Ok so Chevy asked me to put my story on here, a lot of you will probably find it boring but will post it anyway. So here goes.
am now 24 and live in Kent, England with my Boyfriend Dean, we are really happy together in fact I have never been so happy and we plan to marry later on this year.
I was brought up a JW from a baby by my Mother, my Father was never really bothered about it all and my Mum fell away, divorced him and married another guy and then went back to the witnesses, he was not a witness and they met at my Mums place of work, she was a DJ for a local radio station and he was a chauffeur. They were happy together but had their problems, initially we went through some real money problems and ended up living in a flat in a bad part of town, my mum was put on Anti-Depressents (Ativan and Tamazipan) and used to drink aswell, I would come home from school sometimes and she wouldnt even know who I was (Imagine that at about 5), meanwhile my real dad and his new wife who I was going to every other weekend were taking my Mum to court to try and get full custody of me (this is probably while my pool old Mum hit the bottle (she was so scared of losing her son).
We then came through that, Step Dad got a new job and things got better, we used to move around a lot and I used to find the meetings so boring but of course you go along to keep the folks happy ! or that you are forced to.
My step father then got cancer and after a 2 year battle (including a bible study and turning down a blood transfusion) he passed away - I was 11 by then and just about to go to High School. I have to admit the witnesses were amazing, they rallied around and helped look after us through this hard time. Me and My Mum had a really nice close bond, we used to do a lot together.
I started High School a few weeks after my Step Dad died, I had big feet as a kid and I remember someone saying to me "Whose shoes are they, your dads ?" this really upset me, kids can be fucking nasty creatures cant they.
It was probably about this time that I realised that I was gay.
My Mum then met a Pioneer Brother from Gravesend, Kent (just as a disgusting area as it sounds), he had two Daughters and at the time seemed a really popular and funny guy, he was well known throughout the area and everyone just loved him. I personally hated the guy and hated the fact that he was taking my Mum away from me and him and his two daughters were moving into MY house and pushing me out of my bedroom into a smaller one. We all went to the meetings together and he insisted we had a family study all together - he was damn boring and we would read the scriptures and he would just say "What do you think of that ?" what the hell are you supposed to say to that when you have just read a pointless chapter about abraham being the son of mish'mek who was the son of seth and so on.....
The first few months of their marriage was ok then he turned into a nasty bastard, we would all go to the meetings as a happy family, he was a special pioneer and then a ministerial servent, so to the congregation we were the happy family to be admired by all, at home was a different story, he was an alcoholic, would get drunk, act like a complete dick and then turn nasty, he would hit my mum (she would lie to us and tell us she fell down the stairs or something, but you would know, he would also end up with a bruise or two back aswell) and then he started on me aswell, at one time he threw me around the living room, I was pinned against the front door on one occasion and then another time he tried to throw me down the stairs because I stood up to him about driving from France to home after drinking a bottle of wine.
The elders would come, the elders would go, Mum would say to me and the girls (of which she got really close to) things are going to be different now, but alas they werent, a week later it would all kick off again. One day Mum stood up to him, the Elders (Congregation Police Force) were called, Mum got reproved and again nothing happened to him, it was as though they didnt want to lose a pioneer. Money got very tight as he wouldnt work, he just wanted to pioneer all the time, this guy was living against the bible but then would go out and make it all better by being at the meetings or going out in field service.
We got to the point where we were running out of money thick and fast and Mum was working all the hours to try and keep us afloat, we sometimes had no food in the cupboards and had to just eat these things called bakes (which look a lot like dougnuts). She aproached him and asked him to work but he refused and said Jehovah will look after us ! so it was decided that me and my remanining sister would have to up our house keeping, this made Mum feel terrible but it was the only thing we could do. We were both working by now.
I feel so sorry for her, she had all the worries and it wasnt until she was gone that it was realised.
After five years of this the youngest Daughter stood up to him and said she was not going to the meeting that night as she didnt want to (she out of the two used to visit her real mother every other weekend) of course my step father was not happy with this and smacked her in the mouth and cut it open, she ran out the house and called her mother who then came down and picked her up. He then went to the meeting as if nothing had happened, leaving me and my other sister and mum to go search for her.
A short while later Mum was diagnosed with Breast Cancer, of course after nursing her husband to death she was terrified it was her next ! she had an operation and the lump was removed but this triggered another series of hitting the bottle, we went through a period of 5 days of the week, she got very depressed and some days would just sit on the sofa and look out the window all day, of course guess where her husband was..........not supporting her but out on field service. She found herself a little job, I was so please for her, she was finally sorting herself out but it turned out to be sales and she didnt like it, I came home to find her on the sofa drunk again. She went through her treatment of radiotherapy and cheomotherapy and then the Dr's realised they had left some cancer cells behind and she had to go in again to have these removed. I have kinda put my Mum in a bad light her, she was a really lovely person and adored by all sorts, she had loads of friends and would do anything for anyone but we are all imperfect and I guess this was her weakness.
Something gave her a kick up the arse and she stopped drinking, cleaned herself up and got on with life, she would run around doing errands for friends, she had various little jobs around and she was happy.
Then mid november she got the flu, it was so bad she went off her food and went to her bed and stayed there, she called the Dr but they just said she had flu, a week later it was worse and she didnt even seem to know what was happening, I would go into the bedroom and ask her what she had done that day and she would come out with all sorts, I knew she hadnt moved from her bed all day. It got to the point where we were spoon feeding her or breaking off bits of cheese and bread and feeding her like a little animal. The witnesses were again very supportive. Between us we kept calling the Dr's but nobody would come out.
I remember sitting there talking to her about the day and she just didnt have a clue, my sister then walked in and she didnt even know who she was, I walked out the room crying and heard her say "Matt I Love you ".
Eventually a MEDOC (Medway Doctors on Call) came out in the evening and got an ambulance straight out to us. She was taken into Medway Maritime Hospital and was put straight into intensive care. The next day she died at 4pm, I was at her best friends house. You could not fault the witnesses with how much suppport they gave us, they were there all the time. Mum was cremated 2 weeks later and there was a turn out of 400-450 people there - just goes to show what a popular woman she was.
So anyway, we carried on with the meetings and with life, I was beginning now to doubt things that were being said to me (although one good thing I used to like was how Mum and that bastard would not be married when she was resurrected). A year on it turned out my Step father had not been paying our housekeeping into the mortgage and had been spending a lot of it on his drink and I saw a letter on the table to say that the house was to be reposessed on Dec 14th, 1999.
This was my home that they had come into and now it was being taken away.
I managed to find a really nice little house in the next village, I was so lucky, I was literally flying out the next day to Los Angeles to visit some friends. I came back from LA after a great holiday and two weeks later I moved into my new house. It was so strange popping back to the old house and seeing it empty, the house was stripped bare (you know the film titanic when you see the doors as they were and then it goes back to it being under water, it was kinda like that, I saw the bare house and then would flash back to a year before when things were ok).
Now I was living on my own and starting to miss more and more meetings, and started chatting to guys on the net, I used to speak to a Police officer in Scotland, we would talk almost every day. Then my Sister moved in she kinda persuaded me to move back to America with her. I thought about it for sometime and I was also sort of seeing a Sister in Michigan so I went out there a) To pioneer and b) to further things with the sister. I spent some time there and we were engaged, I guess I thought that this would kind of push the gay feelings aside, big mistake as you just cant do that. In hindsight I feel like this was a really selfish motive on my part but it all ended and I ran away to New York spent some time there and then stupidly moved to Spain.
In Spain I was supposed to be working for an estate agents but this all went wrong and I ended up goat herding, I was in a very rural part of Almeria, Andalucia where no one spoke English and there was like no social life let alone a gay scene or anything. I was living with a witness family in a run down old house and they turned out to be…….well lets just say very strange.
I managed to scrape together enough money to get back to England and then moved in with a family in Ashford, Kent they were really great and I have to give it to them, really helped me out. This is where the leaving the witnesses part starts, I went to work for the Police Training College also in Ashford and met a gay guy there, there was nothing between us and no one there knew I was gay but I watched how people reacted to him and how they talked about him. I noticed that people actually really liked him, in fact even more than another straight guy. I noticed that he wasn’t looked upon as being dirty or hated which is how I was made to feel about my own sexuality.
I then transferred to the Police and became an Investigator at Police Headquarters and decided this was it enough was enough and moved to Chatham in with a girl from work as her or flatmate as she would like to say. I handed my letter in to leave the witnesses but the elders and members of the congregation when they caught wind would just not let me go, I would have phone calls with people crying trying to persuade me not to leave. The elders wanted to have a meeting with me (I guess I saw it as a kind of exit interview) they tried to stop me from going, on the third meeting I explained to them that I was going out to bars etc, they still tried to persuade me, then I dropped the bombshell that I was gay, you should of seen the faces…..but alas they printed something from the Watchtower library and still tried to stop me. In the end they asked if I was repentant and I said no so they said that they were left with no other choice but to disfellowship me – HOOO BLOODY RAH I was free !
Another girl moved into the house where I was living, she worked on the same section as me in the police and she turned out to be a real nightmare it was like living with Jekyll and Hyde one moment she would be fine, the next she would turn nasty, here and her boyfriend were constantly having arguments. I would have to get up at 5am for early turn with the Police, she would wake me up at 2am having a row with her Boyfriend, I would have to then go down and pull him off her.
This went on for about 7 months, I met some guys but none were ever my type and I came to the conclusion that I wasn’t going to meet anyone so I should just get on with my life. I got really low and miserable, at times I even thought about going back to the witnesses. I actually felt like I was a complete loser and a waste at times thought that there was no point in me even being here.
I was seeing a guy for about 6 months who was an inspector in the police and he one day out of the blue decided to get back with his ex, this didn’t really help matters.
Then one day I just got up and thought right Matt, get your arse in gear and sort your life out, I realised that there was something better out there for me and started making plans to move out and start a new life somewhere, I wasn’t quite sure where yet but I was going to do something. I had lost about 6 stone by now (I was a hefty fucker before).
Then my life suddenly changed completely……………………………
My second Gay pride in London I was on the Police recruitment stand, I had been chatting to a guy on the net but as I didn’t have a PC at home I had to go to the library to send him the odd message, to be honest I thought he was way out of my league but chatted anyway. I was supposed to meet up with him but something happened and it didn’t happen, he thought I wasn’t interested. Then at Pride I sent him a text message to see if he was there, he was and he came over to meet him. We walked around for a while but his friend was with him and we went our separate ways, he said he would like to meet up on Friday though for a drink, I just thought he was being polite but agreed anyway. I thought he was amazing but I don’t think very highly of myself. This guy was different from the others I had met, I was so scared and nervous yet there was something else, something clicked straight away and I fell for him, I have never felt this way before. By Wednesday I really wanted to see him, I was so scared that I was going to get brushed aside but went for it anyway. I finished work at 6am and sent him a text to see if he wanted to meet for lunch, to my surprise he agreed ! he came to meet me, we got on so well. He then took me to work that evening and in my break I called him. He said that he would come pick me up from work in the morning and bring me back to his place, I had a meeting with the Chief Inspector the next day so he said he would take me to the meeting. I couldn’t believe it.
Dean picked me up us planned, I was terrified but things just seemed so right, I cant explain it. He took me to the meeting and before I got out of the car he said that he would stand by me what ever happened – to this day he has done this. I ended up leaving the Police that day. I stayed most of the time at Deans in Ashford and got a job with an Insurance company in London. Then he told me that he wanted me to move in with him, I was to go home this weekend and get my stuff packed and then go to work on the Monday and go back to see him after work, but on the Sunday as a surprise he turned up at my house and told me he was there to pick me and my possessions up.
I cant stress to you how happy I am now, I am the happiest I have ever been in my life. All I have ever wanted is to settle down with someone who says and does the right things, who I can love and will be loved in return, Dean is all of this and much much more. I love and adore him so much and know that this is it I have got all I want and need and I am not going to ever let go of that, anyone that now tries to step in my way god help ‘em. I guess all that I went through was kind of a lesson for me, to show me how bad things can really get. Just when you think you cant take anymore things get better. Something somewhere helps you over it, wether it be a god or a guardian angel I am yet to find out – I am looking at my options.
Now whenever I am low or down or have problems I look back at the past and realise that the problems I may have now are nothing compared to the past. Ok I deal with things that need to be dealt with but I don’t let things get on top of me. I have realised that material things, money etc are nothing the most important thing is life and even more important to me is my relationship with Dean. We are planning on getting married this summer.
I would not want a repeat of the past but I have been taught some valuable lessons and although I feel the JW’s have wasted 23 years of my life I have also learnt valuable lessons from them too. There is still a few that do keep in touch and let me know who is doing what, I love it, it makes me see even more just how lucky and happy I am.
If you have come this far I want to say thank you for reading, I hope that this has not been too boring for you, but I hope that it helps you see that things can get bad and when you leave something that has been part of your life and you leave all the friends behind that have always been there….apparantly through thick and thin it will be hard, probably harder than you know but it will work out and life will get better. You also realise that those friends that were supposedly there supporting you were never real friends in the first place.
Thank you for reading this and I hope that you will be as happy and fulfilled as I am.
Regards,
Matt