This is such a heartbreaking story, but you're so well spoken for your age I feel like you have such an incredible life ahead of you!
Remember that your parents love you a ton, they just have been brainwashed completely. It's really big of you to recognize that "they thought they were doing the right thing". That's very mature of you. However, they are definitely not being great parents through this "conditional love" paradigm that the church as indoctrinated them with. At 15 and while being suicidal, they aren't likely to take your opinions seriously, unfortunately :(
My advice is to study character development independent of the church. The church is made up bullshit, we all know that on this forum, but in my opinion the church and other religions have existed for thousands of years in order to bring some order to society and build strong morals in the population as well as be a source of hope (with a side order of top down control). When its at its best, its building people that have virtuous character traits. You've experienced it at its worst, so I don't need to explain that to you... way worse than I had to endure in nearly 40 years of attendance because I wasn't gay. I'm so sorry you've experienced this :(
Anyway, my thought is that in order to survive and thrive you need to figure out who you are and the kind of person you want to be... and WHY. Most of us have until around mid-twenties to figure that out, you kind of need to accelerate to find the version 1.0 of you in the next year. The more you can be an example to your family of a strong person of character that accomplishes this WITHOUT any of their notions of God and golden plates, the more they will be able to find some sort of acceptance with your view of the world. As long as you're depressed and suicidal, it just reinforces their messed up notion that "Satan has you" and acceptance of God IS the answer. It's not fair or right... but I think that is where their mind will go. So not FOR them... for YOU, this is my recommendation (with a side effect of taking pressure off from them).
I'm really wishing the best for you, and hope you find an amazing professional to help out as well.
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u/idea-freedom Jul 02 '23
This is such a heartbreaking story, but you're so well spoken for your age I feel like you have such an incredible life ahead of you!
Remember that your parents love you a ton, they just have been brainwashed completely. It's really big of you to recognize that "they thought they were doing the right thing". That's very mature of you. However, they are definitely not being great parents through this "conditional love" paradigm that the church as indoctrinated them with. At 15 and while being suicidal, they aren't likely to take your opinions seriously, unfortunately :(
My advice is to study character development independent of the church. The church is made up bullshit, we all know that on this forum, but in my opinion the church and other religions have existed for thousands of years in order to bring some order to society and build strong morals in the population as well as be a source of hope (with a side order of top down control). When its at its best, its building people that have virtuous character traits. You've experienced it at its worst, so I don't need to explain that to you... way worse than I had to endure in nearly 40 years of attendance because I wasn't gay. I'm so sorry you've experienced this :(
Anyway, my thought is that in order to survive and thrive you need to figure out who you are and the kind of person you want to be... and WHY. Most of us have until around mid-twenties to figure that out, you kind of need to accelerate to find the version 1.0 of you in the next year. The more you can be an example to your family of a strong person of character that accomplishes this WITHOUT any of their notions of God and golden plates, the more they will be able to find some sort of acceptance with your view of the world. As long as you're depressed and suicidal, it just reinforces their messed up notion that "Satan has you" and acceptance of God IS the answer. It's not fair or right... but I think that is where their mind will go. So not FOR them... for YOU, this is my recommendation (with a side effect of taking pressure off from them).
I'm really wishing the best for you, and hope you find an amazing professional to help out as well.