I was born and raised mormon, the middle child of 5 kids growing up in a small town (8000 people) where about 25% of the area was also mormon. I was a very astute mormon until I was about 18-ish ... in science-oriented biology, we started to learn about evolution. When I tried to ask my parents about it, they acted like the devil had possessed me or something - so of course I only wanted to learn more and more... I started to ask them questions, like if god existed and we are the most important thing in the universe, then why is Jupiter 300,000 times bigger than Earth? And why are the poles of our planet uninhabitable by humans? (I just didn't see any logical explanations for these - if god was all-powerful, then why would these weird anomalies even exist?) They never had answers, and I remember my Mom told me, "You think too much."
Anyway, on to college! I came to CSU for my freshman year, and then I turned 19. Mission time! Well, by now I had decided that I was really an atheist. My parents probably broke some laws by filling out mission papers for me and submitting my name to the church as a missionary applicant. (They told our bishop they were just helping me out since I was up here, etc.) Anyway, I got a letter in the mail calling me to Brazil! Londrina, Brazil. I called up my parents and I went a little nuts on them... "I'm an atheist, I'm not going on a mission, etc. etc." I didn't sleep for a few days. When I can't sleep, I know something is VERY wrong, because it's only really happened three times in my life, two of which were related to my mission. (The third was Amy.)
I was supposed to leave in June, and school ended the first week of May. So I went home for the summer, and my parents started "helping me" get ready to go on my mission (buying tons of white shirts and ties, mostly.) Well, one night we had a BIG long talk about everything, and my mom basically told me that if the church were true, wouldn't I want to know? If god existed, wouldn't that be important?? Of course I said yes, and so she convinced me that the best way to find out would be to give it a shot! (Also, she told me she would go back to school and finish her degree if I attempted my mission - well, that was a lie, she never even tried to go back. So here I am thinking that if I go on my mission, my mom might actually start a job and a career and stop feeling so depressed and worthless, two things that the mormon church is GREAT at making their women experience.)
SOOOO I went. I flew to Brazil. I didn't have to do the language training in the MTC in Provo, Utah... there's another "missionary training center" down in Sao Paulo. I flew from Alamosa to Denver to Atlanta to Sao Paulo, all alone wearing a ridiculous "Elder Weston" missionary tag. I landed and got situated at the MTC in downtown, Sao Paulo.
The next two months were good months. I was spending all day, every day learning Portuguese. Well, I'm a student by nature, so I was happy to be learning something cool in an exotic environment. The religious parts of the MTC were easily ignorable, so I focused on learning Portuguese as much as I could. (I learned it a lot faster than the other missionaries - they were telling me that I was gifted, I was blessed, God was loosening my tongue to speak the truth to the Brazilians, and a bunch of other bullshit that somehow they use to solidify their irrational beliefs in things.) - Quick funny story - instead of reading my scriptures for an hour every morning, I built a fort out of toothpicks. This was a sweet fort!
Well, I got out of the MTC and flew to Londrina. Londrina is a hell of a city! It's gorgeous, it's clean, it's modern... anyway, I had a Brazilian companion, we lived in a little house, and we had a schedule to live by: 6:00 wake up, get ready... 7:00 read scriptures and be holy until 9:00... then hit the pavement! Knocking doors, telling people their religion (catholic) was wrong and mine (mormon) was right. So here I am, an atheist in missionary clothing knocking on doors to tell people that they should convert to a religion that I knew to be wrong. I was kind of like a robot, dying inside and going through the motions.
It took me 1 month to realize that I was going to kill myself. I'm not kidding - most of my diary isn't very serious, but I have wanted to kill myself once. One night I found myself in my kitchen while my companion was sleeping. I was crying and I was going to kill myself. I can't express right now why I was so angry, depressed, hopeless ... I guess that before I left, I KNEW that I was NOT going to go. I was absolutely positive. Well, then I let my feelings and respect for my parents get in the way, because nobody ever wants to admit that their parents are 100% wrong about the most important thing in their life. So knowing that I had consciously made a decision and fucked up my life THAT bad was enough to push me over the edge. I didn't sleep for a few nights, I was a nut job, and needless to say, I was probably the worst missionary to ever try to serve.
Buuuut I didn't kill myself. I realized I was feeling more anger than depression, and I wasn't about to just bow out. I learned more about myself in the span of about 3 days than I ever imagined possible. I came to terms with being an atheist (it sounds trite in this diary, but at the time, that was a life-changing realization), I learned that above anybody else, I need to trust myself and myself only, and I realized I was going to get sent home, re-enroll at CSU, and get my life back on the track that I wanted it to be on.
There was another American missionary in my city who lived across town with his Brazilian companion. We went on "splits" (swapped companions for a day) so I was with him. I told him that I was not cut out for mission work and that I needed to go home. He laughed at me and told me that when he was first out in the mission (he had been out for 22 months then), he also wanted to get sent home - when he told our Mission President to send him home, he found himself working in a church office in Londrina for a few months while they tried to "do the paperwork" or some crap, and then they convinced him to stay. So I'm thinking to myself, "Holy cow, it's a trap! They don't let you go home! That explains soo much!!" So I start thinking about how I'm going to get myself sent home.
Well, the answer was obvious to me... what's the #1 things mormons are afraid of?? Gay people! I set an appointment with my Mission President, I sat down in front of him, and with a straight face, I told him in Portuguese that I was gay. "Antes da missao, eu fui homosexual!" - "Before my mission, I was gay." He got the funniest look on his face, thought for a few minutes, and told me, "You might have to get sent home for this..." and I was like, "Yeah, I know... but I can't keep it a secret."
2 days later, I hopped a jet from Londrina to Curitiba to Sao Paulo to Atlanta to Chicago to Denver to Alamosa. Some Mormon pilot on the way from Atlanta to Chicago saw me all dressed up missionary-style and was like, "Hey there Elder! Coming home from your mission I see!" and I said something about how the church wasn't true. He left me alone.
Aubri met me in DIA and flew home with me to Alamosa. She knew what I was probably going through, and when I landed, there were my parents with pale, dead-pan faces. You would think I had just shot my brother or something. We went home, I called up Chad, and I was no longer a Mormon. I got my life back on the track that I wanted, and actually, that is exactly when I started this diary! 4 1/2 years ago, I was working at a pizza place to try to save up some cash to move back to Fort Collins to reenroll at CSU. That's where the story picks up ... entry #1.