Sorry that my story is long, I have never written it down before now. I have actually never told it to anyone before. I’ve wondered may times about how I would finally let it all out. In fact I’ve erased all I’ve written a few times already. Also, I have lurked at this board for many months, but now I now I’ve decided to go ahead and register. This past week the former friend that I’m about to tell you about has been trying to contact me. It’s just bringing up these memories I guess, and something about that has made me want to tell this story, I’m tired of holding it all in.

When I was in 9th or 10th grade (early high school is all I remember) I met and became friends with a mormon. He and I were best friends for many years, in fact, we were best friends until I joined the church almost two years ago. I was an outcast for all of my high school years, so I clung to the few friends I did make. This friend was a year older than me, so during the middle of my senior year he left for his mission. I took it very hard, we were so close and I had a very serious crush on him at the time. I had never attended his church before so I didn’t truly know what he believed in, we didn’t talk about it because religion was a hard subject for me, my family and I had been betrayed many times by churches and I struggled with the thought of attending any church again. I have always been a Christian, but I didn’t attended many services, I couldn’t. They never really felt right.

When my best friend left for his mission I decided to wait for him to come back, I thought I was pretty much in love with this guy and I couldn’t imagine not being with him. While he was in the MTC we exchanged letters and he mailed me a copy of the book of mormon. Honestly, it scared me. I assumed all the bad things for my past church experiences would repeat themselves. Even though I had these fears, I began to read the book, I actually got through most of it. It felt strange to me though. It didn’t feel like the bible that I had read all my life. It felt fake, like a story someone made up. So I ended up looking up mormonism online, (No one had ever told me not to) and I stumbled across RfM.org. The stories online terrified me. My best friend was in a cult and there was nothing I could do about it!

By this time he was out of the MTC and in the mission field, since it was such a pain to send letters via airmail we exchanged emails. (I’ve read since then that missionaries aren’t supposed to do that, but I didn’t know and apparently he didn’t either, or just didn’t care. At one point he stopped, I guess maybe he got caught, but then a few months later the emails started up again, so who knows?) In one of these emails he asked if he could send missionaries to my house. I freaked out inside but simply told him no. For awhile that seemed enough for him, he actually seemed to respect what I had told him. He continued to ask me if I was reading the book of mormon and I continued to lie and tell him I was, I had actually stopped after finding RfM, I wasn’t going to read a book of lies and if I had to hear ‘and verily I say onto you’ one more time I was seriously going to loose it.

Eventually the two years passed and he came home. I was ecstatic! After two long years my best friend had finally returned! Yes, I counted down the days once he told me his return date in one of his emails. I counted down the days and waited. And waited. He was home, but I hadn’t heard from him. I had no phone number for him (his old phone had been turned off) so I simply waited. A few weeks (yes, weeks! This was my best friend and he ignored me for two weeks!) passed and finally he turned up at my college campus. And then it seemed as if our friendship was back to normal. He asked me to come to his ward to hear him give a talk on his mission. I thought ‘sure, it’s just one service and its moral support for my best friend’. I didn’t realize I would be there for three hours! And I had to sit through Relief society. (I have to get a bit ahead of myself and go off on a rant here but; I hated that hour. Every day I went there I HATED it. I was the only person in the room under the age of 40, there was a lady in her early forties and then a lady a few years older than her, but most were senior citizens. I guess in this ward all the younger women had callings or hid with their children because they weren’t in RS. I was 20 and felt like I was stuck in a senior citizens home (Nothing against any seniors out there but, I had nothing in common with these women or what their talks were about. (okay, end of my relief society rant and back to actual sequence of events)

Unfortunately I let myself be talked into going back a few times. Then one day I was supposed to hang out with my friend at his house. And there were two missionaries there! Waiting for me!! I will try and cut out all the boring part of discussions here (though I did enjoy those missionaries, they were great guys and I still talk to them to this day, but I have avoided telling them of how I have left the church, I fear that I will lose their friendship).

But yes, I listened to the discussions and I suffered though, I mean attended three hours of the morg every week. I did this not because I believed in any of it, but because I was in love with my best friend. But he wouldn’t be with anyone who didn’t attend his church. So I was foolish and even agreed to baptism. I was baptized in May 2010 by that best friend. The baptism felt so hollow and pointless. It wasn’t spiritual in the least. It was wet and cold and I was forced to go underwater (I have a phobia of being underwater, so having water over my head and on my face is a very big deal for me).

Now the part that really makes me sick. I was baptized on a Saturday. My ‘best friend’ had to do something that night (probably get patted on the back for tricking someone else into the church. Is baptism a numbers game to these people? It always felt that way to me.) Then the next day (Sunday) I was ‘confirmed into the church’. Where I had to get up in front of everyone and have them say a prayer over me that felt as hollow as the baptism itself. Then I went home to help my family pack (we were moving at this time). Then that night. THAT NIGHT, my friend told me that he knew my feelings towards him but he didn’t, nor would he ever love me.

I felt so betrayed. I knew that he had avoided telling me this until I had already been dunked because he knew how I would take it. He used my feelings against me. (I also found out during this time that in those first two weeks of his return that he didn’t talk to me, he had been dating another girl. I guess that didn’t work out so let’s just trick Chi instead!)

I moved a few weeks after that. Thankfully there isn’t a ward within 60 miles of here. I had one semester of college left in a town by the one where my ward was. I lived on campus those last few months until I earned my associates degree. I don’t know why but I tried to make myself believe in the church and attended that same ward. Thankfully I didn’t have to see that friend, by now he was at a college in Utah (I know it’s mean to laugh, but I can’t help that I find it amusing that he didn’t get into BYU).

But I just couldn’t make myself buy into all the things the church was telling me, something kept bothering me, then I remembered this site. So I came back to RfM and studied more. I learned the truth and saw the church for what it really was. I put all those feelings and doubts I’d had together (such as I had always wished I would never have sons because I couldn’t stand for them to go on missions, I wish that red flag had read ‘cult’ to me earlier) and made up my mind. I continued going to that ward until both the missionaries that taught me were gone (one transferred about a month after my baptism, the other gave his farewell talk in October) That farewell talk was the last time I stepped foot in a ward (And I didn’t go to relief society! Yes!) and I’m happier for it.

Do I miss the church? Not at all. It never felt like a church, not once. Meeting house is a much better term for it. I have no ill feelings towards the missionaries that taught me. I feel bad for them, I wish they could see the truth like I have. But I don’t feel that they betrayed me, they simply did what the morg brainwashes people to do. But that best friend? I don’t talk to him, he doesn’t know how I really feel about the church but the way I see it, he wasn’t honest with me, so I’m just returning the favor. Sure, I’m bitter with him, but for now, that’s just how it’s going to be. I’m still healing.

-Chi