So, recently, I made a reconnection with a long lost JW friend.
I first met her when I was about 12 or 13, and she was about 10.
She was a lovely young lady, very poised, very intelligent, a cut above the other girls in the hall. Easy to talk to. I was in love with her.All the boys in the Hall loved her. But if she noticed all the attention, she found it amusing, and wasn't at all cruel about it.
Her parents, or rather, her Mom and her Step-dad, were very adept at keeping a force field around her. They couldn't stop people from talking to her at the Hall, but they definitely would stymie efforts in letting anyone with a Y chromosome do any activities with her at any other time.
As a result, there were many aspects of her and her life I never really knew.
So, about 30 years after the last time I ever saw her (by then, I was about 20), I now reconnect with her, both of us in our "mature years".
It has been very exciting to know her again! After all these years, I find out that she has hidden artistic talent, she teaches art workshops, she has a food blog, she went to culinary school, she's more interesting now than when I knew here then. I am almost afraid to say it, but, dang it, I am still in love with her, much as I was when I was 12.
But, like a grinning, ugly Jack in the box, that old cult speak just pops out in the chats.
"I will be SO glad when Jehovah's kingdom is here, and the food tastes like he intended it to taste."
"So looking forward to the paradise."
"People are so lost without the kingdom hope."
I haven't had the heart or the balls to tell her that my wife and I don't go to meetings anymore, that I don't believe in all this crap anymore, and that, if we are lucky, we are only going to be here another 25 years before the inevitable happens.
In her personal life, she has been through a lot:married young (to escape her home life), husband turned out to a be phony, immature dick who abandoned her with to small children to raise on her own, siblings no longer Witnesses due to various personal problems, and I know she has to cling to something to give her hope and assurance in her life.
But WHY does it have to be this made up, fairy tale, pie in the sky bullsh*t?
With her looks, intelligence, and talent, she could have had a much better 30 years if she had used those to better her life choices, rather than subduing those talents, rather than marrying a jerk who didn't deserve her to escape a stepfather who was same way. So many things she could have done, but instead, she is waiting for a pipe dream that will never happen.
Sigh.
It only intensifies the feeling that so many of us lost so much of our lives in the past 30 years, and for nothing, not even a bowl of lentil soup.