Growing Up Without Communion

Growing up in the LDS church it was called Sacrament.

Growing up in the LDS church I was one of those children whose parents didn't go to church but sent me with my friends, smelling like cigarette smoke, dirty clothing and unwashed hair. Growing up in the LDS church I was looked at with pity and disappointment, I suppose, by those clean and polished Elders and their clean and polished wives and children.

Growing up in the 1970's there was no discernment made between sexual activities of young people. You didn't do it or you were "one of those girls". Regardless of whether or not that girl was barely 11 and the male was closing in on 17 and violent.

Growing up in the present, it would be called rape and child molestation.

Growing up in the 1970's she was called a whore and nothing was said about the boy. Which then gave license to the boy to continue his circle of violence and forced silence of the girl because it was after all, her shame she was hiding.

Growing up in the LDS church after rumors began about me, timed with my upcoming graduation into Mutual from Primary. I had to have an interview with the Bishop. There I was sitting across the desk from a scary authority figure in his scary office with pictures of LDS Presidents and Joseph Smith staring down upon me. He asked me many questions about my faith and such and then he asked me point blank if I was a virgin, or did he say "clean"? I remember looking at his eyes for a moment and then looking down at my hands horrified about the topic and what I was about to do. He had heard the rumors, I knew he knew. I looked at him and lied.

Growing up, at 11, I didn't know what else to do.

At graduation we each were given an article of faith to memorize and recite during the ceremony. I did the best I could and got through it. When it was over, I bolted to the door and ran into the closest bathroom, threw up and began weeping uncontrollably over the double life I was leading. I lied just to graduate with the girls I had gone to primary with. I didn't belong to this group of pure, "clean" girls. I hated myself. I blamed myself. I was scared.

As rumors got harsher and lengthier and more easily proven that I did, indeed, have a boyfriend, I began to get the snickers and the nasty remarks from my peers that I really shouldn't be allowed to take sacrament because I was "that kind" of a girl. And then finally, the Bishop himself, asked me if perhaps I should study a little more about what the sacrament meant and the promises I am making to God each week and decide if I was really worthy right then to be continuing to take the sacrament. I wasn't living the gospel.

I never took sacrament again. I never went to church again.

Growing up, there was no one to save me during all this turmoil, no one, not God, not one grown up, parental or otherwise, stood up and said, "There is something bad happening here to this poor little girl." No one. I couldn't do it. To do it would reveal my lie, my sin and my shame. I couldn't save myself.

Growing up, I fell between the cracks of the LDS platform from the beginning. I, convinced that I had forever lost my way back to God, gave up, gave in, and became to know myself as the person they said I was. And they, in turn, told themselves and their children, "I told you so." and "I don't want you playing with her at school or around the neighborhood." And then they must have felt safer that they had weeded out another bad moral influence that may have threatened the lives of all the righteous.

Growing up, cut me off from God. Growing up cut me off from normal social events with friends. Growing up I lost my way back to ever understanding the meaning of worthiness in the eyes of the Lord. Now I walk a path I don't entirely trust or understand.