I’m sorry this blog is being used for this purpose and not for updates on my videos and song writing. It’s just that I’m going through a personal tragedy. I’ve lost my grip on religion and a fair amount of my identity. It’s hard to make clever videos or write clever songs when I feel like I’m on the verge of tears. I really am sorry.

My struggle with my faith began a few weeks ago, around the time of my stake’s stake conference. I “slept in” and missed it. The following few days were spent avoiding my now former best friend. He had taken notes during the conference and had something he needed to show me. Once he got me trapped almost literally in a corner, he told me that having the “capital t truth” in my life was the only way I could be truly happy.

(By the way, that’s crap. Lots of non-Mormons are happier than I am right now)

I could feel my face flush with both anger and embarrassment. Depression has been a fight I’ve been fighting in private since I was in middle school and escaladed to a suicide attempt February. Nearly everyone I knew in the church knew about it at some level. I wanted the damn (pardon my fingers) thing to stay private. I had grown up believing that people with mental illness went to hell. I didn’t want to hear that or that God “would take my mental state into consideration” when I was judged.

My friend mistook my expression for guilt and pretty much ordered me to talk to our branch president the following Sunday. Said branch president said he’d call Latter-day Saint Family Services for me and that he wanted to talk to me in two to three weeks. I’m a young single adult convert, just about to reach the year mark. That means I should be thinking about the temple, whether it be going on a mission or getting married. The three temples in my state were lingering just out of my sight, in Bellevue, Spokane, and Richland. Everyone’s bugging me about getting a recommend

I’ve tried—almost begged—to leave the church three times so far, but every blinking time something’s happened. My phone’s rang and it’s the missionaries. I’ve been the chapel, just a few feet from the office, and my friends have staged an intervention. (Yes, like I was on drugs). I didn’t attend church this Sunday at all, planning on never going back, but guess who showed up on my doorstep? The MISSIONARIES and these two weren’t even one’s I knew or the one’s from the Young Single Adult Branch. They were from my “home ward”. The one I had been baptized into. They thought I was inactive.

I WISH IT WAS THAT BLINKING SIMPLE!!!!!!!!!!

In fact, I think I might be an atheist. I can’t imagine a god that loves people putting anyone through this level of pain and confusion. That’s all for now.