Greetings, dear friends and fellow survivors:
I am grateful to be alive and associated with like-minded people, both here on this wonderful forum and in day-to-day interaction with friends, neighbors, clients, but, sadly, few if any Jehovah's Witnesses. I have, somehow, become detached from the sadness and sorrow of the past, about which I have written on this and other ex-JW forums for some dozen-plus years.
Dunno why, but it seems to come out in rather poetic fashion, which is not everyone's cup of tea, but this manner of expression is linked to how I've survived.
Love you all,
Frank Carton
RECENT HAPPENINGS CLOSE TO HOME bewilder me by day, terrify me by night.
Immersed in profound waters of both doubt and despair, I struggle and gasp my way to a far-off shore encased in black mist.
Yet, the shroud of fog does rise. I see through the windows to my soul and arrive at a calmer state of mind; tranquility replaces anxiety and confusion. Scattered pieces of life's puzzle assemble, interlocking.
Once disconnected events -- the past flowing into my present -- form a meaningful whole. It is a continuation of life, a flowing stream whose source has bubbled forth since times unrecorded.
In that timeless flow from then to now, I am an onshore observer, not participant. Rushing past me, in vision, are people and cities and marvels of nature and . . . The environs of childhood edge their way into my present reality. I see who I was and what I have become.
Contentment and peace . . . at long last. . . .