[To all those who followed the first eight chapters of my story, thank you. It's very healing for me to write all this. I had fooled myself that my story was done after Chapter 8, but it really wasn't. Please bear with me as I see how many more it takes to finish this where it must be finished. Love, -dp]
Chapter 1: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/155373/1.ashx
Chapter 2: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/155429/1.ashx
Chapter 3: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/155490/1.ashx
Chapter 4: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/155940/1.ashx
Chapter 5: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/156292/1.ashx
Chapter 6: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/156570/1.ashx
Chapter 7: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/156717/1.ashx
Chapter 8: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/156949/1.ashx
Chapter 9: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/162910/1.ashx
Chapter Ten
I heard a knock at the door. It was someone I didn’t want to speak to, someone I hoped I would never see again. I opened the door and, with only a sense of polite obligation, let them say a few things. But at the first opportunity I ushered them away. Then, on another day, someone else came. It was the same as before: I let them make their point, then huffed a quick retort and showed them the door. Again and again they came, and again and again I refused to entertain them, or to even express the confusion I had over what they said. But each time I sent them on their way, the words they spoke while in my house lingered and accumulated into a heavy, yet transparent cloud. It started to follow me wherever I went.
The great tragedy of worshiping God as a Jehovah’s Witness, and being led by the “faithful and discreet slave,” is the loss of spiritual intimacy. This is the beginning; because all other intimacies—trust, love, physical affection, and forgiveness—are enslaved along with the spirit of a person when he resigns his heart and mind to the men who assume the power to deem what is right and wrong.
James was going to married and I would be his best man, just as he had been at my wedding. But one weekend he and his fiancé went on a trip to visit some family friends, and during the trip they committed fornication. There were technical details that were hashed and rehashed over and over again by a series of judicial hearings in our congregation, and I could tell it was wearing heavily on James. I was angry at him and I was angry at the elders without admitting it. Someone was taking my best friend away from me, and all I could do was to hold onto Angela and let my eyes drip tears over her shoulder so she wouldn’t see.
James said the elders had no right to ask the questions they did, that even with it being a classified as a “gross” sin, it wasn’t any of their business. I let him talk about it, but still held the righteous ground. After all, I had always been the stronger one spiritually, or at least I thought so, and I think he thought so too. He was going to be reproved, but his fiancé would be disfellowshiped. She had been disfellowshiped once before, and it was easier for her frustration to well up, as well as that of the elders’. James and I discussed this over many beers, and the conversation turned to the act itself. He said he had never realized that oral sex was from the demons, as was shown by the scriptures and Watchtower articles that the elders showed him.
They were going to wait to have the wedding until she was reinstated, but when she sent in her letter to the elders to be considered for reinstatement she was refused. So they decided to marry in their shunned state, away from the congregations, without an elder to give the service, with only their parents present. After the wedding, they moved to another town and congregation, and I began to see James less and less as they carried on with their new life and Angela and I carried on with ours.
Throughout my first two years of college I found many voices to express all that I had been through. In addition to the brief role I played in drama class, I painted, wrote, and studied nature. I only completed a few paintings, but in one of them I was able to successfully do what I set out to do, and it hangs on our wall today. In writing however, there were more failures than successes, and perhaps because of this I took to it with compulsion. Simply wanting to write and to have written gave way to absolutely needing to do so, and continually; unforgiving of my repeated and desperate failures to complete anything, or to get to the point and say what I really wanted to say. To be recognized also gave way, but only to the greater madness of being under the threat of implosion if I did not recognize myself, carving out little grotesque things from the surface of my skin, going deeper and deeper to discover the really good things. And when each gruesome surgery was performed, the brief respite from pain and the high which came would barely get me through to the next episode.
And yet, I found a way to continue to carry out my congregational duties and to perform in school, and of course, to grow together with my young wife, which was perhaps the most challenging thing of all, but also the most rewarding. Her presence gave me everything; her laughter, her unabashed grin, her unconquerable spirit, her constant expressions of affection, her child-like mischievousness, her desire to see the best in every moment of life. She was the best I could have ever had, and better than what I could have ever chose for myself: perhaps this was the foremost indicator that not all in my life was left up to chance.
Out of the blue my father—my real father—called Angela and I and asked us to go on a trip with them. They wanted to go visit my brother back at Bethel and they wanted us to fly back and meet them all. My father had never met Angela before, and none of us had spent any substantial amount of time together for a couple years or so, since I was in the hospital. My father wanted to pay for everything; he bought our tickets, sent us some spending money, and arranged for him and my brother to pick us up from the airport in Newark, the same place where I arrived for my Bethel assignment five years ago. We packed our bags and went.
We arrived in the airport and walked through the corridors to meet my father and brother. There they were; so much alike: their noses, their physique, their boyish grins, their stance. They greeted us and then we left the airport and drove up to the Farm.
The last time I left there I refused to turn my head to look back, and instead looked at it through the side-view mirror as we rolled over the hills. I was curious to feel what I would when we saw it again: whether I would feel that yearning for it, and if I would, if I would be able to discern if it was for it itself, or for the youth I spent there. The memories danced across my eyes. Carrying my heavy laundry bag from the outside residential building to the laundry depository on my way to morning worship, finishing a long day of work and hurrying to catch my ride to the meeting, waking up early and watching the sunrise throw its grandeur onto the granite cliffs of the ridge, moving pallets of fruit around in the cellar as I drowned in the cool crisp odor of freshly-picked apples, and finally, stamping my name in the snow on a clear morning.
Those memories were real; they happened; but they were immobile; I could not drag them back to somehow recapture that feeling of wonder and life and love, that immense love of everything in my world. So I didn’t try. I looked at Bethel through the eyes of I had at the moment. I liked the idea of what I saw, and I would have probably given it a another chance if the circumstances were right, but somewhere deep inside me something told me to let it go, to move on, to not taint the memories I had created with any over-eagerness of today and spoil them in the process.
We traipsed around the countryside, spent a few days upstate, and then finished in Manhattan and New Jersey. On our last night we went out to dinner at a mall and walked around for a bit afterward. I have never got over the strange but vaguely familiar feeling of being with my father. Even now, after not seeing him several years, I can conjure up the smell of his old worn flannel and denim, hear the springy seats in trucks, touch the broken radio dials, see the grass stains on his knees, the toothpicks above his ear, forgotten, and listen and try not to giggle at the endless stream of witticisms and bad jokes. Those were my most valuable and meaningful memories of him as a boy, and although they may be forever out of reach, they do come back occasionally and relive me.
We—all of us—strolled about the mall, laughing and joking, and then Angela saw a shop where you could go and create your own stuffed bear. While the others were waiting, her and I went in and picked one out, watched it get stuffed and stitched up and “brought to life.” We named it Fergussen, misspelled and all, and carried it back to our hotel. Little did we know how much of a role in our family he—Fergussen—would play.
This particular trip was a blip on the radar screen. It was completely out of the ordinary, and although there are plenty of things I could talk about in reference to it, I prefer to let it lie in the background, untouched by the revisions of recollection other than what I’ve said above. My father went back to his life, and later moved to “where the need is greater” to help out a new congregation in another state. My brother and his wife returned to their life at Bethel, until just a year or so later when they were asked to leave. This was part of a larger downsizing Bethel had been going through, although at the time, it was referred to as “streamlining.” Whatever they called it though, the implications were the same: people who had been there all their adult lives were now asked to leave with no money, few prospects of making a living, and a heart full of trepidation. They were just one couple out of many who, in a matter of days, were forced to find a place to live and a hope of work. They settled in the South, and my mother and step-father would soon follow to move near them.
Despite the fractured nature of our upbringings, Angela and I highly valued the household we were creating and knew we would have to devote a lot of time and energy to make it into what we wanted. We disagreed on hardly anything, and found many ways to understand each other when we couldn’t immediately do so. One of these ways was with Fergussen. He spoke when one of us wasn’t able, and by his trying to explain things in the best way he could, we were better able to understand and explain things ourselves. He took on his own personality, and also his own daily activities. Eventually, he came to represent our young love, the potentiality we had, and our yearnings for a household of our own with our own children, routines, and life. Through all that we imbued through him to each other, he came to represent the best parts of our relationship and what we wanted for each other. Eventually, neither of us could see him sitting on the couch, on the bed, or on the window sill, contentedly looking out into the flowers, without seeing those best parts of ourselves. This was one of the most precious things we had together, what we created, and perhaps because of it, it made the changes we would soon go through a little easier. It also made the bad things that threatened our marriage harder to accept.
I believe every man, somewhere deep down inside, wants, and needs, to be the hero of his own world. Most of those who commit crimes against others are the ones who have had their hopes dashed to bits, or at least had hopes too high and risked their power when they were yet infantile and fragile in the face of this world’s elements of chaos. In other words, there are those who need to make a difference, and those who have given up trying, and, heaven forbid, those who have such a need to make a difference in any way they can that they have assigned their powers over to the forces of evil. Perhaps this is an overly-simplistic, comic book style of interpreting the world. But wanting to be more powerful than they really are has always been true of men, in every society and every age. Those raised as Jehovah’s Witnesses are no different. And to be told that this world is hopeless, already under the power of Satan, that nothing can be done but go around to people’s doors and leave tracts in the jams, that those trusting in themselves and in their own power for good and in the rightness of what their hearts tell them are wrong, creates a state of fatal hopefulness, because those only hoping in others and never trusting in their own power cannot know that each of us holds the key to our own madness, and by extension, that of the world’s. Most likely, this was the first thing I refused to believe in: that I was powerless. As I attended school and spent time contemplating my life and how I was changing as a man and husband, I realized that I had already escaped death by chance; what else in my life would I leave up to chance? I couldn’t just keep floating along with a vague sense that Jehovah was watching me and everything would be alright. Because it wasn’t alright; everything had been taken from me, because I had willfully given it up, despite it being spared in the end. I had made my sacrifice, I cut it out of my heart; I wouldn’t fool myself that it could be repaired without many deep wounds. I had spent time in the bone-white tower, breathing in the exhalation of Death, attempting to escape its shadow and break away into the sea. It was my brief purgatory, and I was unexpectedly given a ticket to go back into the world for a time: damned if I wouldn’t take it as far as I could go before I had to go back.
After completing most of my general education, I settled on the career path that would serve us best. I had briefly considered doing what I most wanted to do—to major in English—but this was lost among the hundred other practical considerations like money, health insurance, and job opportunities, if and when we moved. So I chose a major in the architectural field, after realizing that the math classes I would have to complete for engineering would set me back another two years before I could transfer to a four-year college. Angela and I toured a couple colleges that I could transfer to, and our decision was soon made. It was a very well known school in the West, the tuition was affordable, and it was in a nice town.
It was an enormous leap out of my socio-economic background, but my acceleration through junior college increased my self-confidence in reaching my goal of earning a bachelor’s degree. Also, I think, it was a way for me to distance myself from my family and what roots I had. I would be the first college graduate in my family if I finished, doing something that no one else I knew had done. This desire to exceed beyond that expected for me cascaded and fueled my desperate desire to go as far as I could in life; to take me far away from those whom I tried so agonizingly not to be like. The foul taste of my family’s dysfunctions was still fresh in my mouth, and my brush with death only revived my boyhood urges to take myself as far away from it all as I could, mentally, emotionally, physically, and now even spiritually. But I wasn’t there yet. The cloud over my head grew, but I didn’t acknowledge its presence until after we moved to our new town, about six hours away in southern California.
We adapted to our new surroundings quickly: Angela got a job waiting tables at a nice restaurant that paid better than any she had previous. I got involved with my hectic new schedule, adapting to the higher standards of my school but excelling just as I had before. I began winning awards, was on the Dean’s list every term, and assisted my professors in several extra-curricular projects. I became known as a serious student, asking teachers the tough questions, perhaps putting them on the spot more than I needed to. But increasingly, I couldn’t take anyone’s word for the truth. I had to test them on the things they were teaching me, for whether it was, in fact, true or not, and also whether they believed it themselves. The results were always interesting, and sometimes astounding. In this way, school made me a better learner and a better person. I was still loyal to what I was taught about God, but I couldn’t refuse higher learning the good things it was showing me about the world. I defended what I was learning to those who were critical and skeptical of its value. Some of my friends scoffed at my academic progress; neither understanding the process that was involved in getting a degree, nor having any sense of value for the things which they knew little of. It wasn’t soon, however, before I had to accept the fact that this view was encouraged by the Watchtower Society. And when they published a particularly offensive Watchtower article, stopping superficially short of completely vilifying higher education, my head swam with contradictory feelings, until finally I looked up at the cloud that had been following me the past couple of years and accepted the presence of my own doubts.
On hands and knees, I tried feebly to put back together a shattered pane of glass before anyone could see its state of devastation. I was angry at myself, saddened at the loss, and scared that someone would hurt themselves on its razor-sharp shards. More than anything I was humiliated, like a child wetting his pants after pushing on an emergency exit door. I didn’t want anyone to see the fragility of my faith, the fact that all the sudden I was questioning everything I knew: whether the Society simply didn’t know what they were talking about, or whether they didn’t care if they were using inaccurate information and false logic to make their point. I tried to piece together the fragments of my faith, but as soon as it was all smashed apart like that, nothing but make-believe could have put it back together again. Was I to blame? I thought Jehovah gave us what we needed to maintain our spiritual life. This line of thought was always used as a substitute for watching over us physically. Well, I had been handed over to physical mutilation and mind-altering time in that nether-world, and, after returning to the world of men, and knowing the empty terror of death, had thought that at least I would always have what I needed spiritually. But that so-called spiritual food was what broke apart my faith—so who was to blame?
I began to voice my frustration about my doubts to Angela. One time we were walking back from our book study, which was only a few blocks away from our house, and I was talking about how something in the study bothered me. Suddenly, she snapped: “Well what now, you don’t believe in the faithful slave? Is that what you’re going to tell me? I can’t believe you’re saying this….” After hearing her go on, I knew that whatever I was going through mentally and spiritually I was going to have to go through it alone. I wish I had known then where it would take me, because those early chances at understanding fade quickly, and despite risking the agony of failed communication, I would have pressed harder when it was fresh for both of us.
I was still a ministerial servant, giving public talks and conducting parts in the weekly meetings. For a brief period I just wiped all my doubts off the table and tried to forget about it, going through the motions of worship as a Witness. But it didn’t work for very long, because all the things I previously accepted were now subject to scrutiny. I couldn’t not think about them and try to make sense out of them—if they were so plainly wrong in one aspect, using false reasoning and manipulative argumentation, they may be in other matters. The subject of higher education was brought up yet again at a special weekend school for elders and servants. They briefly interviewed a brother who had gone to college when in the world but then never obtained a job in his chosen field, and now, forty years later, had no use for his degree.
I started missing meetings and getting replacements for the parts I had in the programs. I stopped going out in field service, being not nearly strong enough to go and convince others that I had the truth. Every day was a new revelation as my mind discovered so many fallacies and inconsistencies in what the Society taught. I tried to read the Bible and just take its word for truth, but all the layers upon layers of interpretations and explanations I had been exposed to, and had taught others myself, concealed any base meaning of the words themselves. And then all the things people had said about doubts they had, or the things they were upset about in the religion came crashing in on me. All those I knew over the years who only attend the annual memorial, those who never went out in service, who only came with their wives or mothers, those who never expressed anything about the faith… I could see them clearly, and see why they did what they did. It was because they were trying to go on with it, for someone else maybe, or because for some reason they couldn’t let go of it themselves, perhaps out of guilt or fear. Suddenly I was one of them. And I could hardly believe it. All my life I had believed in the one true faith, the one road to salvation, the one rough path which led to that narrow, closing door. I had spent my youth and everything I had preparing myself to squeeze through. My world was now devastated, mangled, and I carried it with me, in my stomach, not knowing whether to defecate or vomit to purge all its senselessness and mad perception.
I simultaneously clung to and receded from Angela. She was the only person in the world I trusted, and the only person in the world who could hope to understand what I was going through. But she couldn’t understand; because understanding meant accepting the plausibility that I was on to something.
I set up a meeting with two elders in my hall and they came over to my house one evening when Angela was away working. For some reason I hadn’t told her about the meeting. There are some things I’ve done, or thought, in my life that I’ve not told her. Not out of shame that I did anything wrong, but probably because I don’t know what actions of mine will cause pain and which ones won’t. The elders came in and sat down, them on the couch and me behind my desk in a chair. We prayed together and they said they had read the email I sent them about wanting to step aside as a ministerial servant. I had also written in the email about the higher education issue, but hadn’t mentioned any other reason I had for rejecting the faith altogether. I just wanted it limited to my status as a ministerial servant being changed, and to my being stumbled by that single issue. They defended the Watchtower article through all the stretched quotes and nonsensical reasoning, and I quickly gave up trying to get them to see the absurdity of it. Both of them had college degrees, and in some sense I trusted that they would acquiesce and admit the article was a lot of garbage, but this sense was false. Their glazed eyes and well-practiced voice modulations told of their dissonance. I settled for admonishment, their acceptance of my resignation, and a prayer to close the meeting. I had no doubt that they were truly concerned for my spiritual welfare: I’m sure they had seen similar situations play out before; they knew that one question leads to many others. Their own tactic had been to not ask themselves the questions which they knew led to the others, at least not outside of the bathroom, in the shower, naked and alone with water pouring down their back. I had questioned in those moments, and, thinking of this while closing the door after they left, I refused to believe neither of them had also done so.