Recap, now with moar balance

Just like in my dream, I went to Ian and cried (so to speak) and then I woke up. I thought I had been addressing these issues, but when asked to articulate why I hate Mormons now, I didn't even have an answer. I'd been wondering why I wasn't over things, but I hadn't taken the time to really consider why I feel how I feel (beyond my usual "mormons/my parents are crazy!"). And as always, kicking demons out into the daylight makes them so much less scary.

Reasons why:

• Hypocrisy. Everyone wants you to think everything is always lovely and fine and that they care, but everything is NOT fine and people are really mean sometimes. Like when my dad and step mom were getting divorced. Before then, everyone liked my dad and said he taught good sunday school lessons and whatnot, after wards, my step mom was like "rawr, Ed is so mean." and everyone was like "oh poor baby, we hate him now." and I'm like WTF. There's a sort of group shun mechanism in place that is like, people like you as long as you're doing what the group wants, but as soon as you step out of line, everyone hates you. Which brings me to my next point
  
• Control. and I know this is present in any religion, and I'd even say that control is the point of religion, but of course, I experienced the control of mormons, so yeah. Ah gods, this is just like a textbook example from my sociology book. Isolation from the out-group, fatigue (6am seminary all through high school? yes I was tired), strong in-group hierarchy, on and on. Textbook aside, people are always bothering you to do stuff. They make it try to seem like everyone cares about you so they call you all the time or stop by your house and shit.
  
• Cognitive dissonance. This is more of a personal one. I feel like for Mormonism, I had to split my brain into two parts; the part of everything I know about the world from books and school and all my sources of learning stuff, and then there's the part for religion. And when i was thinking about one, I wouldn't use the other part of my mind. Now that I've exiled religion because it doesn't jive with the "things I know" stuff, I feel like my mind still lacks unity. Like there's still this other part that just isn't doing anything now, and may be taken back over by mormons at any minute. Okay, unlikely that I'll be conquested, but I won't dismiss the possibility.
  

For a long time, i thought too much about it, and then i didn't think about it at all. I used to cry a lot, but I haven't cried for a while. Too much religion, and now too little. The irony of being a unicyclist but completely lacking balance in my life isn't lost on me. So I guess now that's the next step. And I'm okay with that.