A lot of other people’s stories are a lot more impactful then mine. Truth be told I was one of the lucky ones. My parents never taught me about sex. Being a small embarrassed child I never wanted to have the talk, but soon enough puberty set in, and I began to start masturbating. Truth be told I had no idea what it was or anything.
I had been to a few bishops interviews where they asked me about worthiness, but I had always just lied. Honestly it might not have even been a lie, I’m unsure if I knew that the church saw masturbation as evil during those days. Then my sister took my iPod and found a picture of a girl in a bikini. Like a good Mormon she immediately told my parents who immediately took away all of my electronics and shamed me. They made me go to a bishops interview where I had to tell him what I did and how often and when was the last time I did it. It was the most uncomfortable experience in my life. He told me basically that porn was just as bad as having sex with someone, and having sex outside of marriage was the third worst thing that I could ever do, the only things being worse being murder and denying god.
At the time I was the deacons president, so I was shamed by my parents for doing this sin while being the deacons president. I started to hate myself more and more. Then I found a girl who liked me. I was inexperienced and was just so taken at the idea of being in love that I agreed to date her. At this time though I was under 16, and when my parents found out, they got even more mad than at the masturbation thing.
More bishops interviews, more public shame, more having to tell your friends that you can’t pass the sacrament, more guilt at passing the sacrament “unworthily”. Soon my feelings of guilt and shame blossomed into depression. My girlfriend was not a very great person and introduced self harm to me. She basically told me that her problems will always be worse then mine because I don’t self harm. So I did, And I got into it.
Things got bad. Really bad. The guilt clawed at me inside to the point where I looked into castration because I simply didn’t want that guilt anymore. Soon I started thinking about suicide. A noose was in the corner of my room for a while. I took it out once, but came to my senses before I used it. There were a few times I tried to cut my wrists but that didn’t really work ether. I had a bunch of old Medication that I crushed up and put in a small vial that I carried around everywhere.
Meanwhile, throughout all of this, my parents and bishop told me that cutting and suicide was a sin. I started lying to the bishop even more. It ate me alive that I was lying but I knew I had to. My parents were even worse then my bishop somehow. My parents got mad at me when I cut, and shamed me even more. One time my mum asked me why I cut and I told her that it was cause I feel empty, and she laughed and told me that that wasn’t a real reason and the actual reason is cause I wanted attention. She constantly tried to get me to talk to the bishop.
Then we went to Utah. I didn’t want to go, but I was forced to, and while I was there the guilt kinda grew and grew and the depression got worse, and one night I took out my vial, poured it over my food, and ate it. I didn’t expect to wake up the next morning. I did. I was disappointed. For the next 2.5 years I spent every Sunday waking up feeling terrible about myself. The guilt clawed at me. It wasn’t until I finally discovered that I don’t believe in the church anymore that I found freedom. All of that was caused by the churches unhealthy view of sex and masturbation, and by the horrible bishops interviews that they use to enforce their rules.