Happy, Smiling Faces

I'm going to admit something weird. For a few weeks some years ago, I went to an addicts anonymous meeting held at a local Mormon ward building. A friend had recommended it to me, and I tried it. I'll also admit that I kept struggling with the first "step," which was to accept that I had no control over my life. Maybe that was because I wasn't an addict, though I'd gone in the first place because I wondered if I had an addiction to my own control of my life, to exercise, or to my image of myself as a nearly perfect person. In any case, I couldn't give up control and I certainly wasn't going to give it up to something called "God," since as far as I was concerned, God had done a pretty lousy job of being in charge of my life as far as I could tell, and He might well be a sadist, given the death of my daughter months before.

I asked if other people were having the same problem of being stuck on step one, but no, no one else was. Maybe their lives were worse than mine. Maybe I just wasn't ready to let go of my own control. It's something I'm still working on, honestly. Every night, my prayers are an attempt to let go of my need to control everything in my life--and in the lives of the people around me, sometimes the whole world. I don't know if I could do a better job, but really, could I do a worse job? 

I think that one of the truths I learned from this experience is that one of the reasons I am addicted to Mormonism is that I am caught in a cycle of guilt and shame. My need to have control is inextricably linked to my need to believe that anything that goes wrong is "my fault." As long as it is my fault, then I can fix it. I can change myself, even if I can't change anyone else. And so if it's my fault that my daughter died, then I can at least do all the things to make myself better, holier, more pure, more worthy of divine intervention, and protect my other children and all the other people around me from dying. Giving up the need to be in charge of everything is very, very difficult. I think I *might* just barely be learning to do that, and therefore also be giving up the need for guilt and shame as levers for controlling my own behavior.

As for the addicts anonymous group, I stopped going after weeks of being told that we were to "remain positive" and that the only comments we were allowed to offer to the group were about good things that had happened during that week. I was so uncomfortable with this at the time. I'd look around the room, sure that someone else would break this ridiculous rule. I asked about it specifically, asked why it was in place. I was told that it was important for us all to help encourage each other, and that without this rule, the meeting would easily devolve into a long tirade about all the bad things going on in all of our lives and that would make "Satan" enter the room, which we didn't want. Is that really what Satan is? Is that how we think about "evil"? Any negative emotions are from Satan and positive emotions are from God and so we dissect ourselves and decide that we can only be this one half of our real selves?

Looking back on this explanation of the need to control a group of women who had been through some bad stuff and were still going through bad stuff, who might have felt bound together because of our honesty and vulnerability but in my opinion were prevented from doing that, I can't help but wonder if this isn't indicative of the parts of Mormonism that I have to reject to move forward in my life. Were the men told they had to do this or only the women? Why the need to show perfect, happy faces to the world, and even to each other? I don't think you can really grow in this kind of an environment. I think it's false and may reveal something deeply wrong with our culture. We've got to get real. We can't have relationships without sadness, anger, and all the darker sides of our emotions. Mormon women can't just be happy, smiling faces that are used to show the world how great it is to be Mormon. Because we're also human.