my journaling thread

Entry 1 (original date: Sep 19 2020. Side note, I'm putting some earlier entries just so backstory is there and you can understand a little bit more what's going on w me.) Journaling daily hopefully. It's supposed to help me practice mindfulness? I dont know, but it definitely gives me time alone with my thoughts that can be uncomfortable. To be upfront, I'm working through a lot of things mentally that are really, really difficult for me. I'm having a crisis of religion at the moment. I'm bisexual, and the more I think about that fact about myself and how it fits in with my religion, it's making me more and more anxious. I dont know what to do. I haven't felt anything spiritually in almost 4 years. I keep praying for an answer or a sign. but its radio silence. The church condemns the LGBT community, but I have found more genuine love and acceptance there than I ever have in the church. Church always made me feel as though I had something to prove, and Im tired of proving myself. Coming to understand myself and my sexuality is a process, but one that has brought me so much joy. When I think about my experiences in the church, I dont feel that. I feel resentment, confusion, and pain. From the time I was 8 years old, I felt like a fraud. Sitting down in the bishop's office and being interviewed on whether I believed in God, whether I paid my tithing, whether I read my scriptures every day, I answered in a way that I thought would make my parent happy. I wanted to make them proud. Did I know the weight of the choice I made then? Absolutely not. I hardly knew who god was, let alone an understanding of my relationship with him. I wanted to prove myself to my parents, so I answered the questions in the way I knew would make them happy. When I hit 12, I had a checklist to complete. Completing personal progress and checking off all the boxes would prove that I was a good mormon. It would show that I'm worthy of love and praise, and cover up my crippling anxieties. So I checked off all the boxes as quickly as I possibly could, completing it all before I even hit high school. I got my shiny medallion and wore it with pride, a physical token as a symbol of my "good-mormon-ness". Tjen I went to girls camp, where I was told that my shorts were too short, my tank top too distracting, while simultaneously being told of my infinite worth as a daughter of god. My value wasnt inherent. It hinged on my connection to a mysterious, omnipotent sky ghost. I wasnt valued because I was loyal, or a good friend, or smart, or simply myself. I was valuable because I was a daughter, a future wife and mother, a person whose identity was always tied to someone else. Children shouldn't be preached at because their shorts are "distracting" to boys, or even their adult male leaders. They should be taught that they are enough, regardless of what they wear. It is never their fault if someone takes advantage of them and justifies it because of what they wear or how they look. I vividly remember several nights where, in a drowsy, emotionally drained state, the camp leaders would wake us up in the middle of the night and drag us through the pitch black woods, not telling us where we were going, using our fear to make us emotionally vulnerable. Then they would use lighting, music, and our drowsy state to invoke an emotional response and call it a spiritual experience. They told us our tears were evidence of a higher power. they told us we felt the way we did because god was acting though them to attest to some eternal truth. Those experiences made me feel that I was worthy, that those feeling were some kind of gauge of my closeness to God. once I stopped being subjected to that manipulation, or stopped listening, or just stopped having that emotional response, my brain had been conditioned to take that as a sign that I was unworthy. That I had left the lord behind. That something was wrong with ME because I wasnt being a good little Mormon girl and feeling the spirit. That emotional abuse has continued, and is continued to make me feel "less than". When I go home and we talk about spiritual things, I lie through my teeth and pretend to feel what everyone else is feeling. I'm so fucking tired of living to please other people. Its tearing me to pieces and I cant live like this anymore. Something needs to change. I need to live more authentically, but I have it ingrained in my mind to value the happiness of others above my own.

oh also I dont mind replies