At a certain point, you just get tired of Watchtower-bashing. I kinda miss the awesomeness my life had when things were more normal. When I didn't know about being in a cult. I could sit there at home and watch movies to my heart's content, and nobody in particular harassed me so long as I made 6-10 hours a month--except the Thought Police checking up on me to see if I'd stopped looking at porn. Which I hadn't.
Now, it's like...all of that normalcy is gone. It was a twisted kind of normal, but...at least...I don't know. Now, I'm married, broke as a joke, and can't do anything beyond go to sleep once I get home from work. Can barely afford to rent movies, much less buy 'em. I miss that.
Now that I'm out, what now? I don't know how to enjoy life. My wife...it's so hard to hang in there with her. She believes in it. It's hard to even listen to her about mundane things because I'm so fixated on and disturbed by having spent my whole life in a cult. It still seems so impossible. How could it happen to me?
I did think of starting a ministry of my own, maybe hitting up YouTube or something, maybe trying to team up with the 4Jehovah.org ministry team--except I don't accept all their ideas, so...probably can't happen. I'm overwhelmed with a wife and kid who both refuse to just sit still and chill out. I can't seem to concentrate. My wife tells me 5 different things and I can never remember them or it just doesn't register. I ended up late for work because she told me to take her somewhere before work and I had no memory at all of her saying that, I mean none. What's wrong with me? Do I not care? Am I so distracted by being here or by realizing I'm in a cult that I literally can't think about anything else?
I don't want to be self-centered. I'm just...exhausted all the time, unable to give my family the quality time they deserve. I'm bored with this job and the commute is way too long. But I don't know if it's a good idea to look for anything else in these uncertain times. A bird in the hand, they say?
I think I'm having a bit of Stockholm syndrome. I could choose to appeal the elders' decision if I do it by Sunday. But how the heck could I demonstrate repentance? I'd have to acknowledge the 'faithful slave class' and that the JWs are 'God's organization'. But my logic circuits went mad trying to go along with this cancerous thinking. I couldn't recruit people into this. The moral responsibility involved in that is staggering. It would be very wrong for me to go back, even for family. Family doesn't know yet, most of them. Don't know how to tell them.
Wondering if it's the only way I'll get to have intimacy with my wife again. It's been almost a month since the last marital due, and...we've not been married that long (almost 4 months). Now the kid's in bed with us these days. My wife doesn't even want me to touch her anymore. I'm usually bowled over with surprise if she gives me a hug. I'm supposed to talk to her about my need for affection from her, and maybe...I haven't done much for her needs apart from being the sole provider and a father-figure to the kid. But maybe I'm not much of a real husband. I come home so tired that I can barely eat dinner. I keep forgetting stuff she tells me or it's like I don't remember her telling me about it at all. I want to listen to her. I want to.
Is there an unconscious part of me that's ignoring her because she's the one who turned me in, set me up for being expelled? I don't know if I still have resentment over that betrayal. I know she didn't see it as a betrayal, and never will. ...
What I find particularly sad is those moments in the day when I daydream about the love we used to share, used to make together. I'm fantasizing about my own wife, as if she's the unattainable girl I fell for in high school.
I wanted to take her to see the orchids that are on display. Or to that restaurant we never got to go to for our 'honeymoon', which consisted mostly of shopping for necessary household items and one meal at a Chinese restaurant.
I'm asking for a lot of advice, aren't I? I shouldn't be. I'm just feeling a little down today, remembering...how the men I most respected in my life now treat me as a non-person. Perhaps I only feared them. But brothers don't fear each other. Not in a normal relationship. Only in an abusive one.
Was it really a cult? Why did they make up all this stuff? Nobody's really getting rich off of it. Is it just a power thing? Or just something that people inherited from the original power-mongers?
I messed up my life so badly. I hope my wife leaves me someday. I didn't deserve to get her back. I wasn't up to the challenge.
I was supposed to stay morally clean to make this stand, not be put on trial for the very things I vowed I would never do in life. All those tears my wife cried, she cried because of me, because I didn't treat her as a sister with chasteness. What right do I have to criticize corruption in this religion when I'm no less dirty than they are?
I'm no longer one of Jehovah's Witnesses. I don't think I ever really earned the title anyway. It was my mother's religion, and I just went along with it.
I can't even say goodbye to my family because I don't know how. No matter what, I'll always be the villain. I deserve to be alone. It doesn't matter if those people think I'm unhappy or not. I was unhappy amongst them, and I'm still unhappy. The only thing that's changed is my religious affiliation.
There's nothing left for them to take because it doesn't matter what they take. I wasn't a friend to anyone on the inside. And probably only a rare few were genuinely friends with me. The only one I know of who fits firmly into that category is dead now. He died never knowing what was really going on, in fact died as a zealous proclaimer of the Society's version of the good news.
I can't help wondering if this knowledge was worth its price. I may never produce an heir to it, with my wife. She will never allow me to teach her daughter, and any other children we might have, she would claim as belonging to her, and to the religion. My knowledge, the years of struggles to reach this point--all of that will die with me. Rendered irrelevant in the stream of time, just another speck of lint on its immense fabric.
For that it matters, I might as well have believed it. Because none of what we do here really matters. All the good, it's just a band-aid on a cancer. ...
I'm sorry. Just feeling a little depressed today. No point in it. You folks, and many others, have real problems. You all take care.
--SD-7