Am I Evil Incarnate Going to Hell?

I am sometimes amused at the idea that I somehow represent evil to other Mormons now that I have stepped away from the church that I was raised in and raised my children in for so many decades. This amuses me because my life is extremely boring and so very normal. In many ways, I am still following the Mormon patterns I grew up with. Some of those patterns I follow consciously, others more unconsciously. For the first few years, I was very earnest about keeping track of what I did and did not want to replicate from my Mormon life. Now, I mostly shrug and, well, not give a fuck.

See what I did there?

I swear a lot more than I did as a Mormon. As a Mormon, I said “shit” in moments of extreme stress, which I always felt guilty about at the time (and sometimes liberated, which I suppose is the point of the mechanism of shame/guilty in high-demand religions). I spent a couple of years consciously trying to add “fuck” into my repertoire. I feel pretty comfortable with it now. It comes out a lot when I am upset. I feel a lot less shame about it. In fact, I probably feel the reverse: pride.

Yes, very dangerous woman here. I curse when angry and I don’t feel bad about it.

I was largely compliant when it came to rules about modesty and clothing. Or at least that’s what I thought. Looking back, I think I was “extremely compliant” and again, the tiny little rebellions I made served very well the mechanism of making me feel both ashamed and liberated. For instance, I wore the Mormon temple garment ALL THE TIME. Except when I was exercising, which was a standard carve out rule, though I did know people who wore them even while training and running marathons. The trick was that I exercised so much in the years following my daughter’s death that it was hours and hours of freedom daily from the old-fashioned underwear.

These days? I tried to wear normal underwear for a couple of years after leaving Mormonism. I even bought a few fancy pairs of bras and panties in colors and with lacey designs. The reality? I hated them. So much. Very uncomfortable. I thought Mormon garments were supposed to be the uncomfortable underwear? But either that is overhyped or I am just weird and trained to like bad things. I hate my thigh rubbing together, which they do because I have very big, muscular thighs. The solution has been to wear “bike shorts” all the time. Not exactly the same as the long Mormon garment bottoms, but very, very similar. I also wear a standard set of either long-sleeved close-fitting shirts during the winter or something similar, sleeved or not, during the summer.

Of course, I am not wearing what I wear because I was commanded to do so by threatening people in Mormon temple ceremonies. I no longer listen to the Mormon high leadership at General Conference tell women how important it is to God for them not to show their shoulders or stomachs at any time because men might have sinful sexual thoughts. Or whatever it is they are telling them now that they are allowed to show their shoulders because God changed his mind.

But if you look at what I wear on a standard basis, you are not going to see any difference from what I wore when I was Mormon. In fact, most of the time, you will see someone who is dressed more conservatively than most Mormon housewives of today. I just have a different reason in my head for what I am doing.

So how can it possibly be true that I am seen as evil or somehow tempting? Just by my very existence? If I am vain about my appearance, that mostly comes from the fact that I wear ridiculously expensive Scottish sweaters from Eribe, something I would never have allowed myself to do when I was Mormon because that’s not what money was FOR. I doubt any Mormon or anyone who isn’t a knitting aficionado would look at my sweaters and have any idea that they were expensive. They look like old lady sweaters you could buy at the thrift store—unless you know what to look for that screams “expensive.”

I drink coffee. Regularly. At first, it was difficult to get used to the bitter taste and strong undertone of coffee. I drank Chai tea for several years instead, and didn’t believe that I would ever like coffee. But I do now. I made a transition with lots of milk and a little sugar and now I almost always drink my coffee black. If this is the evil wayward model of selfishness and dissolute living you are looking for, look away. I have considered giving up coffee because it is more expensive than ever now, but it still isn’t that bad per cup. I am not a fancy coffee snob. I make a big pot on the weekend and drink a small cup every morning before work. I am careful about my caffeine use after noon because that interrupts my sleep.

Occasionally, I take a sip of alcohol. I do not love the taste of alcohol (I’m not sure that many people do). I don’t think drinking alcohol is evil anymore, so I feel free to take a sip now and then and to order a drink once a year or so if I feel particularly celebratory. I am aware that alcohol is mostly poisonous to the human body, but growing up Mormon means that I have no innate reflex to drink and am not worried about becoming an alcoholic from a mere sip. I don’t judge people who drink alcohol. I have friends who drink more heavily than I do. I don’t care. They are adults and are allowed to make their own decisions, as I do. Sometimes they laugh at me a bit because I am still so very Mormon in my choices and lifestyle. My doctor notes on his computer that I drink “extremely minimally.”

I don’t attend church very often. I go sometimes during the holidays so I can sing Christmas hymns in a group. No, I don’t want to try another church again. I’ve done that in my transition phase and it just doesn’t give me what I miss from Mormonism, which it turns out is mostly singing the hymns of my childhood with a group of people whose voices are middling. I don’t know why I like it and I no longer care to investigate it further.

I write novels. Sometimes they are spicy. There are bad people in them who do bad things. Sometimes they get punished. Sometimes they don’t. Writing novels is, as my children have often told me, an extremely boring lifestyle choice. I imagine bad things, but I sit at my computer in my living room or office and simply type letters on a keyboard. That is the extent of my evil. Well, my father would say that it is truly evil because I am encouraging other people to do evil. But he said that when I was still Mormon. He thought that fiction was evil. Shrug.

I work at a financial firm on the phones. It is an extremely boring job. I do not have sex with my coworkers, despite the many years of being told that women in the workforce will lead to this. This is partly because my coworkers are not my age (they are much younger) and mostly because I am not interested in much social contact at work. I am there to earn a paycheck and that is about it. My experience with my coworkers is that they are at least as disinterested in socializing at work as I am. Sex does not come up in cubicles. Or not around or with me.

I watch mostly Britbox when I have free time. Or PBS. Not because I am trying to watch shows that are wholesome. Because I am traumatized enough by my lifetime in Mormonism that I find it difficult and triggering to watch for entertainment media about traumatic events. It happens, but it’s pretty rare. I like to watch cooking shows, sometimes with Gordon Ramsay. That is the extent of the level of evil in my watching habits. I almost never go a theater because I don’t like leaving my house if I don’t have to, but if I do go watch movies, I don’t make my choice based on some strange rating system that has nothing to do with me or my values, interests, or preferences.

I do not believe that there is anyone taking constant notes on my habits in order to grade my soul for sorting in the after-life. I believe dead is dead and I find comfort in that idea of eternal rest. I sometimes like to imagine dead people I love and talk to them, but not because I believe they are actually anywhere real anymore. I like celebrating secular Christmas with Santa Claus, but I don’t mind Jesus stuff in there, either. Jesus is a nice story, just like Santa is a nice story. I will put my fingers in my ears and sing if any of the bad stuff comes out.

After work, I do my best to spend as much time as possible with my grandchild. If there is any extra time (which there rarely is), I spend it with a handful of friends who are varying degrees of nuanced Mormon or ex-Mormon. I still like Mormons. Shrug. I just do. Not because they are better than other flavors of people, though I do tend to think Mormonism creates equal parts traumatized and kind, compassionate people. It is just what it is. I live in Utah and most people have some relationship to Mormonism and neither side particularly bothers me if they are not annoying in their evangelism and understand that if I come back to church, it isn’t because I’m reconverted.

I have largely given up dating at this point. I didn’t have very much fun and I didn’t go on very many dates. I did go on a few before I was technically divorced, though we’d been separated for some time at that point. Does that make me evil? I have still only ever had sex with one man, the Mormon man I was married to for thirty years. I kissed one man on a date, but it was pretty chaste and that means I basically only ever kissed my husband for real. I’m not proud of this. It’s the result of some combination of Mormon prudery and me not ever being one of those girls who liked boys. I only ever really liked one boy and that didn’t turn out very well for me in the end. Shrug. This may change. I don’t care about it changing right now.

If this is what it means to be a very bad person who will rot in hell (or Outer Darkness, for the Mormons in the group), I guess that’s me. God must be a strangely petty man if this constitutes the height of evil behavior. Other people must be absurdly interested in my moral thoughts and heavier if I represent in any way a temptation or bad example of anything in particular. Expensive sweaters anyone?