A realization

(My apologies for this. I feel the quality of writing is roughly similar to my "Suicide is Painless" post.)

Well, the move approaches and it looks unsurprisingly like money will be a little tight. I will not have Internet access right away, but the town's library is two doors down so I will still be able to post on a daily basis if I so choose.

I've been thinking some more on the role religion has played in my life and how it has affected me. On the whole I want to believe it's a positive thing, but doing so negates one area that Mormonism did royally screw up. I think how I feel about sex and sexuality in general is somewhat unhealthy.

It's easy to point out that as someone who is BIC (which means Born in covenant, not born in the church -- basically my parents married in the temple), would have been indoctrinated from a young age to feel that way. In fact, I have no interest in sex whatsoever. Now it may be tempting to say there are psychological issues here and there may well be, but it was the Church itself that made me hostile and fearful of it. Teaching monogamy is fine, but instilling problems that may cause problems in marriages and other intimate relationships is not.

I think I've come to realize that the church had no right to do this to me, nor should I let it hold power over me any longer. I've mentioned before that it kept me hoping that someday things would change and I'd be "fixed" (which perhaps is an unfortunate metaphor), but it also helped keep me from developing relationships with others, by exacerbating an already existing psychological condition. The fears it instilled kept me from expressing in anyway how I personally felt.

I just wish my parents had selected a less intrusive religion to convert to before I was born. Sure, I may not have turned out to be a drug addict, a filanderer, a criminal or many other things, but it has caused me to miss out on some important areas of life. If I decide to experience them may I remember what the Greeks said and do it in moderation.