Nothing in life is stable as a Jehovah's Witness...

by silentbuddha 15 Replies latest jw experiences

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  silentbuddha

  At least in hindsight it would appear so. I remember as a small kid not making friends because ultimately they were going to die. I never saved anything because money would be useless in the new world. I never made plans for the future, etc...

  Even as an adult witness those things were still in the forefront, but even as a pioneer you knew one slip up and you were no longer on the list. Bethelite... 90 day review, then 9 month review... then everyday thereafter you had to be on your best behavior or you would be kicked out. For god's sake, even if you were put in a nice room at Bethel you had to consistently live in fear that someone who had literally 1 day seniority more than you would bid on it and kick you out with a week.

  As an elder, you see a nipple on the internet and your whole life is destroyed...

  You literally live your entire life waiting for something and all the while thinking what if I haven't done enough. It is a constant state of worry, a constant state of fear, I almost wonder how people can continue to put up with it. Obviously I can think that way now that I am no longer in, but Jeez that shit is horrible.
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  Bella Henry

  Yep. Which is why I can't sit through a meeting any more - before I left, I was having panic attacks just driving into the parking lot let alone walking into the KH. Now, I've enough distance that I can attend one off events without any problem but it has taken about 10 years.
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  Giordano

  I knew I was heading out when I couldn't stand the smell of a fresh printed Watchtower or Awake.......... maybe it was the cheap ink or maybe I had moved past the JW construct and it was all toxic.

  The wife followed me out and then there we were on our own. But i never had to smell those magazines ever again.
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  Wild_Thing

  And yet, at the time, it all seemed so normal. The longer you are away from it all, the crazier it all seems. Like an f'ed up movie you were once a part of. Some of it seems so surreal.

  I can't believe we use to talk about Armageddon coming so much. I can't believe we used Armageddon as an excuse to not have any life goals outside the Watchtower.
  
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  Apostate Anonymous

  Giordano.....the smell of those damn magazines still haunts me LOL
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  silentbuddha

  I remember that cheap ass brown paper that they use to arrive by mail. It was like fucking onion skin...
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  WTWizard

  And yet they expect you to save your treasures in heaven where joke-hova can take them away on one mistake. One sin, real or bogus, and your chances of doing anything are dashed forever. All the work you did to get there, gone.

  How often does that happen with physical treasure? You get burgled, how often do they take everything and then clean out your bank account and whatever you are making at work? Your bank bails you in, how often do they claim assets you have at home? Things break, how often is it everything at once? (Not to mention you at least get the use of the item until then, and sometimes you can repair or salvage parts of the item).

  And you often get move-aways and split-ups. You become attached to someone, only to have them assigned to another congregation or book study group for no reason. And then joke-hova wonders why people drop out of the religion, when all the benefits are stripped away and the rules and drawbacks remain?
  
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  Pete Zahut

  How could anyone be stable after attending 3 indoctrination sessions a week where all the flaws of everyone else in the world are highlighted and everyone is preparing for a cataclysmic event that never occurred.
  
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  kairos

  It was a false sense of security.
  
  Disappointing is the understatement of the overlapping century...
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  Phoebe

  When I was cleaning the most disgusting of places as my life as a cleaner, I would console myself with the fact that I wasn't living the real life. That was yet to come. All I had to do was get through this system as best as I could because my real life was ahead of me and very, very soon.

  When I got too old to clean and now find myself literally scraping by financially and with no nice pension because the end was imminent so I didn't need a pension and anyway, on minimum cleaners wages could never afford to contribute to one! I am dismayed to learn that elders in my congregation - yes, the one's advising me to put the kingdom first - are now retiring and all have private pensions!

  I hate myself for being such a damn fool :(