Thu, 16 Nov 2023 08:00:44 GMT

I've been wanting to get this off my chest for a long time. I grew up Mormon. This religion used to be everything to me. My entire life, social circle, and ideology was built on it.

From a young age, I was taught to pay my tithing, stay away from coffee and alcohol, and that I would give two years of my life to serve a mission for the Lord. Three years age at age 18, at the beginning of the pandemic, I received my mission call.

They told me that I would be sent to Chicago, Illinois for two years to "preach the gospel", and help bring people into the church. Wearing a suit, a tie, and an n95 face mask, I boarded the plane and flew to Chicago.

When I arrived, quarantine was in full swing, so none of the Elders (male missionaries) and Sisters (female missionaries) could leave their apartments.

I was assigned to live with (and never leave the sight of) another Elder in my mission, and we were given a specific geographical area to work in. Because of the pandemic, we had to invent ways to find people to teach using our phones.

We tried all kinds of things: posting The Book of Mormon for free on Facebook Marketplace, dialing all the residential numbers in the phone book, cold-calling people on Facebook Messenger, and calling people who had previously said no. After a while, it got really old.

We felt like we were going crazy. We had nothing to do. Our phones were extremely limited with filters and restrictions (MAAS360), and we couldn't use our phones without our companion watching the screen (four eyes on the screen at all times).

The software restrictions made it so that we couldn't even make a Google search. The fact that we were in a small apartment 24/7 for months with a person that we didn't get to choose meant that many companionships did NOT get along.

The mission president (the old man that leads our group of ~150 missionaries) also became more strict and made new rules all the time. Eventually, he even had the bathroom doors on all of the Elders' apartments removed to keep them from masturbating while in quarantine.

This was because masturbation was considered a sin next to murder. I was bored. I was so bored that I started naming blobs that looked like animals in the popcorn ceiling.

I always tried to find something, some little world that I could immerse myself in to take my mind off of things. I filled a plastic tub with dirt from outside, stuck it in front of the window, and sprouted beans and potatoes in it.

I filled up 10 composition notebooks with stories that I wrote. Fictional worlds that I would completely lose myself in. I wrote until I gave myself carpal tunnel syndrome. My companion did not find creative outlets for his boredom.

He pent up his emotions, yelled, screamed, punched the walls, and even tried to do harm to himself. He always got angry at me for being silent and writing in my notebooks while sitting in front of my bean plants on the windowsill.

I told him that it was my way of staying sane, and that he should find a productive outlet for his anger. He took this as an insult. Later that morning, I was showering in the bathroom, when I heard my companion moving things around outside.

I heard the apartment door open and close a few different times, and then silence. When I got out of the shower, my stack of notebooks and my plants were gone. My companion was sitting silently in the corner. I asked him where my stuff went, but he didn't respond.

Panicking, I ran to the door and looked down the hall. At the end was a door, which led to a trash chute... with an automatic garbage compactor. It was all gone, and it felt like a 500 page chunk of my soul had been torn out.

My little bean plants had just started flowering. My companion then said, "You're probably going to kill me now, aren't you?" I didn't feel like killing anyone. After that, I just sat in the bathtub and cried.

Thu, 16 Nov 2023 07:58:53 GMT

I've been wanting to get this off my chest for a long time. I grew up Mormon. This religion used to be everything to me. My entire life, social circle, and ideology was built on it.

When I arrived, quarantine was in full swing, so none of the Elders (male missionaries) and Sisters (female missionaries) could leave their apartments.

This was because masturbation was considered a sin next to murder. I was bored. I was so bored that I started naming blobs that looked like animals in the popcorn ceiling.

Thu, 16 Nov 2023 07:55:17 GMT

I've been wanting to get this off my chest for a long time. I grew up Mormon. This religion used to be everything to me. My entire life, social circle, and ideology was built on it.

When I arrived, quarantine was in full swing, so none of the Elders (male missionaries) and Sisters (female missionaries) could leave their apartments.

This was because masturbation was considered a sin next to murder. I was bored. I was so bored that I started naming blobs that looked like animals in the popcorn ceiling.