I have a friend with cancer. Stage 4 now. Just when I convinced him the church was bullshit too. Ya, I know how that looks to a TBM – it looks obvious.

Knowledge of my apostasy is pretty common now. He's been having fights with his dad about the church. I gave up trying to convince my father after the first confrontation. My friend just keeps on keeping on. As far as my friend's dad is concerned, I'm the one who turned his son to the dark side and the cancer is God's wrath. Or at least... God can't do anything about the cancer as long as his son is faithless. He's been told that his sins have returned on his head too, because the atonement is only good for believers.

Mormonism is amazing.

He could go back to church and the cancer would get him anyway, and his family would say, "well, at least he was doing the right things." They could lay hands on his head and tell him he will be healed, and there could be false hope for a little while, but then reality would strike without mercy like it always does, just when false consolation has put away the words that should have been said and now can never be said.

There are any number of ways that Mormonism could completely fuck my friend over. Its cultish influence is there prodding his family to pick any number of bad options instead of seizing the day and enjoying what unknown time is left. Because blood is thicker than faith. Or it should be. We will see.

It's hard not to blame myself. I have been telling myself that I should have kept it all to myself and said nothing to anyone. What right did I have to come into my friend's life and alter his course like this? He was one of the first I told about my atheism, and he almost didn't talk to me ever again. But he sat me down and heard me out and in the end he agreed with me! At one point I was hopeful everyone I knew would put such faith in me and my judgement.

He has been having the same shitty time that I have been, trying to convince anyone else of what has been consuming his mind for what has now been months on end. I've reached a point where I keep it to myself and try to keep as many relationships as I can intact. He's just reaching that threshold, I think, where he realizes that TBMs don't care what you think you know or how much evidence you have for thinking so – they simply move your name in their mental lists from the in-group to the out-group.

But ya, all this has me thinking about how short life is. Especially now that it's almost been a year since I left Rexburg and came home to Az. I got a manual labor job for good pay, but it's not the job I thought I would have.

But, you know what, I had no idea what job I would have. Mormonism has had some peculiar effects on me for most of my life. It has spiked my social anxiety and made me very afraid day in and day out to speak up and live life. Even now, in many ways, I am afraid to make any kind of ripple in the world lest it convict me on the spot of gross corporeality and I lose the vantage point from which I like to observe the world, the one where I feel unobserved and unnoticed. As a kid I used to be afraid to say or do anything that would make the church look bad. Everyone here knows what it means in Mormonism to "be reverent" – shut the fuck up and pretend like you don't exist, do not inconvenience anyone and the indoctrination they are trying to spoon-feed you, and act like you like it. Because others are always watching.

I grew up, with anxiety, feeling like there was a camera over my head at all times. God and his angels were watching. Grandpa was watching from beyond the veil. My schoolmates were watching, because Mormons are a peculiar people. And my peers were watching, because I was Bishop's kid. So, I had few friends over the years, and even those were stolen from me because of a burgeoning scrupulosity and self-blame that robbed many good feelings from me.

So, you can imagine my indignation when it dawns on me that it's all bullshit, all of it. I tell my friend in a text and he doesn't talk to me for some months. So the first thing I do when I visit home the next time is go over to his fucking house and show him Brother Min. At that moment in time, I had no remorse for doing a thing like that. I knew my disownment was imminent and it was coming from probably the majority of people I knew, through no fault of their own – it was this fucking cult and Joseph fucking Smith and his cons and his lies acting through them. But I was not going to lie down and just take it, and I actually convinced someone of what had been consuming my mind for months. Then my friend told me he had cancer.

Life is utterly weird sometimes. And there's nothing you can say to stop TBMs from seeing not only correlation but causation in things that have absolutely nothing to do with each other from any reasonable standpoint. No, I made an atheist of my friend and then God smote him – that's all there is to it. Fuck me.

I've been sinking into a funk with a lot on my mind. I have the rest of my life to figure out – what job to shoot for, a career, paying off my debts, trying to build a community for myself post-mormonism, feeling like I'm never going accomplish anything, like I will fail miserably right after leaving the church, and everyone in the church will see my failure and say "figures". Then I think about my friend and the soberness with which he has been taking the same lumps I have been taking, plus some. I envy him. I always envied his ability to tell his dad to screw off and then go out, get a job, and live on his own with time and money enough for hobbies like astronomy and building a big gospel library. He's a fellow intellectual and I wanted to be like him from the moment we met. My library kinda sucks compared to his, but now Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, D Michael Quinn, and Fawn Brody sit on his shelf where McKonkie and Nibley used to be.

He purchased and read Hitchens' book called Mortality, a collection of Christopher's musings while he was being treated for his own cancer. The Hitch was in his 60s. 29 is too young.

There's a lot of life that Mormonism prevents from being lived. We busy ourselves with meaningless worries and tedious tasks while our fathers are always gone to some church function, or collapsed in a chair dog tired, while mom is struggling to keep her head together while she raises the kids alone at home, and friends at school are no refuge either because Mormonism takes every step it can possibly take to discourage fraternization with "the world" and isolate you from it. We leave on missions fresh out of high school and spend good money that should have gone to a good college to put the capstone on our indoctrination doing slave labor in some godforsaken other land somewhere pushing a book that no one wants, all so that our parents can show off our letters home and feel like there was some purpose to all the bullshit and added stress that in the end is all the church adds to our lives.

This religion... the way it places itself at the center of all things in your life... It's like a heavy tax on life itself, and all you get in return is whatever good feelings come your way through a barrage of the cheesiest propaganda. It's like molasses on social and emotional development. It takes up space and time that should have been filled with other things, great things that will never happen now. It infantilizes us. It makes us stupid. It makes us dependent. And just when we break free, it tries to jerk as many things away from us as it can and turns our fellows and families against us. That's usually about the time that we feel the most adult we have ever felt in our lives, the most whole. We would have the all the advantages in the world now to take on life, but then Mormonism is there to punish us for our thought-crimes by turning relationships sour and burning whatever bridges and support networks we had. So, too often, the progress we make in our own self-esteem and cognitive clarity by realizing the truth about the church is offset by any and all social leverage the church has to throw at us.

Since I came back, I have been trying to take a neutral stand towards my family's religion – increasingly, anyway. But, in all actuality, I hate it. I hate all of it. I hate what a miserable joke my first 25 years of life feel like in hindsight. All that guilt and shame and loneliness and for what? I hate it all for clusterfuck of emotions it causes me now, and how I have to shut up and keep to myself because there are people I love that I can't bear to lose. I fucking hate it for all the ways I could be more mature and capable to take life on at 28, but am not, because of the retarding bubble of Mormon culture and its poisonous mental health effects that I have every lived under.

Sometimes, it is just too much to suffer the patronage and disrespect of a TBM. When one of us has a faith crisis, we run the entire length of the emotional spectrum. We run it at speeds we didn't know we could and we realize it is longer and deeper than we ever thought possible. Our brains light up and take in more detail than they ever have since we were in elementary school. We have almost another life's worth of experiences in such a short time, and we want to share it with someone, anyone, especially the people that matter most to us. But they cut us off. They will not hear it, but they will go ahead and presume to know what you would have said and why. We bite the bullet and keep so much in. It's hard to be talked down to like you're just some stupid person who thinks leaving the church is the best way to convince yourself that it's ok to masturbate or whatever fucking bullshit that TBMs think to themselves.

I don't know what comes next. I'm thinking about graduate programs I could shoot for, skills I could try to learn, careers I could pursue. I think about whether I continue to live here or split. I've got the freedom of my mind and the rest of my life to spend it on something meaningful. It's the best gift that someone could find. My friend has told me he is grateful for what I have done for him. No regrets from him, the cancer notwithstanding. I shouldn't have any either, then, at least not about opening my mouth to him about the church. He's a big boy and has done just as much if not more thinking about this than I have. I'm grateful to have him as a friend.

My girl friend's niece and good friend died from cancer just a few days ago. Age 50 JFTR. We are going to the memorial service tomorrow. She was stubbornly faithFOOL MORmON right to the very end, and guess what that MORmON faithFOOL ness got for her.
-NOTHING!!! except more anguish and suffering and bitterness. She died way ahead of her predicted time left. She only got more MORmON, as in more difficult and hateful as time went by. SHe was especially spiteful to my girl friend over my GF quittng "THE" church, which effectively ended their decades long otherwise cozy relationship, so when she finally died they had not spoken to each other for over 9 months. her daughter is gay, and we know how MORmONISM feels about that! so instead of trying to make amends with her daughter with the time that was left -just as her daughter tried to do, she ended up going hard line MORmON and writing her daughter out of her will Obviously out of spite, and then she requested that her daughter do her post mortem / pre burial make up. It was super hurtful to the daughter. My GF told the daughter that she really did not have to do it under the nasty circumstances. ANYWAY, that situation is a huge affirmation for me of what I have been saying for quite a while now - that ( foul nasty) MORmONISM does not really bring families together nearly as much as it really drives families apart.

How do you know your friend's cancer wasn't caused by Mormonism?

I really hate cancer. If you want to get rid of your friend's cancer, I'll show you how if you arrange a meetup. Costs nothing.

Thank you for spelling out your emotions about leaving the church onto my screen this morning. What you have written is very similar to my sentiments at the moment.

You will have to decide to move forward with your life and make the best of things. Just be thankful you were 28 years old and not 39 like me. It is sad really. Give yourself a couple of years and you'll have an entirely new life carved out for yourself. A better life. You'll see.

Good luck!

You summed Mormonism up perfectly "This religion... the way it places itself at the center of all things in your life... It's like a heavy tax on life itself".

Your friend, or even your friend's doctor needs to set firm boundaries with his family and tell them that while he is in treatment, they are to say NOTHING negative or manipulative to him about church. That is toxic stuff. The truth is people both in and out of Mormonism get cancer. Some of them get better, and some don't, and even the most faithful Mormons die from it. For his family to construe his illness as having anything to do with his faithfulness is messed up and he needs to call them out on it.

I think it's great that you are doing hard labor. Physical activity can be good for dealing with anxiety.

You are a smart dude. Find something you want to do and go for it.

Hi Dodger, I'm really sorry to hear about your friend. I get news like this more and more because of my age and the ages of my friends. I'm really sorry that you and your friend are experiencing cancer so early in your lives.

Your post was profound and powerful. I hope you realize the writing talents that you have that are so evident in your posts. What I write will pale in comparison to what you posted.

You and your friend had deep, powerful conversations about existence. You found that you viewed the questions of god, church, death, and afterlife similarly. Both of you are thinking adults, and I doubt that the two of you would have been able to change each other's minds if you saw things differently. Rather, the two of you found friendship and kinship through your discoveries.

Any adult with basic critical thinking skills knows that fellow adults will form their own positions on issues, including religious ones. It's foolish to think that somehow you stole your friend from the Mormon Church--even though that's what the TBMs might be saying. They are the juveniles if they persist in this limited thinking.

With your friend, as much as possible, you may wish to share time together. His parents ought to be grateful that their son has such a good friend. And your parents should be proud of you for being a man by loving and supporting a friend fighting a terrible illness.

Dodger, you're a deep thinker and have overcome a lot of major challenges men encounter in their twenties. However, you seem burden down by the major changes you experienced and overcame. I suggest counseling. I started counseling in my 20s and with the exception of my 30s, have returned to counseling as needed. I'm in the process of finding another counselor due to some health issues I'm encountering.

Talk therapy can help clarify issues and potential resolutions. You'll also learn a lot of good things about yourself. In healthy homes, kids can talk and receive counsel from their parents or other close relatives. Unfortunately, in most Mormon homes, parents can't or won't talk and support their kids when the kids become adults and leave the faith.

Now that you've left the faith, really leave it. By that I mean, don't let it exert power over you by focusing your attention on the past. The past is done, you're a man with a college degree and you're in power very your life. You own your power--don't give that power to the church by worrying about its past effects on you. You are in charge of your life.

Dodger, I hope this helps. I've watched you grow the last couple of years as you've posted here. Very best wishes for you. I know I'm not alone in saying a lot of folks here care a lot for you.

My hope for your friend is that he will have high quality of life and medical care as he fights the cancer. He's got a good friend supporting him. (((Hugs))).

I'm sorry about your friend. Death at such a young age is a shocking thing. You didn't do anything wrong. Your friend seemed to have a hunger for information about the change in your beliefs.

It took me about 5-6 years post college to find my way. I took a variety of jobs during that time. I worked for the local parks department and I cooked at a restaurant. I ski-bummed (which was fun.) You can take whatever time you need, and everything will turn out okay. But if I had to give some advice, it would be to not take as long as I did! Whatever you decide upon does not have to be your final answer. I went in one direction and enjoyed it, but changed my mind in my mid-30s, subsequently going back to grad school.

Valuable life lesson -- You can't control what other people think of you. Not everyone is going to approve of you and your decisions. Not everyone is going to be a fan. Exmos often have this far worse than I ever did, but the same lesson still applies.

I had people tell me that my ex CHOSE to be gay after we went inactive. I have news for them. I went inactive as he was cheating and I wasn't ever going to leaders again over the issue. He was the executive secretary at the time and I told him he had to just wait to get released and then go inactive, too.

My cousin who is 3 days older than I am died at age 37 of cancer. I am almost 60 now. She had 6 children. She was a true believer. I had a rough time accepting that that would be God's will. It was a huge nail in the coffin of my beliefs, listening to mormons say that God needed her for some purpose. What about her 6 kids, ages 16 to 3? Those children have been through A LOT because of this.

My boyfriend just last night stated that he didn't tell his sister that her dog's name is the same as my temple name because he didn't want to be disrespectful in case if I ever got cancer, I might go back to the LDS church. I told him, "I am less afraid of death than I ever was as a mormon."

You are young. You have so much of your life ahead. Don't be in too big of a hurry to make yourself pick what you want to do with your life. Take it slow and easy. Be good to yourself. You'll find your way. I've read your posts over time and you're very intelligent. You'll do well.

I am lucky in that most of my family is out of the lds church, but my daughter (the ONLY grandchild or great grandchild of my parents who is mormon) is TBM. We've had a lot of problems over this fact. She was determined to save me. She seems to have accepted where I am now and I try to be supportive of her choices as I got to make those choices for myself at her age. She posted something that Thomas Monson said the other day about parents being someone that their children would want to pattern their lives after. My ex and I got a good laugh out of that. She is patterning her life after mine. She is so much like me when I was that age and she doesn't believe that.

Your friend made his own choices. Think of it in terms of you freed him from his prison of mormonism before he had to face cancer.