Well, I'm going to do it. Here's my story:
I am the oldest of 5 children. My parents and grandparents ( on my dad's side ) are all JW's.
I was not raised well. My parental units had too many kids, too fast and couldn't look after us all - emotionally, physically, spiritually, or financially. One of the stories my mom used to tell about me was that when my younger brother was born, I lived with another family in the congregation til she could "get it together". I was gone long enough that when my parents came to pick me up, I looked at the new baby and said, "Well, you guys have a really nice baby. Bye!" My mom laughs about how I thought I lived sommewhere else after that. Now, I think it was just wishful thinking on my part.
My parents were definately physically and emotionally abusive to us all. If something broke in the house or whatever happens when you have that many kids, dad would line us all up and spank our hands with his belt, while we held them out. He would go up and down the line over and over til we were all screaming. My mother would sit in the chair and watch. It was usually done at her instigating. I remember having black and blue marks up my arms and on my butt and down the backs of my legs. At one point, I think about Grade 5, the school finally clicked onto what was going on in our household and the school nurse would occasionally call us from our classrooms and check us for bruises. When I was about 13, one of my school friend's moms called the police about our family and we were investigated. But it turned out we were sort of a "border-line" family - no one knew what to do about us. After that, my parents always made sure the windows were closed when they beat us.
At one point we lived in a smaller town, and my mother went to work. My brother and I were left with a "worldly" babysitter who molested me, locked me in a closet every day, locked me in the car a few times and pretended they were going to cut off my hand one time. My mom says I told her about the closet and so she took us to another sitter. I still can hardly read the pedophile stuff on here without getting sick to my stomach. But I have healed alot from where I was when I first confronted this issue in my life.
My dad travelled alot for work, which left us kids with an absent mother. She came home from work, went to her room and closed the door and we were left to fend for ourselves. That was actually a relief because when she was around us, she would tell us how she never wanted kids, she was going to leave and we'd never see her again. I remember being terrified for many years that she would leave us, but when I got to be about 13, it suddenly occurred to me that I didn't care anymore if she left.
We had alot of trouble with the demons when I was growing up. I remember quite a few instances where there was definate demonic activity in our house.
My grandmother told me after I grew up, how she and grampa felt about what was going on. They knew if they said too much to my parents about how us kids were being treated that my parents would cut them off and they would never see any of us again. This is not an idle threat in my family. They do it to each other all the time, to this day. My grama said they would often drive away from our house after visiting us, park around the corner and they would both cry. They did what they could for us. EVERY weekend, one or two of us went to stay at grama and grampa's house - it was heaven!! Such a relief!! Unless dad called and brought you home early for a beating because they just found out you did something wrong.
I believe to this day, that my mother hates me. I don't remember ever being hugged or held by her, she never told us she loved us. It was always just so much hate. One wierd thing that used to happen - sometimes I would come home from school and find that she had gone into my bedroom. She would rip the sheets off the bed, dump all the drawers, take everything off my shelves, empty my entire closet until there was nothing left but the bare furniture. It would all be in a huge pile in the middle of the room. Sometimes she would yell something about me being a pig, but most of the time, she wouldn't say a word. And neither would I. I just would spend the evening putting it all back together.
My parents were inactive from the time I was about 8 until my mother decided she wanted to go to meetings again when I was 14. I don't remember having any feelings about it one way or the other. I always thought I was going to Paradise, like other people thought they were going to heaven. Once we started going to meetings, I realized I probably WASN'T going to paradise. That scared me. I started studying and was baptised when I was 16. About a week before I was baptised, my mother was screaming at me for something and said she was going to call the elders and tell them I had no business getting baptised. Then at my baptism, they played the proud parents. It made me sick.
Just before and just after I got baptised, my parents drifted into inactivity again and I went to the meetings by myself mostly. My mother would tell me that I was just doing it make them look bad.
Just before I got baptised, a brother from BC saw me at a meeting and we started dating. I wasn't all that serious about it, but I guess he was and within a few months asked my dad if he could marry me. My dad said "Yes! Let's go get a ring right now." And they did. Looking back I felt railroaded into it but I also thought it was probably the best thing for me. He was 30 and I was 17 when we got married.
He slapped me a couple of times when we were first married, and then never again. But it set the tone for our marriage. I knew I wasn't allowed to question him on anything. Over the years he would often advance on me with his fists when I angered him and I would immediately back down. Our whole marriage whenever I tired to talk to him about how I felt or how he was making me feel, he would turn it all around so that everything seemed to be MY fault. For many years, I believed him. If I would just try harder!! Do better!! Do more!! Then everything would be okay. One thing I'll tell you, will likely gross you all out. Every time he went to the bathroom ( #2 ) he pooped on the seat and would just leave it there. Sometimes it was worse than other times. When I told him about he, he at first told me I was imagining it. When i showed it to him, he told me it was the kids. When I found out it was HIM and not the kids, he yelled at me that I was "making a big deal about nothing and I should just shut up and clean it up." That one incident should tell you everything about how he treated me and what he thought of me. And for years I did think everything was MY FAULT. And then, I don't know what it was, if I woke up or just grew up, but something happened and I realized, THIS IS NOT ABOUT ME!! HE'S THE ONE WITH THE PROBLEMS!!!
After that, I tried for many years to get him to shape up. I left the magazines out when they had an article about marriage, I read secular marriage books and left them out, with which passages for him to read. NOTHING. His attitude was, "Why should I change? It's not like she can leave me! We're JW's so she's stuck here!" Hahaha! So I left him. One time when the elders wer talking to us, after I left, they asked him, "Did she tell you she was gonna leave if things didn't change?" He said, Yes. They asked, "Then why didn't you change?" his answer? "Cus I never thought she would actually leave." That about sums it up, folks!
Well, that's all I can say for now. Next time, I will tell you how I left his sorry ass.
Thanks for listening, everybody. I appreciate it.