Posted by:
georgedubya
(
)
Date: December 16, 2013 12:32AM
I posted on this forum a few years ago about how I was a 15 year old who found out the church was false and how I should go about living my life while within a TBM household. I am almost 19 years old now, and after about four and a half years of not believing, I have decided to come out to my family on the 30th of December. Shortly after, I will move in with my best friend's family and will continue my community college education for a couple of years there, funded by Pell grants that I receive. Along with generally being sick of my dad who constantly makes me feel like trash, I have decided that it is ultimately best if I leave my family for some time, possibly indefinitely, so I can continue my education and live out my life the way I would like to without constantly being in such a strife-filled environment.
Originally I wanted to come out sometime in the spring, close to the time when I'm expected to go on a mission, but the family and social pressure is becoming so strong to prepare me to go on a mission, soon I will be expected to turn in my papers. Every Sunday I have adults asking me "what are your plans for the future?" (why these adults have nothing more interesting to look forward to than to see the progress of the younger generation, I have no idea), and I respond "I'm going on a mission this summer" in order to shut them up. I can't wait any longer. And since my best friend's family supports me and has offered to let me live with them, I now have an out. The only thing that is stopping me is my wish to spend just the one last Christmas with my family.
Not only will my family be livid with me leaving the church, but my ward probably will too. As part of hiding my nonbelief, I've had to appear as though I am doing all the right things and responsibilities that I should be doing. That means blessing the sacrament every Sunday and accepting my calling as an assistant scoutmaster for the 11 year old scouts. I have already set a good impression on those young guys so it will be quite awful once they find out that I'm gone... and although this fear is probably irrational, I'm somewhat afraid that someone is going to take some kind of weird legal action against me for being an atheist teaching their young scouts. Like, accuse me of some terrible sexual thing I didn't do. I'd like to think that no one will be that crazy though?
So with coming out, here's what I will have to face:
-losing all support from my family, and my dad possibly wanting to harm me in some way
-possibly having to forfeit all of my possessions to my family when moving out, even my clothes
-the BSA coming after me in some way for (being coerced to) take up the position of scoutmaster even though I'm an atheist
-some mixture of lovebombing and death threats
Wish me luck with this! Things are going to be awful for a bit I'm sure, but I am confident that my life can only improve from here! I'm glad to be soon out of this horrible cult!