated, love-bombed, gossipped about, and shunned--but thanks to the wonderful people on this board, we are doing fine, and we are much happier now that we are free!

Thank you very much for this JoD3:360. I think you are my favorite poster dude. I am still going through my crisis right now, and no one around me knows, and sometimes I just feel like losing it. I feel like yelling at people. I'm not this kind of person. I found out the church was a fraud from freaking reading too much of the churches stuff and from going to fairlds so many times. I was trying to build my faith and learn more about the church.

Anyways you are a stud. Thanks again. Brewskies on me sometime man. Ok I don't drink, but still...

I hope Susie P reads this, so she understands that while it's easy to be baptized, it's difficult to leave.

It's easier going in than getting out.

Leaving the Church IS a dark time and a time of confusion. Glad you snapped out of the suicidal mindset.

Pardon the analogy, but it really is like holding onto the rod of--not the Church's version of the 'word of God' but the rod of TRUTH--in a dark mist, and moving forward, trusting that the Truth will take us where we need to be. And so it does... to the post-TBM rainbow!

Life (now) is good!