My Mormon Mother's Advice
I called my mother today to ask her about the bit of Native American heritage I have since I've been reading this awesome book Love Medicine and am now hoping for as much Native American heritage as possible. My mom started talking about another book on compulsions--I have OCD--by a "psychiatrist" named Martha Nibley Beck who's apparently been on Oprah a few times. I put psychiatrist in quotes because upon further research I learned that my mother is once again calling anyone in a field related to mental health a psychiatrist when Beck is in fact a sociologist and therapist.
Mother'd heard of this book through one of the members of the anonymous pornography addicts group she and my dad head up or chaperone or whatever they call it.
"So he was telling me about how compulsions and addictions work together in cycles and how this book really helped him to 'get it'. I haven't read it yet, but it's really helped him, so I just thought, 'Oh! Arielle should read this!' Martha Nibley Beck is apparently a really really good psychiatrist and just really understands compulsion, so I think it'd help you," said Mother.
"That sounds interesting," I replied, "So does that 'Nibley' bit come from a relation to Hugh Nibley (very important (to Mormons) dead Mormon scholar and apologist)?"
"Yes, she's his daughter. I think she and her husband are kinda outside The Church now. Later in life, she had these memories she said were repressed of Hugh Nibley molesting her as a child. Who knows if they're real or not; I think she wrote a book about that too."
I was pleasantly surprised about the conversation thus far. I had suggested a beautiful novel to my mother, she had suggested an interesting psychological book to me, and she had been forthright about Hugh Nibley possibly molesting his daughter. I was so glad that we could have these nice adult, mature, friendly conversations.
"Oh wow, I'm surprised I haven't heard of this before. That book sounds really interesting. I'm just about home so I'm going to look up Martha Nibley Beck and see what all she's written."
"Well, read the one on compulsions though. It's called something like 'Getting Out of the Cycle of Compulsive Behaviors' or something like that. I think that one could really help you."
"Yeah okay, I'm sure I will. This all sounds fascinating," said I.
"...or maybe 'Leaving the Cycle...' or something. Read that one first at least," Mother reiterated.
"Okay," I said, slightly annoyed because I figured this was one of her attempts to try and get me to hurry up and fix myself because she's annoyed by my OCD, even though, trust me, I am trying my best, and I'm almost positive it's harder for me to live in this brain than for her to have a daughter who has to live with this brain, "Will do. Anyways, I'm home, I'll talk to you later," I said.
"Love you!" said she.
It was Wikipedia time. Born...7th of 8 kids...raised Mormon...married...impressive degrees from Harvard... Ah, here we are, her first book, co-authored with her husband: Breaking the Cycle of Compulsive Behavior. Clearly the book to which my mother was referring. Guess what the only description of it is: "mostly focused on overcoming homosexuality".
Oh. So basically what happened is some guy at church struggled with an addiction to gay pornography because he's gay but got eternally married to some Mormon chick so that they could go to the Celestial Kingdom together and thus he found it hard not to indulge in a some extra-heterosexual activity. One day, he confessed his deepest, darkest secret to his bishop, who then suggested Beck's book to him. The book really helped him to fight what had become quite an addiction for him, and thus he suggested it to my mother to read so that she could understand compulsion an addiction. "My daughter thinks she's gay," my mother thought, "and she's got that compulsion thingy. I bet they're related. This book could help her get over all that. Snaps for me."
I'm still surprised when my mother pulls shit like this because I am so open and honest to her nowadays about my homosexuality and my not believing in The Church. Does she seriously think I'm going to read some book on overcoming homosexuality and decide to try my best to go straight?
Then I kept reading. And here's where things got fun. Not only did Beck later leave The Church during the early 90's bull shit at BYU when six faculty members were excommunicated for writings deemed critical of The Church, she and her husband then got divorced and came out as homosexuals! Her book on overcoming homosexuality, as Wikipedia points out, is of course still sold in LDS bookstores. Perhaps I'll read Nibley's more recent book called Leaving the Saints: How I Lost the Mormons and Found My Faith.
On another note, I feel like sharing another snippet of my dreams. I was playing one of those games in which you have to type all those text commands (look at dresser, open drawer, take key, etc.), except this one also had some graphics to go along with it. At first I kept getting past these people at a dinner party by waving my arms hysterically and passing them by by looking crazy. I kept playing that part of the game that way but then wondered if that was a cheap trick and there was actually a right way to get through the game and go on to somewhere cooler. So I kept finding all these crazy secret passages and tunnels and winding staircases and obstacles and anything you can think of. My character was saying to me, "Okay this is ridiculous, I'm never going to find the end to this. There probably isn't one."
Then we found the end. Higher than we could really get to there was a beam, the end of which a beaver or some other furry animal was chewing. "Okay," I said as I was becoming my character, "is there a point to this?"
The beaver started hinting something about a farm and how I needed to help him feed himself for a while. So I got up on the beam, where I learned the shocking truth that he'd been hinting about: by "farm" he actually meant a row of cats that were being raised as food. There were also four little bowls of mushrooms, carrots, onions, and lettuce there. My task was to maximize the potential food. Feed the animals so they get bigger or eat the food and the animals as they are? Um no. All but one of the cats basically turned into, or were possibly eaten by, Travis, Caleb, Petty and Quagmire (my four closest guy friends at the time). The other cat's name was June (a name of one of the characters in Love Medicine). I was holding the precious cat in my arms, petting it, saying that no one could eat this one. It had a funny collar on. At first it stayed in my arms, but then it started to want to leave, but I couldn't let it go because someone might eat it.
This was from my MySpace blog in June of 2007. My mother no longer really holds out much hope that I'll stop being gay. Also, my OCD is no longer a huge presence in my life.
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