OK, finally here is an abbreviated version of my story. I say ‘finally’ because I have lurked here for years and years, and I owe a big thank you to all of you posters that have been a source of support for me for all of this time. Some of the details here are fuzzy, so that I can remain anonymous, I have a number of secrets from my family….
My mother was baptised when I was four, so really ‘the truth’ was all me and my brothers and sisters have ever known. My father didn’t get baptised until years later, but strangely he always supported my mother in her religion. I think he believed it himself, but he had a problem with smoking. When he finally managed to give this up, he got baptised and auxiliary pioneered for a few years, then he died. I was only eleven at the time.
It was difficult being a ‘fatherless boy’, with a controlling mother who was more nun-like than the average nun. We never ever missed a meeting, went preaching at least once every weekend, and spent a lot of time discussing and judging others who were ‘weak’ in ‘the truth’.
There was one elder who looked after me a lot. He studied with me, helped me buy my first car and would have been there if I ever needed him for anything, but I was quite independent and we never really formed much of a bond. Still, he is a nice man and I am grateful especially for the practical help that he always offered, like when my mother’s car or something else broke down, he would always offer help.
When I was nineteen, I had a life changing conversation when I was out door-knocking with an elder. I had spent about ten hours each month for my whole life doing this, and had never really had a conversation that challenged my beliefs at all. Up until that time I completely and utterly believed everything that had been taught to me.
The guy we met at a door on this particular day was an on-and-off study. He was probably in his forties and he had a girlfriend who had started studying and had kicked him out of her house because that was the right thing to do. He apparently started studying so that he could get back together with her. I knew this about him before we met him at the door; I had seen him at the meetings a few times before but had never spoken to him. We only talked for about 30 minutes, and it was so long ago now, that I don’t completely remember the conversation, but he showed us a few original sources for some quotations from the ‘creation’ book. He showed how out of context the quotes were, and I was quite shocked by this. He kept saying that he was 95% sure it was the truth, but there were just a few bits and pieces that made him unsure. He also showed us the picture of Jesus dying on a stake that was in the appendix of the NWT bible, and he had a copy of the original source of this as well. He pointed out that the original source had many diagrams of possible stakes and crosses, but that the NWT had made it sound like the source supported only the stake as a crucifixion device. He asked why would god design lions with digestive systems made for eating raw meat…. There was a lot more to the conversation, but it was about 20 years ago now….
I was really quite shaken as I left, and I think the elder that I was with was the same. He kept saying ‘are you OK with this?’, I knew that I wasn’t OK, but I kept telling him that I was, and we didn't mention it after that. What else could I say? After that I was really quite depressed for a few weeks. I wasn't sure what to do, prayed a lot.
The funny thing is that after that it still took years for me to leave. I went through a long and torturous process of unravelling everything, of trying to make sense of what I was thinking, feeling and learning, while going for months at a time trying not to think about it. I kept going to meetings, giving talks and knocking on doors, but because I was not as convinced as before, I knew that I would never pioneer or go to bethel or become a circuit overseer or any of the other things that I had planned. I guess it was mind control at work.
In my slightly weakened spiritual state, I decided to apply to go to university. When I was accepted, I quit the menial job that I had (it was boring and poorly paid) and found some part time work to support myself. I avoided being given a hard time over this by explaining to people that I had no intention of completing a degree, but I was enrolling in a number of short courses (this was true enough at the time). My mother was not wealthy, which was a big advantage for me because this meant that I could get financial support from the government. I remember having conversations with a number of elders and others who all responded quite differently. Some showed me scriptures and told me that what I was doing was dangerous and a waste of time, but others were quite encouraging.
In spite of me attending (short courses at a) university, I was seen as a very strong publisher and was given a number of ‘privileges’. This of course made me look like decent potential marriage material and got me some unwanted attention from a number of sisters. I don’t mean just a little unwanted, I mean really, really unwanted. (It was years later that I admitted to myself and came to terms with being gay.)
When I finished my university degree I worked locally for a few months and then moved overseas. I joined a new congregation in a new country for about ten months. In the move, my publisher record cards had gone missing and had to be re-sent three times. This made the local elders suspicious of me, but I kept going out witnessing and to most of the meetings, but I was not allowed to give talks. It was there that I finally admitted to myself that I did not believe this at all, that I was kidding myself and everyone else. So I decided to quit cold turkey. I had one phone call from one elder asking what had happened to me and I just told him that I would see him at the next meeting, but I didn’t go. I thought that when I left I would be love bombed, and I thought of changing my phone number to escape the inevitable multitude of worried brothers and sisters. But in the end, there was only one phone call; even though the elders knew that all my family and friends were a million miles away.
It was difficult moving back to my own country and facing my family after that. It was something that we didn’t discuss for quite some time, I just told them I wasn’t going to meetings for awhile, and now they seem to think that I am taking some kind of extended break from being a Witness. I decided to leave the country to work elsewhere again. It’s easier this way. I phone my mother regularly and visit about once each year. She doesn’t know that I am a total apostate and she doesn’t know that I’m gay and that I live with my boyfriend of three years. I know that this will all be revealed one day, but I’m in no hurry to have my family cut me off completely.
My siblings are all witnesses and have each married into big witness families. Their kids are all baptised. Many of them work with other witnesses and have virtually nothing to do with non-believers. (This of course makes it a lot easier to believe that worldly people are worthy of death.)
So in the end (not that this is the end), I see myself as a well-balanced, happy, successful person. I am also extremely lucky. If I had not met that man at the door that showed me what he did, I would have skipped university. If I wasn’t gay, I might have married some elders daughter and never left ‘the truth’.
Thanks for reading, and thanks to the guy that I met at the door who knew more about my religion than I did, and thanks for all your posts over the years.
More later,
escapee