After moving in with Jason, I kept going to church with Estela.

For a little while.

It didn’t last. I still had doubts left over from my mission, and after the last year and a half of asking for help that never came, my trust in leadership had quietly evaporated. Faith is harder to maintain when the promised divine support never shows up.

But I kept trying. Showing up. Nodding. Singing the hymns.

In the end, I didn’t leave out of anger. I didn’t leave because I wanted to sin. I didn’t leave because I felt unwelcome—I was welcomed, enthusiastically.

I left because of MySpace.

Yes. MySpace.

The social networking site best remembered for glitter fonts, auto-playing music, and Tom—the world’s least threatening man—smiling at you from your friends list like a divorced youth pastor who just wants you to be happy.

Honestly, it’s a very Mormon-approved reason to leave.

Because whenever someone leaves the church, the explanation is always tidy, shallow, and deeply convenient.
The Johnsons left because Sister Johnson was offended at a potluck.
Brother Davis stopped attending because he didn’t get the calling he wanted.
The Millers apostatized after they bought a boat.

Of course. Boats are notoriously anti-Christ.

So sure. Put me down for “Left because of MySpace.”
It fits nicely in the spreadsheet.

I remember the moment it started. I was sitting in church, minding my own business, genuinely trying to be a good person—which, in retrospect, was my first mistake—when they combined Relief Society and Priesthood for a VERY IMPORTANT LESSON.

This never means anything good. It’s either a surprise scolding or a public relations emergency. Sometimes both. Usually with handouts.

This time?
MySpace.

The bishop stood at the pulpit and warned us that this website—this digital wasteland where people posted their thoughts and favorite music—was a hive of danger. According to him, child predators lived there. Identity thieves lived there. Satan himself had a profile and was probably in everyone’s Top Eight.

For a full hour we were told:

• Don’t log in.
• Don’t visit.
• Don’t even search for it.
• Your children might be molested.
• You might be abducted.
• Your soul could be digitally mugged by someone from Nigeria.

I walked out of church feeling unsettled—not inspired, not warned, just… confused. The reaction felt disproportionate. Strange.

Then, because the church never does anything halfway, I turned on the church-owned TV news station later that week and saw the exact same warnings. Same language. Same panic. Word for word.

This wasn’t discernment.
This was a memo.
And suddenly, everything else lined up.

And it didn’t smell like revelation.
It smelled like fear.

So naturally, I created a MySpace account that night.

And there it was.
A website.
Just a website.

No demons hiding in the code.
No predators lunging from the comments.
No one stealing my identity—mostly because everyone was too busy decorating their own with glitter.

It was… fine. Completely normal.

And the thing that stuck with me wasn’t MySpace. It was the contrast.

The absolute overkill.
The intensity of the fear.
The certainty.

Why lie like that?
With such confidence?
About something so benign?

Just tell people to have a lick of common sense about what they post and it would be fine.

Current me: I probably should have thought about that before posting about losing my virginity…

And then—like someone flipped on a light switch I didn’t know existed—I realized:

Oh.
This isn’t about safety.
This is about control.

They weren’t afraid of predators. They were afraid of unapproved information. Of people comparing notes. Of the outside world bleeding in.

And once you see that, you can’t unsee it.

Suddenly, all the doubts I’d carefully stacked on a mental shelf came crashing down. Not in a dramatic, thunderbolt-from-heaven way—but in a quiet, devastating ohhh.

Not “I understand God’s plan.”
More like, “Oh. That’s why this has always felt off.”

I won’t lay out every grievance here—there is a list, and it is long—but the structure of my faith collapsed in one stupidly simple moment.

So, I broke up with the church.

Cold turkey.
No more rationalizing.
No more mental gymnastics worthy of Olympic qualification.

I logged out of Mormonism and didn’t go back.

Because while I can’t remember a single thing I actually did on MySpace, I remember the moment it handed me the most important friend request of my life:

Critical Thinking.

That choice cost me friendships. More than I expected. People drifted away quietly, politely, permanently. And that hurt.

But it was the price of my soul.

The problem with leaving a high-demand religion is that suddenly you don’t know who you are, what’s right, what’s wrong, or whether the universe wants you to drink coffee or burst into flames. It’s like being handed your life back without the instruction manual. Or the batteries.

Luckily—miraculously—I stumbled into PostMormon.org.

It was an online support group for people who left “The Church^TM”.

It was a small, warm corner of the internet filled with funny, kind, slightly shell-shocked humans trying to build new identities from the wreckage. People of all ages asking the same question in different ways: Wait… that’s not true?

People who treated alcohol like plutonium.
People whose entire sexual experience consisted of one partner, one position, and a prayer.
People rebuilding moral frameworks from scratch because the old one collapsed the moment they leaned on it.

We were grieving.
We were angry.
We were figuring it out.

And yes—we were furious. About the manipulation. The lies. The years of our lives. The money. The ten percent of our income that we had given away, that could’ve funded retirement, travel, or at the very least, better underwear.

PostMormon.org is where I learned how to breathe again.

One of the local Post Mos hosted a party where someone bravely bought alcohol, and the rest of us sat in a line like frightened ducklings, taking microscopic sips.

“This tastes like black licorice.”
“This tastes like nail polish remover.”
“This tastes like licking a mossy rock.”

We gagged. We laughed. We learned.

We talked about sex and swearing and porn like explorers mapping a lost continent called Everyone Else’s Adolescence.

Eventually, I drifted away from the Post Mo group—not because it wasn’t helpful, but because living in anger forever is exhausting. You need something sturdier to build a life on.

But I will always be grateful.

They held a lantern while I crawled out of a collapsing worldview.
They helped me take my first shaky steps into autonomy.
They gave me community without a tithing slip.

And honestly?

It was a godsend.
The ironic kind.
The best kind.