This is so relatable. "My brain had been using Mormonism as an external scaffolding system for my executive function my whole life. . . . I don’t have a framework for choosing. I only have options."
This is just part of the reason I describe leaving Mormonism as "empowering and terrifying."
Add to this that we're not allowed to say we're struggling after we leave, because it will be attributed and blamed on our having left. "You did this to yourself. You left the path. You let go of the iron rod. You are being punished. You walked away from the Spirit." And that REALLY sucks.
Empowering and terrifying is exactly right. Both things fully true at the same time.
And you named something important. The silence around struggling after leaving isn't just social pressure. It's a trap with teeth. Because if you admit it's hard, you hand the institution a narrative it will use against you. So you perform fine. Which means you're managing the collapse alone, on top of the collapse.
That's an enormous amount of cognitive load for a brain that's already trying to rebuild its entire operating system from scratch.
The struggle after leaving isn't evidence you made the wrong choice. It's evidence of how much the structure was doing for you that you didn't even know about.
the progression from "i got out" to "so why am i falling apart" maps something that almost every deconstruction narrative skips over - the part where freedom feels indistinguishable from paralysis. standing in the kitchen unable to answer "what do you want" - not what should you want, not what makes sense, what do you actually want - and having no answer. that's not indecision. that's the absence of a framework for choosing that was never needed because someone else's framework did the choosing. the repetition in this piece - switching, starting, stopping, switching again - performs the very experience it describes. and the final reframe is precise: this isn't grief or doubt. it's the collapse that happens after the structure is gone. nobody warns you about that part because from the outside it looks like freedom.
This is so relatable. "My brain had been using Mormonism as an external scaffolding system for my executive function my whole life. . . . I don’t have a framework for choosing. I only have options."
This is just part of the reason I describe leaving Mormonism as "empowering and terrifying."
Add to this that we're not allowed to say we're struggling after we leave, because it will be attributed and blamed on our having left. "You did this to yourself. You left the path. You let go of the iron rod. You are being punished. You walked away from the Spirit." And that REALLY sucks.
Empowering and terrifying is exactly right. Both things fully true at the same time.
And you named something important. The silence around struggling after leaving isn't just social pressure. It's a trap with teeth. Because if you admit it's hard, you hand the institution a narrative it will use against you. So you perform fine. Which means you're managing the collapse alone, on top of the collapse.
That's an enormous amount of cognitive load for a brain that's already trying to rebuild its entire operating system from scratch.
The struggle after leaving isn't evidence you made the wrong choice. It's evidence of how much the structure was doing for you that you didn't even know about.
the progression from "i got out" to "so why am i falling apart" maps something that almost every deconstruction narrative skips over - the part where freedom feels indistinguishable from paralysis. standing in the kitchen unable to answer "what do you want" - not what should you want, not what makes sense, what do you actually want - and having no answer. that's not indecision. that's the absence of a framework for choosing that was never needed because someone else's framework did the choosing. the repetition in this piece - switching, starting, stopping, switching again - performs the very experience it describes. and the final reframe is precise: this isn't grief or doubt. it's the collapse that happens after the structure is gone. nobody warns you about that part because from the outside it looks like freedom.