#im feeling very exmo in this chilis tonight

[themasterofstudies]

Gender queer not in the normal way but in the "i was born a girl and raised a girl but i hated the social customs and expectations of the religious community i grew up in and the society at large and Im not sure i want to be a girl. But i dont think im anything else" sort of way.

[f-z-blackheart]

You ever think about how there’s no real women mentioned by name in the Book of Mormon?

Does it bother you like it bothers me?

[icannotgetoverbirds]

a compilation of the ai-generated images i've made today

the one that started it all

One of my personal favorites:

[girl-in-the-waves]

i saw a thread on twitter that got me thinking so go read that first:

for the majority of my time in young womens i had a really great bishop. i was friends with his son. we had a lot of *fun* mutual activities at his house. i honestly valued his lessons and devotionals. but, when i talked to him about the harassment i was facing with one of the young men from a different ward, he didnt want to alienate him from the church by calling attention to his actions. i was given a lesson on forgiveness, and then moved to the next grades seminary class (not super helpful since i went to school with him).

i never felt more alone in the church than i did when his salvation was chosen over mine. the real tragedy of my faith crisis was that most mormons are *good people*. they are trying to help you, even when they’re hurting you. thats why you dont see it at first, thats why its so hard to leave. the community is real, the love is real, but god are they misguided. and then you realize how much damage they’ve done, but you still love them. so now, you lose eternal happiness and salvation with your family and your whole community. or, if you have to stay in the church after you lose faith, your surrounded by these threatening “good intentions” all. the. time.

i dont even really know what my whole point in this is, other than be patient with mormons on their way out of the church, have compassion for the ones still stuck, and dont trust the priesthood.

[laineysbucketlist]

New reason women don’t get the priesthood just dropped: seminary substitute says that women are too bossy and if they got it then men would never get a turn

[weaveintheends]

I’m still getting used to drinking coffee at 31 years of age, and I still had a ton of milk to my coffee because it’s too bitter for my palate… but, I have to say, when I get the ratio right with a little bit of chocolate…. it’s so good. Coffee is delicious and I missed out on drinking it in college.

[garlicsolitaire]

So I got my ecclesiastical endorsement today...

1. Tired of this cult's homophobia.

2. Tired of said cult erasing other queer identities outside of gay and lesbian.

3. But also not looking forward to said cult learning about aroaces. Not gonna be pretty.

[themasterofstudies]

Which one of you dropped this off at my local goodwill

[icannotgetoverbirds]

tried to get my stepdad to scan in my quitmormon documents

like an idiot

now he wants to 'have a conversation' (he sounded really pissed off when he said that) so. wish me luck y'all.

[icannotgetoverbirds]

if you've got any ex-mormon friends/moots, be sure to check up on them this weekend. conference is happening and it can be a really hard time for us.

to all my exmo moots and any exmos that may see this post: it's going to be okay. i may not know what it is that you need to hear right now, but above all else, it's going to be okay.

it's okay to be scared. it's okay if this is triggering. it's okay if you watch it or don't. it's okay if you need to take some time away from everything today. it's okay if you need to keep yourself busy today. it's okay to be angry, to be bitter, to be sad.

be extra gentle with yourself this weekend. it's going to be okay.

[icannotgetoverbirds]

[icannotgetoverbirds]

a little something from my drafts: Hell Is A Church

this is heavily based on religious trauma and is supposed to delve into horror territory once you get to the part about hell, so read at your own discretion

Heaven is full of holy places. Churches, shrines, temples, bonfires. Roads for endless road trips. Massive homes for generations of families. Gardens with butterflies and bumblebees and fields of lavender. Fish ponds that are always warm. Barns filled with soft hay that doesn’t itch and gentle animals. Cabins in the snow full of hearty meals and roaring hearths.

On holy days, beings of all kinds walk from place to place, visiting family and friends, and everyone has a place.

In heaven, there is a long street full of churches, tucked away in the desert. Each one resets to be like new daily. On the opposite side of the street is a construction site and a building full of tools. Sometimes, usually on holy days, people come here. Often, they are far too young, far too small, far too timid – often, but not always. Here they can take the time they need, whether they use sledgehammers, bulldozers, wrecking balls, spray paint, or even simply food and drink, even their bare hands, to say that they have had enough from this place. 

Some days are quiet, filled with gentle discussion. Some days are a little louder as people graffiti walls with their favorite obscenities while joking with their friends, their families. Some days come to a roar as bricks are smashed and wood is burned, or as celebrations with the most loving sins incorporated become riotous, joyful contests against holy institutions, long empty of worshipers. Some days are silent.

Hell is a church. One building, far too white, far too cold, filled to the brim with silent, faceless people, gray skin over skulls that somehow still seem to stare at you, despite not having eyes. Your footsteps echo against the hardwood floors for days after you stop walking. The pews are unforgiving and plain and too hard, and the rows stretch beyond the horizon.

The lights hanging from the ceiling make you nauseous, and you swear they’re just a little different whenever you look back at them.

You are the only one here. There is no preacher. No matter how far you walk, you can still see the pulpit.

Sometimes, organ music plays. The people stand, and it fills you with fear as the shuffling and notes blend together in a discordant, eerie melody that seems all too familiar. You stand awkwardly in the aisle, searching desperately for a place that feels better. You have tried the stage at the front. It will not have you.

The only place for you is at the center of the front row of seats, where your blank-faced strangers will crowd too close and hold your hands in their cold, clammy fingers. Your clothing itches and doesn’t stretch, and no matter what you do, it won’t come off.

One day, you meet a little girl. The only child there - still as faceless as everyone else - she startles you from behind, tugging your sleeve. She stares at you, and you feel an immense guilt, a universe’s worth of matter settling into a pit in your stomach. Her dress is long and thick and gray.

You blink, and she’s gone. The organ starts again.

[icannotgetoverbirds]

coffee my beloved

[icannotgetoverbirds]

the model and the letter

a piece written by a friend of mine, who goes by Kea, about growing up as a little mormon girl.

A little girl does her best to sit quietly, her arms folded, her eyes closed, in the tiny plastic chair. She wears a dress that is too warm and a little itchy. Somebody is praying at the front of the room. Her eyes open accidentally, and her heart rate speeds up before she squeezes them shut, admonishing herself for making a mistake.

The sacrament is in a few minutes. She can repent of her sins then - though she reminds herself that she’s too young to need this: her sins are not her own until she turns eight. Her sins belong to her parents, and she feels a twinge of guilt for burdening them with her mistakes. Still, it’s such a small thing, which she recognizes, and it was an honest mistake that was immediately corrected.

When the sacrament is passed, she eyes the young men bringing around the bread and water. They look awfully nice in their suits. I bet I’d look nice in a suit, she thinks. I bet they’re more comfortable than this dress.

She does not realize that, despite what everyone tells her, she will grow up to be a man with a severe appreciation for button-downs and ties.

At eight, the little girl has spent much of her time wanting to tuck her hair into a baseball cap, to be the girl that everyone assumes is a boy. She doesn’t really want to pull the cap off to let her hair fall out, though. She’s not really sure what’s so exciting about that.

She wears a white dress as an older man conducts an interview for her baptism. He asks her questions. He asks her if she has what she needs.

She lies.

She does not have what she needs. She believes that being baptized will bring it to her. She believes that this lie is okay, because he does not catch it, and if she needs the baptism to gain what she does not have, surely it must be acceptable to say what is necessary to be baptized.

She changes into a white jumpsuit, and her father chants a predetermined prayer before pushing her under the water. When she comes back up, she feels… something. 

If nothing else, she has completed the ritual that will allow her to be accepted by her family and the people around her. The water is warm, and she takes great pleasure in swimming away from her father with movements she categorizes as frog-like.

After she dries off and changes back into her ceremonial white dress, several men put their hands on her head, one chanting a different predetermined prayer to confirm the baptism.

She never truly receives what she was looking for.

At fourteen, she is confused, worried, and unsure. She is anxious, and she has realized that she is queer. She thinks she belongs, anyway. After all, her sexuality is the single most acceptable within her community: asexuality makes abstinence incredibly easy.

Her next ritual is with a prophesier of sorts, called the patriarch. Again, a man lays his hands on her head, and speaks her future. She hoped he would have answers for her.

He does not.

She leaves deflated but with a smile anyways - his words still meant something, right?

At seventeen, she begins to question things. After all, she wants to date eventually, but dating a man seems to not be in the cards. She wants to try and date women, but it’s forbidden by God Himself.

She tries to think her way out of it - if God loves humanity, how can He hate love? If He asked us to love one another, how can He accept the hatred His people have for those that love differently?

She can no longer think her way out of it. She shelves the issue, files it away neatly in her brain under conundrums she may never understand.

At nineteen, it hits him. First, that he refuses to be a part of an organization that treats queer people as less than human, as less worthy of glory in God, and secondly, that he is, in fact, a trans man.

Of all the things he is excited to do now that his community no longer restricts him, by far the most thrilling concept is being himself.

He finds a new community with others like him, and learns from the people within that there is more to his old community than he realized.

He learns of an evaluation first. The BITE model, which damns the organization he grew up in entirely, labeling it a cult.

He wants to think his way out of it, but he knows that he simply can’t do that anymore. His filing system has to be recategorized entirely. It’s time to relabel many of the things he learned as belonging to a cult.

On the bright side, he can now remove several concepts from the conundrums he may never understand and sort them into proper categories.

Suddenly, he is no longer an inactive or former member. He is a cult survivor, and he sees startling connections between the actions of the cult and the actions of abusers.

He tries to make a molehill out of a mountain, to level his cult with religions that have similar traits.

Then he hears about the CES letter. He reads it, and suddenly there is more recategorization to be done. An uncomfortably significant amount of fog clears from his thoughts. Things have never been right here. 

He had seen the cult’s sharp teeth, just as he had seen his father’s sharp teeth. He understands that he cannot stand by and say, “this is not right for me”. He realizes that he must stand up and say, “this is not right at all.”

He cannot bring himself to tell his family that they are living a lie. He cannot bring himself to dismantle the beliefs that comfort his relatives. He cannot bring himself to quietly say to any member’s face what he should be shouting from the rooftops.

He does not say nothing, however.

He simply writes it down. Types it out on a school laptop, prints it on someone else’s machine, binds it with his mother’s scrapbook cardstock.

He is not sure what to do with the small book. He knows he cannot distribute it anywhere near home. He knows that if his family found it, they might never forgive him, or they might never stop trying to convince him of their truth.

It’s a little funny, actually. It reminds him of a story he has heard many, many times.

[icannotgetoverbirds]

i can understand that god has a lot of reasons to nerf me but could he at least make it quick instead of dragging this shit out

[icannotgetoverbirds]

idk how to title this but it is vaguely exmo

exmo stuff under the cut

okay so i've kinda been thinking it'd be nice to learn more about my family further back than my grandmother, specifically about my mexican family. problem is, the only genealogy website i know of is owned and run by the fucking mormons. i dw fuck with that shit if i can avoid it.

does anyone know about any family tree / genealogy websites that aren't run by the mormons? maybe somewhere where i can find my extended family and try figuring out if there's anyone left to go to?

idk maybe im focusing too much on blood relations and need to worry about making my own found family or w/e. maybe im a little bitter about the idea of found family as a whole bc my current circumstances make any form of that damn near impossible. maybe im just floundering desperately while i search for human connection.