I'd recaptured the "community," (or, perhaps, better said: the "community" had recaptured me). My wife and I were invited to one party after another, old friends, and new friends. Indeed, there was a considerable degree of subliminal suspicion about me; after all, I'd been DFd, and who knew what I really thought? But they, and I, set those concerns aside. Life was again good, and somehow I found yet another psychological reason to set aside all the disappointments of my last 20 years with the WTS.; don't ask me why, or how, but I did.
Then, a really nasty thing reared it's head: the wife of an elder said that her husband had been having an affair with my wife, for at least 2 years.
I couldn't believe it, if for not that I'd known all these people (including the elder and his wife) since we were all teenagers. In fact, after spending a couple of years as a warehouseman, and then another couple of years as a self-employed janitor (yes, the good old "JW janitor" thing), I finally was offered a "respectable" job by this very elder, in his construction company. And, fwiw, I'd always considered his wife to be a snooty little bitch, born into a JW family that expected only the "best" for their children. So, I discounted her accusations as being just another evidence of her dissatisfaction with the otherwise considerable financial success of her husband.
This became a hurricane. There were two committees: one in the congregation of the elder (5 members on the committee there), and another committee in the congregation that my wife and I were now attending. We bounced like pingpong balls between the two, meeting after meeting, question after question.
In the "elders" congregation, there were almost a dozen witnesses against him. Among other things, these witnesses said that they had found one of my wife's dresses in their mother's closet. I was asked to identify it. How the heck was I to know? Did I inventory my wife's dresses? Jesus. They said that they had seen her car parked outside on a certain night, but failed to take photographs. That night, I was working late, and had no reason whatsoever to think that anything was amiss: she was home when I got home.
After a couple of hours of this kind of testimony, the chairman of the committee turned to me and asked what I thought. I said (and this is a quote): "If there is any man (and I had heartfelt emphasis in my voice when I said this) on this planet with whom I would trust my wife, it would be (this elder)."
That ended the meetings. However, based on the circumstantial evidence, he was removed as an elder, and an announcement to that effect was made at the next SM.
Then, about a week later, one of the committee elders called me, to ask if he could meet with me and my wife. Of course, I agreed; I thought it was all a done deal, and that he was going to tell me that the wife of (this elder) had confessed that all these accusations were mere fabrications.
When he arrived, he asked me to sit down.
My wife was sitting beside him.
He told me that she had confessed that it was all true: she'd been having an affair with this elder all during my DF period, and since, and had even before then had designs upon him (since he had a whole lot more money than did I).
I was blown back into my chair, as if someone had just hit me in the face with a baseball bat. I was stunned, beyond any words I can offer to describe how I felt.
She ran out the door, and, after a few utterly meaningless words, the elder left...and I was alone.
In one fell swoop, everything that I'd hoped for, and struggled for, to rejoin a community, was shattered into the smallest of pieces, ripped to shreads. In the one mere microsecond that it took for that elder's words to pass across the floor, I'd lost the wife of my virgin youth, I'd lost the vast majority of my employment, I'd lost yet another friend, and I'd lost my dignity as a man. I never again set my foot into either of those Kingdom Halls, for shame of myself.
And, as I struggled up the stairs to the bedroom, in that lonely vacant house that was once my home, I wondered why I would ever bother to set my foot again onto the ground of this miserable planet.
I opened the lower drawer of my dresser drawer, and pulled out the 0.38 Special I'd bought many years before (for target practice). I checked to make sure it was loaded, laid myself on the bed, pulled back the cock, and put the barrel up into my mouth.
As I pulled on the trigger, my religious fears overcame me: I was about to destroy any chance I had for a resurrection.
In spite of the fact that my guts were eating themselves right out from inside me, like a pain that I'd never ever experienced, and didn't think I could ever survive...I put the gun down.
There are just a very few days, or nights, that I will remember till the day I do finally die...but this one was by far the ultimately worst of everything I'd ever experienced, till then, or since then.