My future brother in law (FutureBro) is a great guy, as I’ve mentioned. He really cares about people, doesn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. Yet, now he was trapped between doing the right thing, and possibly losing his parents.
My sister is very stressed now, with wedding plans and this mess on her hands, with us being the focus of her wedding plans, and not herself.
FutureBro sat me down one evening not long ago, and picked my brain for an hour or two about why I left being a witness. He even knows that I post here and consider myself an ex-JW.
We talked for a while, and he understood my pain. He went through a lot of the same things himself. But he didn’t understand how I could just leave friends behind. I answered that conditional friends are no friends at all, and better have the pain of loss now, than twenty or thirty years from now, when it would be so much harder to start over.
I told him that I didn’t want to compromise, and that he and my sister were the top priority in my extended (outside of my wife) family right now.
I told him that I didn’t give a goddamn about his spirituality, nor did I have a religious ego to bruise him with. I wasn’t involved in the moral fashion show any more, and never would be again. I told him I was no longer a witness, along with my wife, and that if he didn’t want us in the wedding, I would understand.
He said, “Ashi, I love you guys. You’ve been the only people to stick up for your sister, and me and I won’t forget that. Disfellowshipped or not, I’d never stop hanging out with you guys. I know you’re right….”
He put his hand on my shoulder, and I knew that I wouldn’t lose him or my sister in the ensuing religious battles.
Now, it started getting ugly. Elders were calling my father, bullying him into trying to trick me into calling the elders, and such. Unfortunately, my father is an open book, and his attempts always failed.
One time my father started a phone conversation with those familiar words, “Ashi, I wanted to talk to you about something….”
“Yeah?”
He proceeded to tell me that the elders had told him that I was like Korah. I told my father that I wasn’t doubting headship, but questioning corruption and criminal activity. (As to my molested friend.)
The conversation was one sided----all of the talking was done by me. I spent about an hour smashing every one of my father’s preconceived opinions about religion, and told him what a Christian person should really be like. I gave him examples of people I knew, of their corruption, of all of the pedophiles in my wife’s old congregation that never cowered in the dock, the sex, the scandals that I kept under my hat for so long. I explained that I didn’t want anyone to speak to me again about the Witness hypocrites who care for their own kind only, and who love to propagate religious racism in it’s worst form.
As I was having this heated discussion with him, the other line beeped in. I switched over, and LO AND BEHOLD it was an elder!! Who hadn’t called in two years!! What a coincidence!!!
“Hello, is AshiDad there?”
They knew very well that this part of NJ was a different local area code than my father’s.
“No, this is his son.”
“Oh!! Hello, Ashi!!! This is Brother Y!! How are you?”
“Nice, but I’m on the other line with my father….can you call back?”
“Sure, but I was just wondering if it would be possible for us to get together soon with another elder and talk.”
“Suurree,” I said slowly, “that’s a possibility. Go ahead and give me a call in a few minutes, ok?”
“But…”
“A few minutes, cause I’m on the other line with my father.”
“Ok Ashi…”
I got off and switched back to my father. I was a little more than irritated.
“Hey dad! Guess who cheerily graced my other line?!?!”
He knew. I told him never to assume I needed help again, and that if any elders called, they were going to get an earful. You know what? Not ONE call since.
A few weeks later a couple of elders came to the door. When I queried the knock, the two people answered, “the elders!”
I said to my wife, loud enough for them to head, “Don’t open the door…..we’re busy.”
When she asked why I wouldn’t open up, I said, “If they’re calling as THE ELDERS, they’re no longer the men I knew. No matter who they are, they should say, Frankie Thomas, or Harold Billings, or Joe Blow. They don’t care about us anymore, so they toss their titles at us to scare us into opening up. I won’t play their game.”
She was a little irritated, but now she agrees that it was the right thing to do.
That was it.
I always considered the witnesses like those kids in high school, you know, that clique that you always wanted to belong to. Well, you finally get in, and you realize what assholes they are. Then you leave. Like children, they don’t talk to you anymore, because you’re not exactly like them. The Witnesses are the same way……displaced High School kids, still pissed that everybody won’t listen to them, that their club isn’t the best.
My apostasy was almost complete. I posted here on JWD, pissed off the elders, complained about an anointed PO who had it in for me because I wanted to expose his corruption, converted my family members back to reality, and continued to make life interesting for the people still in. All of my enemies are high-profile. Yet, they’ve done nothing but label me apostate. How do I know for sure?
Several nights ago, my FutureBro was summoned before three elders and his still-influential father. They started to brow-beat him for not kicking us out of the wedding. They started to slander my wife and I, and besides that said that we were definitely apostates. Now, these are men I have never met, even seen before. Yet they know of my ‘demonic’ reputation. That says something about the nerve I’ve struck, I think.
But, God bless him, FutureBro stood up for us and called them liars for calling us apostates. He told them that they had no idea of the real story, and that their opinions were made up of only half-truths.
He made them angry, because he wouldn’t answer their questions about what we said and do.
One elder slammed him hand on the table with every one of these words,
“WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT ASHI AND WATER GODDESS!!!!”
Good man that he is, my FutureBro wouldn’t budge.
So, now, I’ve got the whole calvary after me, picking people for details they can use against me. My father knows they’ve formally labeled me apostate, but he won’t cooperate, so he’s out. My mother…..don’t make me laugh. And my in-laws, who you’d think would be the first to cooperate with a Judicial Committee, wants their daughter to divorce me and for her to come back to the fold, so refuse won’t appear before a committee to DF us. So, they have only whispers from other people, my sister and FutureBro. And those two made it clear to them that it’s none of their business.
Have I won?
Well, my mother is out. My sister just said she doesn’t want to be a Witness anymore. FutureBro has already said he doesn’t want to be a witness anymore. Out of my wife’s family, only one brother and her parents are still in. Besides that, we’ve opened up her extended family again, and she’s been seeing people she thought she’d have to cut off forever. I love seeing her around them. Sometimes I feel guilty for not trying to preserve more readily her history, but she does have it in those non-JW relatives, which is everyone but her parents. I think my wife will be ok, once this wedding is over.
You know, I’m only 22. Most twenty-two year olds are just starting their first jobs after college, and not even close to some of the milestones I’ve had. It’s been bizarre. In a lot of ways, it’s been wonderful.
My family is out, I’ve severed my ties with JWs, AND they can’t DF me. It’s like a dream, to get what you want. No matter what I’ve gone through, I know some of you guys have had it a lot worse.
The emotional rigor was exhausting in trying to leave. The guilt was worse, but finding the real truth about the truth was all worth it. Now there’s nothing to stand in the way of my wife and I, no petty differences about how to give a talk, what movies to watch, what clothes to wear. We can do what God (if he exists) wants us to do---live.
In the JW’s, questions, (after you’ve been in a while), are evil. But, all questions are beautiful, and can only open us up to better things, if we’re willing to be free.
I know a lot of ex-JW’s who immediately go to another tight-fisted religion. Why? Perhaps they need that control----some people NEED direction; all I know is that I don’t.
I wanted to write these things down so that maybe a few lurkers can get away from constant castigation, and enter into true freedom. I couldn’t care less about Witness doctrine; it’s their treatment of their flock that angers me enough to leave it and actively oppose it.
My mom said that family, in the end, is the most important thing, and that your friends, associates, and even God can leave you, but that family is always there. I think that’s what helped me to leave the most. Sometimes we can survive living in hell, but we can’t stand our families doing so. I’ve enjoyed my family becoming so much closer since all of this started.
Being called an Apostate is a badge of honor for me. It’s shows that they can’t conquer me with fear, and that I’ve already won……..now they’re afraid of me.
ashi