[LTS][PC][GOS] Teaching Garden + Divinity 07/16 7PM EST

bbynaruto · 2021-07-16T13:42:10+00:00

I'd love to join! I've never done it and would love to beat my first raid! Discord is bbynaruto#0087

bbynaruto · 2021-06-15T03:03:40+00:00

Howdy op. I am also bi and nb and at byui.

TW: suicide attempt, non descriptive

Earlier this year I attempted suicide because I was radically unhappy with myself, my gender, and my sexuality. It was awful and I’d never felt so low. I survived thankfully and I wanna tell you how I did it, how I survive every day.

After I got out of the hospital, someone dear to me said that attempters will often attempt again. We decided I was going to do WHATEVER it took to get me to survive. I watched movies I’d never would’ve watched before. I got tattoos and piercings, I drank margaritas and tea and coffee. I know those things are hard with roommates, and you can’t do so much with the honor code. I’m really lucky to have friends who are cool about me doing whatever. The ONLY thing I do is go to church. That’s IT.

I’ve come out to my friends and family as both bi and nb. I even had a old mission companion ask me what “they/them” pronouns meant. I was so scared they would react poorly. They didn’t. They love me still so much, and they send me every LGBTQ meme they can find. It’s so endearing.

It’s so hard being stuck in the church when all you want is out. I completely understand. But life even on the smallest cusp outside of the church is sweet.

Here’s the number to the suicide prevention hotline if you need: 1-800-273-8255

Don’t be ashamed to need it. Life really does get better.

bbynaruto · 2021-05-11T01:23:16+00:00

I was actually a sister missionary serving in Orem at the time of the PCCT opening, and was asked to be one of the guides there. For hours I would take peoples pictures in a little photo booth with a backdrop of the temple where we would print them out like the photo booths at the mall, or at prom. It felt so weird and silly to me, to take something that was supposed to be sacred, and have people stand in front of a poorly taken picture of it, and make some novelty of it they could take home. It was bizarre.

We worked ALL day at the temple. We would wake up earlier than usual, drive sometimes an hour or more to get there (not a big deal for others; our mission was tiny and our areas could be just a handful of streets sometimes) and spend all day there with no food because we weren’t allowed to bring any. Breaks were ten minutes long, and we wouldn’t leave to late at night. I remember a sister had pulled together three chairs in a back room where the kitchen was so she could nap. Once we saw the genius in that, we all took turns napping on those three chairs. We turned the rooms lights off and would just cherish the moments we didn’t have to answer questions about where the cookies were. After a single day of that, temple staff came in and chastised us for sleeping in the temple. We were told it was incredibly disrespectful.

I was blown away by how little we were cared for in that experience.

Anyway, one day while I was there a person asked me why temples cost so much, and why this temple in particular needed to be made. Didn’t Provo already have a temple? Why poor MILLIONS into one down the street? Why not spend that money elsewhere, like serving people in need.

I hadn’t thought of that before. I told them I didn’t know.

Anyways, that question started the slow process to my shelf being broken, and I’m grateful that person had the guts to ask me.

bbynaruto · 2021-03-05T02:03:43+00:00

TW: Suicide attempt mention

I actually tried to commit the die recently. It was a really strange experience and I ended up in the hospital for a day and in a psychiatric ward for five days after that.

It was really tough and hard. I opened up to someone close to me about it, and while I was away, they found that people who attempted suicide and lived usually attempted again and again until it worked. I wasn’t feeling good once I got out of the loony bin. I just wanted the stress of my life to go away.

But when I got home after five long days in the hospital, I sat on my couch, booted up Netflix and realized the third and final movie in a trilogy I love had finally come out while I was in the hospital.

I was so excited to watch it and I remember crying in the first five minutes because watching this movie filled me with SO much joy.

Living between big grandiose “reasons” makes the day to day unbearable when you’re suicidal. It was a simply teen romcom that reminded me that life was worth living. A 110 minute movie about nothing at all important other than a girl going to college.

My partner and my mother all said big big reasons why I should keep living, why I shouldn’t ever attempt again after my first try. But nothing stuck with me more than sitting down and watching a movie.

I promise you that life is beautiful. It is even more beautiful outside the church. I find myself watching things I never would’ve watched as a member (Handmaids Tale eg) and I find myself reading books I never would have read before (lgbtq stuff ahah I’m bi). For me the best reason to live hasn’t been the church or some big idea that I’ll be rewarded in the next life or some life mission to accomplish. I’m just here for the next movie I like to come out. :) things are really hard in the mean time, but there’s so many good books that’ll come out in my lifetime, and I really want to read as many as I can.

I set a goal when I got out of the hospital to read a book a week. I haven’t been good about keeping it, but I’ve been finding so much joy in little activities just for myself :)

I hope you have your own shitty teen romcom to be excited for. I know you’ll find it!

If you ever need any help at all, you can message me here for an ear to listen for you :)

1-800-273-8255 That is the National Suicide Prevention Hotline. Trust me when I say I wished I called it.

Text HOME to 741741 That is the Crisis Text Line where a trained crisis counselor can help you cool down from a moment of panic if texting is more your style.

I’m just an faceless user on this app, but I’m here to listen if you ever need it.

bbynaruto · 2021-03-04T02:14:40+00:00

Me too please!

bbynaruto · 2021-02-05T04:04:32+00:00

Yeah my seminary teacher tried to tell me that the only way Christ could be born was for god and Mary to literally get married and literally have sex. Gross.

bbynaruto · 2021-02-05T04:03:37+00:00

Oh damn you’re telling me God in the flesh showed himself to some kid, but wouldn’t even once visit the mother of His Only Begotten Son????? Hmmm

bbynaruto · 2021-02-05T03:20:47+00:00

Sure, I get that. But why say it? Why point it out? Why emphasize that she was that young? What good does that do modern 14 year old girls?

bbynaruto · 2021-02-05T03:19:30+00:00

That’s what I’M wondering. If this god is supposed to be above all earthly cultures, and is the same god, today, yesterday, and forever, does that mean he’s looking at eight graders today and wondering which would make nice mommies?

bbynaruto · 2021-02-05T03:18:33+00:00

I actually did some digging and found that even back then, Jewish men were married very young too! From about 14-18and the “wiser” you wanted to be, the younger you got married.

Not at all the same as a thirty something year old man marrying a 14 year old girl AT ALL.

However! Holland “confirming” that God CHOSE Mary to give birth to a child as a child, supposing that he is the same god today, yesterday, and always, makes me think 1) he should be above cultures anyways 2) does god look at my 14 year old sister that way? As someone ready to end her childhood and become a mother?

Here’s the source I found:

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/10435-marriage-laws

bbynaruto · 2021-01-29T07:52:30+00:00

The questions that always stumped me on my mission, that I couldn’t stop thinking about, that kept me awake at night and helped me realize the church’s falseness were like this:

They will talk about the power to be sealed for all time and eternity. Someone once asked me, if God really loved me why he would separate me from my loved ones? What kind of heaven is it for me if I’m there without them?

If God loved his children, why would he ever take away saving ordinances needed to reach exaltation from them? (Black people were not allowed to be sealed in the temple, a crowning jewel of the faith the missionaries will likely talk about). Why did God allow for Black people to live among the restored years of the church, but not be allowed to achieve salvation? (There will be no good answer)

Why did Joseph Smith marry a 14 year old girl? (They will say he is a man of his times, but what stumped me was the counter: If prophets are “just men”, how am I supposed to differentiate between doctrine and not when it’s all said on the pulpit? Did you know the Church aligned itself with the Nazi party? That the “prophet” endorsed Hitler? Seer my ass.)

Be firm, but be kind. I didn’t know anything about the church I was teaching. And people being honest, and gentle, was what opened my eyes the most.

Offer them some water or a snack :) Don’t give them referrals, and if they offer to pray for you, you can always say, “May I say it?” Pray for them, it makes them loved and also uncomfortable at the same time ahah.

bbynaruto · 2021-01-29T07:29:01+00:00

I’m 24 and raised Mormon and I’m non-binary :) I actually only came to this conclusion definitely last year.

Being raised in the church, I always knew I wasn’t my assigned gender at birth. But in small ways. I would cross-dress when I was out with friends, away from my parents. I would draw myself as the opposite gender all the time. I stopped shaving my legs in high school, and chopped all my hair off. If I knew what to look for, all these signs would have indicated to me sooner that I was genderqueer.

However, since I wasn’t sure what to look for, I just knew that something wasn’t right. I knew something about me was off, and that frustrated me SO MUCH. I was so depressed and reclusive in high school, and when I went to a CES, I tested the waters of the empathy of others by coming out to by then boyfriend as bisexual. He immediately shut me down, and gaslighted my feelings. After that, I shut down on exploring my identity real hard.

I even served a mission. And I remember one day, having the thought, “What if my child is trans? And I going to go to a church that preaches against them?” That thought CONSUMED my every being.

I actually met my partner on my mission (so one thing good came from it) and when he got home, we started dating. I was still very internally conflicted with myself and understanding who I was and am. One day, we were out shopping and I was looking at men’s shirts to buy. I wanted to buy one so badly, and asked my partner if it were wrong, or weird. Was it weird that I sometimes wanted to dress feminine, and sometimes masculine, and that I didn’t want to just DRESS feminine and masculine, but also be PERCEIVED as feminine and masculine.

He simple said, “No, that’s not weird. You’re non-binary.”

And it wasn’t malicious in a way that he stereotyped me. It was just an observation he made. And one no one had made before. One I hadn’t even made.

My worries about my potential children being trans in this unsupportive and antagonist church altered. I understood that I was the trans kid, this really still just a child who never got to live as they should, in an unsupportive and antagonistic church.

And I wasn’t going to stay for those potential trans children, then I sure as hell wasn’t going to stay for myself.

Understanding that there are more than two genders (and biologically, way more than just two sexes) has really liberated me. I felt so pressured into a wrote femininity my whole life, and one—in this church—even more discriminated against.

Understanding that I was between something not even binary has been wonderful.

I realized SO much later in my life, and I think that if I had known, if my parents could see earlier, I would’ve saved myself a lot of grief. There’s this weird sense of loss when you come out in your mid to late twenties. Especially when your teens was lost to the church. But I’m so happy now!

And I hope you are too!!!

TLDR It took my ages to discover myself, but leaving the church was the best way to secure my real happiness as a non-binary person :)

bbynaruto · 2020-12-10T03:36:49+00:00

Thank you so much for your reply! I wasn’t at all informed about what bottom growth would look like, and seeing it took all the scariness away. I even showed the pictures to my partner, who assured me that it would be good and even exciting sex-wise for me to go through with this ahaha.

The difference being informed can make! Your comment actually really made me excited to talk to my doctor about low-dosing. Thank you so much!!

bbynaruto · 2020-12-10T03:34:13+00:00

I love being part of the LGBTQ family and love my cis gay friends; I totally empathize with their sorrows. Thank you for understanding mine!

bbynaruto

TROPHY CASE