You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

– Mary Oliver, Wild Geese 

1. Something was growing inside me. I was nineteen, and hesitant to do what I needed. Instead, I scraped out my innards. No rationalization stopped me from believing in my corruption.
2. Now, I’ve almost believed in nothing as long as I believed in God.
3. I’m kind of into Hedonism, and I really don’t fuck with asceticism.
4. My father was a priest. I used to hate him for it. I now see him as just as flawed as the rest of us.
5. Mormonism began with Joseph Smith in western New York around the 1820’s. He is infamous for translating the same “Book of Mormon” that you can find in every Marriot Hotel room around the world. It is said he was visited by God and Jesus in the middle of the night, and they revealed to him none of the current existing religions were correct. They guided him to the “gold plates-” which, coincidentally, were buried somewhere in a nearby hill. They were written in an ancient language only he could translate. He interpreted them, and the gold plates mysteriously disappeared, never to be seen again.
6. The Epicureans claim that pleasure is the first good. Pleasure is the beginning of every choice and every aversion. It is the absence of pain in the body and of troubles in the soul.
7. If you’re going to conform to a religion, couldn’t you pick something that has been around longer and is cooler than 19th century colonial America?
8. Mormonism is inherently just like every other contemporary religion grounded in Christianity – except there is a whole slew of rules that you are taught from a young age. Go to church every Sunday, read the scriptures every day, pray before every meal, get married and have a buttload of babies. Don’t get tattoos. Don’t be gay. Don’t swear, don’t drink, don’t listen to impure music, don’t wear immodest clothing, don’t date before you’re 16, definitely DO NOT partake in premarital sex. Don’t drink coffee or tea. Don’t do anything that could generate any sort of pleasure. Ever.
9. Epicurus also noted that he did not know “how to conceive the good apart from the pleasures of taste, sexual pleasures, the pleasures of sound and the pleasure of beautiful form.” It is the natural state of humans to pursue pleasure.
10. Non-philosophers (the pious community) tend to think of a hedonist as a person who seeks out pleasure for themselves without any particular regard for their own future well-being or the well-being of others. They are the stereotypical drugs, sex, rock n’ roll indulgers who will eventually spiral into a life of corruption. Christian theology is based on the notion that we don’t know what we ought to desire and that only through faith in God can we reach salvation.
11. But Hedonism is not for just one good among many, it is the only thing that defines the good in its own right and not sought for the sake of anything greater.
12. It has been some time since I have denied the soft animal of my body in loving what it loves. It has only been a short time that I have not hated myself for that.
13. If you follow all of the rules outlined by the church during your mortality, you are promised exaltation to godhood in the afterlife. Well, the men are. But, don’t worry girls, you are promised a right-hand seat if you are a faithful wife. They call this personalized utopia the Celestial kingdom, bestowed with all the glory of the sun.
14. I didn’t tell my parents most things. They consistently called me secretive. I wanted to tell them, but I feared that they would be ashamed of me. If they had known the things I had done, there was no way I would be joining them in the Celestial kingdom, and their illusion would be broken.
15. Obviously Hedonism can be used to justify self-destructive behaviors. If I invoked Hedonism in every move, right now I would likely be half-way across the world somewhere warm with a behemoth vessel of beer and a really long bendy straw which a beautiful person would place in my mouth so I wouldn’t have to use my arms.  If I was a nepotism baby with the knowledge of hedonism I would likely be the poster-child for debauchery.
16. If you don’t follow all the rules, but follow most of the rules, you are granted entry into the terrestrial kingdom for the afterlife. Filled with other “honorable people who were blinded by the craftiness of men” (Doctrine and Covenants 76:75), the terrestrial kingdom is said to be created in the likeness of earth. So, just earth after earth. Minus the murderers.
17. The murderers, along with the “liars, and sorcerers, and adulterers, and whoremongers,” all get to be sentenced to a millennium in spirit prison. After those quick thousand years though, they are allowed to enter the third degree of heaven, the telestial kingdom. However, there is still a hierarchy of glory in the telestial kingdom depending on how immoral you were during your corporeal life.
18. I will be seeing you in spirit prison.
19. “Are you gay?” my mother asked me in the car a few years ago. “No,” I responded. “Thank God,” she said.
20. Hedonism is referred to as nearsighted. But it is also a wonderful way to bypass the culture of shame ingrained in individuals who have been encouraged to practice abstinence in every facet of their life.
21. At twelve you are allowed to visit the Mormon temple. After an interview with the church bishop, so he can assess if you are worthy, you are granted a permission slip to go visit the temple. You may have seen this holy place if you’ve driven through the reverenced Brampton, Ontario. It is tradition to go as a family and perform baptisms for the dead. The last interview I had was when the Bishop asked me if I ever “lay horizontally,” quote unquote, with my first boyfriend.
22. Perhaps it isn’t all bad. At the core, deep down at the core, it is about love and kindness and gratitude. But at the surface, fear and shame are the currency of Christianity. 
23. Performing baptism for the dead is no joke. Mormons genuinely believe in posthuman proxy baptism. At the temples, there is a large font room with a big hot tub in the middle, balancing on the statues of 12 bulls. You receive a sexy white jumpsuit and get in the hot tub with a patriarch, while others watch as you are baptized maybe fifteen to twenty times in a row, giving people who had died 100’s of years ago a chance for salvation. Afterwards, it was routine to go out for burgers from Wendy’s with everyone who participated in saving the dead.
24. We started getting takeout on Sundays. My brother and I would whine in the back seat on the thirty-minute drive home from church. It was the weekend. My parents didn’t want to cook either. My dad would eventually give in. My mom would have her arms crossed in the passenger seat. We started breaking the sabbath.
25. I started dating a boy my age from church. This was permissible. We weren’t allowed to be in rooms alone with the door closed. We both got our licenses and would take long drives.
26. I hate the idea that someone is always watching me. When I was around ten I remember lying awake at night, afraid, because my parents had told me Jesus was always with me. Why is he floating around my bedroom while I am trying to sleep? 
27. Epicureans ultimately argue that forms of debauchery aren’t good or pleasurable because they hasten greater discomforts. But they understand that mundane pleasurable experiences of the body are not sins. No shame versus glory. Only pain versus pleasure.
28. I was changing in the bathroom before and after school, and having long teary fights about social injustices with my parents. About gay and trans rights, about racial inequality, about “loving thy neighbor.” Their God didn’t see it the same way.
29. My dad still believes. I think he does, anyway. I am convinced he likes to talk just to hear the sound of his own voice. He gets quiet when I say something blasphemous. We lost both of his parents around the same time we lost faith. I wish I believed if only for his sake.
30. I want to believe, but when I look up at the sky I feel nothing.
31. Lean into the moments where you do feel something. Stop being a floating brain in denial of the body. Follow what pleases you.
32. At Christmas dinner my brother jokes that we should say a prayer to the cult before we eat. My mum tells him the joke isn’t funny. I laugh under my breath and ask to be excused from the table before anyone else. I clean up from dinner alone with my headphones in, listening to Phoebe Bridger’s “Chinese Satellite,” wanting to scream at the evangelicals.
33. Believe in whatever you can.