by d 13 Replies latest jw friends
I personally was very happy to be out of it, but something hit me like a ton of bricks a few weeks later when I came to realise I would never see my dear mum again ........the thought of seeing her in the new system kept me in, and helped me after her death. That was a really upsetting realisation, and I spent a few days crying about it.
Thankfully, Ive come to terms with this now, and hold dear the memories of our life together.
Yep have gone through it quiet a bit....
http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/members/adult/210886/1/introspection
Is just one example.... But it gets much better :-)
I still feel it at times but not as much.
People who had "loved" me and "respected" me and who knew me flipped a switch and unloved me and disrespected me. They no longer cared to know me a second longer.
There was no sense of loss to the brothers and sisters that one of their own was in a jeopardy which could cost him his life.
It was indifference. That struck me with the dumb realization of how easy it was for Jehovah's Witnesses to turn it all off at a moment's notice.
I began to count the cost to me in the past and review my personal sacrifices. Parts of my 20th year of life, all of my 21st year of life and part of my
23rd year of life were spent in Federal Prison! I could have easily served community service instead but my religion said "no". So, some of the best years of my life were spent utterly unproductive and wasted.
What was my compensation? None. I earned not even begrudging respect. In fact, it made me realize nobody had come to visit me. Nobody had even sent me a card saying "Hang in there, Brother Walstrom."
I suddenly felt very used and stupid.
I had been paroled to Full Time Pioneer work and struggled financially barely able to meet my bills.
Nothing but more and more expectations were placed on my shoulders. Yet, Jesus had said his yoke was a light one to shoulder!
The door knocking, recruitment, bible studies and hand shaking was an empty exercise in blind obedience.
My crisis was that I had NOTHING to show for it all. Not one thing.
"Don't let the Kingdom Hall door hit you in the ass on the way out" they all seemed to be saying to me.
Why didn't anybody care enough about me to want me back? Nobody came around and said, "Hey, let's talk about this"?
The cold faces were a billboard advertising total unconcern about my welfare in the eyes of this so-called religion of Truth and love.
Now, I look back and see I did it to myself. I was fooled. None of these fellow dupes were really brothers or sisters. It was an illusion self-enforced.
The worst part of it is this. The friends you make and share your life with when you are young become the foundation of your social family the rest of your life---EXCEPT--if they are fake friends and indifferent and unconcerned.
I cannot share "old times" with any of the hundreds of fellow JW's I had grown up with. It was all as though I had never existed.
Well, Boo Hoo. Get over it, Terry. Move up and move on.
The one thing I won't let go of is the feeling I had been captured and almost killed by a serial killer who is "still out there" preying on the unwary.
That haunts me. I won't keep my mouth shut about that. I will continue to warn others because how they spend the rest of their life depends on escaping the clutches of the Jehovah's Witness pathologies and sociopathic mindset.
Other than that.....it is all a bad dream.
