Hello all, I've just discovered this site and I cant begin to describe how happy I am to have come across it. I stumbled across this site purely by accident...seriously I was looking at Arkham City walkthoughs and a few jumps later I end up here. I though it was a legit society page at first and thought 'what the hell, this will be good for a laugh', but after reading a few posts well...I couldnt stop reading. I've never, not once in my life been able to talk to anybody whose had the same experiences as me growing up in a JW home. Now THAT's providence if there ever was such a thing. I'd like to share my story, so sit back and get cozy this may take a while...I'm an English lit major so I tend to be thourough.
I'll start off by saying I am one of the lucky few who were able to easily (and without ANY doubts or regrets) distance myself from this cult.
I was a born-in, my mother's family are all life-long devouts (I think my grandmother was born in and my gfather converted but not certain about that) and my father was converted in his late teens, none of the rest of his family were which I guess is why we hardly ever visited any of them growing up. I'm proud to say that I realized at a very early age that that this 'religion' is complete b.s. and that I would never willingly choose to get baptised. I always had a problem with the ideas they present...I was only 6 or 7 when my family had a friend who was, purportedly, an annointed one. I remember asking my parents how can we tell if someone is annointed? The general answer was something like 'those who are just have a feeling at some point and then they just know.' I wanted to know what the 'feeling' felt like and they said that only the annointed will ever know, and that the annointed will be the only ones to ever experience it. Even at such a young age this sounded sketchy...the highest possible reward to this lifestyle is handed out based on an indescribable 'feeling'? The same Woman (I prefer not to call them 'brothers and sisters') had custody and was raising her grandchild (her daughter was never talked about...now i suspect she was a junkie) and this kid...was the most vindictive, crazy-ass, spoiled brat, pathetic excuse for a human being I ever remember meeting, he was just a bad, bad person well before even puberty. He actually tried to get me to perform oral sex on him during a sleepover one time, he was a few years older then me at the time probably about 10...nothing against gays but any kid being sexualy agressive that young is crazy.
I guess Crazy breeds Crazy.
Obviously, that's always stuck with me. A few years later and i began to develop cognitave and dedutive reasoning on my own (much to my parents' chrgrin), I began to realise the absurdity of the whole 'prize at the end of the tunnel' scheme: So we have to deny ourselves practically every pleasure on earth live a sh**y depressing joyless life wasting the entirety of it sitting for hours multiple times a week, every week, listening to old guys preach (but dont call it preaching) to either obey them or die! Those who do obey them, TO THE F*ING LETTER, will either be resurected, or live to see litterally every other person whose ever lived resurected -EXCEPT- anyone who'se heard their shpeel and turned it down ...those unlucky fools will either remain dead -or- be hunted down by four scary-ass horse-riding psycho angles of death (you remember the pictures of the 4 horsemen in thier lit, often including terrified people running and crying and dieing...). Honestly it was the whole "everyone who has died before this religion was invented gets a free-pass" resurection clause that really got to me as being just absolutely, irrefeutably, absurd. Hell...even if this crap DID happen (lol) I didn't want to obey any 'god' that would kill millions of people deemed evil because they didnt believe thise outlandish b.s. while simultaneouly giving a free-pass to every child-molester, mass murderer evil piece of excrement to have lived before the year 18wtvr (I had a pretty evolved sense of principal for a 10 yr old). And besides...I'd much rather live a guaranteed enjoyable (at least at times) life -this one...right now...that I can scientifically prove I exist in- than live forever...*FOREVER* under rules that wouldn't even allow me to pleasure my wife in bed (though of course that wasn't an issue I was aware of at the time). The term and sense of 'forever' always bothered me from as far back as I can remember; how can god have lived -forever- and then all of a sudden create the universe and then time started....then when we get resurected we'll live -forever-??? And for as long as I can remember the excuse in response to that being: "Human minds are not capable of understanding gods blahblahblah" has just made me mad...seriously you're trying to tell ME what -I- can or can not understand? I dont't think so buddy. I understood...they were either lying or they were to stupid to realize they were lying. I apologize for insinuating anyone on this forum is or was stupid, but if you were a JW and have realized the falshood of 'the truth' then I'm sure you've called yourself much worse.
Around the age of 12 I was fully aware that this was all b.s. I would absolutely never agree to be baptised. The few times my parents tried to make actually speak while in service all went horribly, even from the earliest attempts, so thankfully they never had any expectation of me to actually speak in service so I never had to feel like i was flat-out lying to people trying to convince them to join this 'religion' that has made my life completely joyless. My horrible home life (more on that later) led to my mother finally working up the courage to leave my father when I was almost 15. My mother is by far the strongest person I know, knowing full well she'd be DF'd she refused to remain miserable for the rest of her life and stay married to an asshole who constantly acted like he full-on resented us. The aftermath of that is well-known to most on this forum, almost every friends she'd ever had treated her like she was dead to them...even her own family stopped talking to her. Her own mother and father and all 7 of her flesh and blood brothers and sisters wouldn't even talk to her. Her family...MY family treated my mom like a piece of crap because she didnt want to be miserable any more. My mother is one of the nicest, most loving people I've ever had the pleasure of being in my life. This was the last straw, I could never associate myself with anything that would ecourage an entire family to just drop one of their members. My mom knew that I could look after my self by that point and my sister who is a few years older was almost finished school, and considering she pretty much had to pack a suitcase and leave my sis and I remained with our dad. In the next year, by the time I was 16, it got to the point where I had used so many excuses to not go to meetings or in service (I had those tuesday-thursday-sunday migranes) that my dad began to actually ASK me if I was coming to the meeting or not. The first time this happen was incredibly surreal, I thought for sure it was some kind of trick, I answered "Uh....no?" I was sure that was going to storm up the stairs and push me around untill i subdued... but he actually just left and left me alone. After that I think i agreed to go once or twice in the next few weeks, the elders and others made it a point to come over to me and say how much they've missed me and are glad to see me. All I could think was "If my mom was here you'd be restraining yourself from spitting in her face." And that was that, I never stepped foot in a KH again and never will. I've also never talked to any of my relatives who shund my mother unless I absolutely had to.
Now I'm 28, working my way through a double major in English Lit and Forest Conservation at the University of Toronto. I am thankful everyday that I was special enough to never fall for the lies of the 'truth' epecially as a born-in. I plan to share a lot more of my life here in the future and if anybody's actually read through this to the end then I can truly say without any hesitation or hyperbole, that I love you. More than any JW has loved another JW just for being a JW.
p.s. I'm not to shy and have no shame in any of my family finding out I have nothing but contempt for this organization. As I go on it wont be hard to figure out who my family is if you know them...and if one of my relatives on my moms side sees this, then go **** yourself you blackhearted piece of ****, chances are you'd never talk to me of you free will anyway. If my sister or father sees this (I wouldn't be suprised if he was one of the spooks assigned to monitor the apostate websites lol) im sorry if this truth hurts you, but it's coming out.
Till next time,
=) peace and love!