Has anyone lost a friend or known of someone who committed suicide over BORG-induced guilt?

by Alpaca 64 Replies latest jw friends

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  Alpaca

  I am not going to use any names for this because I don't want to cause potential hurt to anyone.

  There was a very nice family in my congregation when I was a teenager. Step-dad, Mom, and her 4 kids. The dad became an elder, had a great business, the mom spent lots of time with the kids. The oldest was a boy with cerebral palsey and he was just the kindest, most helpful kid you can imagine. The two youngest were girls--also very nice, kind and lots of laughs.

  The second oldest was also a boy about a year younger than I was. We got to be really good friends and did lots of Dub stuff together like volunteering at the conventions for food service and "security." (What a laugh, huh?) Anyway, he eventually married a girl from our congregation and they moved out west somewhere and had a daughter. We did not keep in touch, but both sets of their parents were still in the area so they occasionally informed me of how things were going with the couple.

  The marriage got rocky, he got into drugs and motorcycles, they separated and got back together a bunch of times and then finally got divorced. While all of this was going on he would also make attempts to go back to living life as a Dub (of course at the urging of his mother), do it for months or maybe a year or two. There were many reasons I think he made attempts to return to being a Dub, not the least of which was that he loved his older brother and knew that someday he would have the responsibility of caring for him. This was how the whole decade of his 20s went.

  He finally snapped and committed suicide. I don't know for sure, but I think he was one of those people that just couldn't sever the BORG's control over himself, and I think he thought he could never be good enough and would end up dying up at Armageddon anyway. Of course, the drugs probably didn't help, but I also firmly believe that was his way of drowning the cognitive dissonance--just the way all of the heavy closet drinkers in the BORG do.

  My friend's suicide broke my heart and in my mind I could never release the BORG from their responsibility in this.
• 

  AllTimeJeff

  My brother, Jonathan, was DF'd at 18. He was gay, got addicted to drugs, and because he had no support group thanks to the shunning, slowly descended into his own personal hell. He od'd on pills 10 years ago.

  Many of Jon's problems were of his own making for sure, but he got zero support, thanks to and because of the borg.
• 

  Alpaca

  Wow!!!

  Jeff,

  I am so sorry for your loss.

  The torture that gays and lesbians must go through being raised in the BORG is one of the many things in pile of evidence that convinced me that the BORG is evil and without compassion.

  Thanks for sharing a painful experience.

  Alex
• 

  shamus100

  Just pray the gay away.

  I knew of one person that killed himself. Not a personal friend by any means.
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  Scully

  I came very close to it. Things happened at the 1994 Memorial™ that sent me over the edge. I felt like I needed to kill myself to save Jehovah the trouble of destroying me at Armageddon™.

  By the end of that year, after getting appropriate medical attention, I decided that I was no longer going to be a JW.
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  OUTLAW

  This thread reminds me of a New`s Report I heard decades ago................I was driving to work one morning,listening to the news..It was an odd piece of news that caught my attention..Docters were amazed that a Jehovah`s Witness lady,had "Willed" herself to death......That was a wierd thing to hear on the radio..

  ...OUTLAW
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  cawshun

  I have a friend, not jw, who has a friend that is not a jw but the wife was, she raised the kids as Jw's. They boy commited suicide at age 17. The dad was furious ( he was divorced from the mother at the time). He said his son couldn't live with the guilt of not measuring up, feeling like he was never going to be good enough to be the perfect jw. How sad a life wasted for what?
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  Scully

  Makena1 & Sabine's daughter.

  Cruzanheart's dad. http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/jw/friends/47058/1/My-father-is-dead

  http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/social/current/30238/1/SUICIDE-IN-KH-PARKING-LOT

  http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/jw/friends/107021/1/Sad-news-from-Maui
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  Alpaca

  Thank you Scully for your personal experience and the links.

  Good to hear your life is going well now that your out of the BORG.

  Thank you Cawhun...very, very sad.
• 

  no more kool aid

  Yes, I have known several JW's that have committed suicide. I used to work in mental health and knew of many more JW suicides that I didn't know personally. Most of the cases I knew were bipolar or depressed folks who just felt they could live up to the unreal expectations of the organization. Another area the society has totally flip flopped on, think of all the people who suffered in the past because they should not seek the help of a psychiatrist. I've also seen witness suicide funerals treated differently. One case had a big KH talk and dinner afterward and other ones with just a few family members at a funeral home (elders would not give the talk). By far the worst must be the poor soul who discovers he or she is gay, unless they have a pretty strong sense of self, I can see why they feel they have no other recourse.