I thought I was the only one.

I had a thought occur to me today: for the first 20ish years of my life, I really thought that nobody ever stops believing in the mormon church. I bought their "offended" stories hook, line, and sinker.

So after deciding to reexamine my own beliefs, when the time finally came that I no longer considered myself a mormon, I thought I was the only one.

And that thought made leaving the morg quite a bit harder...though luckily I'm an independent character to begin with, so by that point my mind was made up. But I was thinking today about how many people find themselves unable to make that decision because they think no one else has done it. The mormon church paints those who leave as small, bitter people who still believe the doctrine, but left the church because of their anger and pride. They do not, and cannot allow the members to think that anyone ever studies their way out, or no longer believes in what the church teaches. Because, like any cult, the mormon church actively works to make their members afraid to leave.

And I'm not talking about fear of the made-up punishment waiting in their fanciful afterlife. I'm talking about fear of shunning and the accompanying loneliness. I'm talking about losing contact with friends and family. I'm talking about repeatedly drilling into their members that nobody ever leaves for a legitimate reason, so that when a doubting member runs across a legitimate reason to leave, they think that nobody has ever done this before, and then they're afraid to take that step by themselves. That kind of emotional manipulation inevitably leads to the person second-guessing themselves, and so the morg plays on their fears and tightens its grip around them all over again. And if they did as the mormon church tells them to do and expressed their doubts openly to a bishop or stake president, then they are watched very closely for any further signs of dissent.

The mormon church fights very hard to make its members afraid to leave, and it works. I left anyway, mostly because I just shrugged it off and didn't give a rat's ass. But there's no way of really knowing how many people don't leave, for no other reason than because they're afraid. The best I could do for these people is reassure them that they're not alone, that other people have gone through what you're going through, and understand how you feel.

I thought I was the only one. I wasn't, and neither are you.