Struggling a bit, guess it's to be expected...........

by dubstepped 21 Replies latest jw friends

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  dubstepped

  Throughout this process since my wife and I disassociated just over a year ago I've been pretty positive. Focusing on my new life, new friends, having fun, and living a good life. It's been great. However, like most things that happen in life, there seems to be an inevitable process that one has to go through and I'm not sure I'm done going through it yet. Heck, even during this year I couldn't help but be touched directly by the insanity of the cult when my dad died and I wasn't welcome at his memorial and was unshunned for 30 minutes or so to see him one last time in hospice and say goodbye. My mom then had no problems contacting me promising me that we'd see each other again, and of course wanting things from me like to sign papers for the estate, you know, all the things that they're welcome to contact us for but that I'm sure we'd be unwelcome if we needed from them. Anyway, I digress.

  What brought about this current struggle is Halloween. My wife is excited about it. For the first time she gets to dress up and everything. For me, well I am struggling mightily. I don't like to be seen, don't like to stand out in the crowd, as I did so much as a JW kid as was bullied so much for it. I was bullied for other reasons too, but that was one. I was thinking back though to myself as a 6,7, 8 year old kid before the JWs. I remember being excited about Halloween, loved going trick or treating in the neighborhood, and as far as I remember loved the costume part too. Somewhere in the decades of destruction that followed, the dehumanizing of me that occurred in the cult, I lost that part of me.

  It made me realize that there may be other parts of me that I lost. I was a happy and sweet kid and I know I turned into a rage filled judgemental prick at their hands, something I've tried hard to shake off and leave behind. But there are still remnants of their crap that are with me. I read something about Russia and nukes the other day and there's something in the back of my head that brought up a panicky feeling inside about the end of this system and were they (JWs) right and other garbage. I'm struggling looking back at all of the time lost to the cult, all of the things I'll never get to experience. I missed my youth, college, sports, girls, etc. All gone and can never be recovered. I'm left with feelings and thoughts of a doomsday cult that pop up at unexpected times and make me feel weird inside. I'm also left fighting from behind, trying to catch up on experiences and things like retirement savings that I was never prepared for. Of course, I have to pay for these things with money made cleaning houses. It's not like I have a six figure income. Heck, I surprised my wife last week with her first ever water gun. She had never been allowed to have one. At 36 she finally got to play with one. I mean, really? The simple stupid things we were never allowed to do.

  I wish there was one of those devices like in Men In Black, a clicker of sorts that makes everything previous just disappear. I know that there's more to me than what the cult took from me. I know that at 39 I have years in front of me. I know that I have a good life right now. I have a lot, and generally choose to focus on that, but right now my focus isn't my choice. I've been hit by a few things out of the blue and they shook me a bit. I met some other ex-JWs locally and heard their painful stories (two young ladies whose mom died and they were adopted by JWs that now shun them, and a young man whose wife turned him into the elders for smoking weed and then he lost everything). That miserable cult just leaves destruction, misery, and dysfunction in its wake. I think for the first time some of it is hitting me. I really hate them, and I mean that sincerely with every fiber of my being right now. I know that will dissipate. I know that I'll move past this stage. I may also come back to it at some point, but for now I seem to be here whether I'd like to be or not.

  I'm not good at asking for help. I'm usually the guy trying to help others. I'm not even sure I'm asking for help or what in the world I need, but it was nice just to write this out and put it somewhere where I know others will understand.
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  DesirousOfChange

  I missed my youth, college, sports, girls, etc. All gone and can never be recovered.

  That's the sentence that jumped out and smacked me as I read your story. That's the issue that has me so angry (and the Cult cost me an additional 20 years of my life than it did you). All that is just gone! Not just the time/years of life, but the experiences of life!

  Focusing on my new life, new friends, having fun, and living a good life. It's been great.

  And, that's the other significant sentence. And, the answer to getting past the other. While it's not a "new" life. Nor does it replace the "lost" time of life. New friends are very important to moving on and enjoying "the rest of your life" (sounds kinda cliche') and making it the "good life". Good luck to pursuing all of that! . . . . . Doc

  The greatest revenge is living a happy & successful life!
  
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  dubstepped

  That's the sentence that jumped out and smacked me as I read your story. That's the issue that has me so angry (and the Cult cost me an additional 20 years of my life than it did you). All that is just gone! Not just the time/years of life, but the experiences of life!

  I hope you at least saved something for retirement because you're so much closer than I. I'm so sorry it two more decades from you.

  Once you realize that the panda paradise, and the hopes that you hinged your future on were likely a fairy tale, it puts even more importance on living this life, not the next. There is only one life that I KNOW I have, and it is this one. My goal isn't to run out and do all of the things they told me was bad, like some people that I've known over the years, but to live a good life, do no harm, be happy, grow old, and die with something I can be proud of behind me. If there's something ahead of me that's awesome, but I want to control the controllables, and this life is the only thing I have any control over, any concrete knowledge of. I just wish I hadn't wasted so much time. Then again, there are many people that aren't JWs that waste their lives in other pursuits. We aren't alone in that for sure. It doesn't take the sting away though when things hit you.
  
  
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  Ding

  I can identify.
  

  The WT is all about emotional programming, especially involving fear if you don't swallow everything the GB says and obey without question. Then even have to try to control your thought life.
  

  Even when you realize intellectually how much of what they said is manipulation without basis in fact, those emotional triggers can still be very powerful.

  It takes time to get past them. Even into 1976, I wondered if they were right about the end coming in 1975 but just off a few months.

  When I started panicking and thinking they might be right, I found it helpful emotionally to go back and look again at things that convinced me that the WT's claims are smoke and mirrors created by men behind a curtain (akin to the Wizard of Oz).
  

  One thing that helped me realize they didn't have a pipeline to Jehovah was to re-read some of the nonsense written by Rutherford, such as from the Millions booklet: "Therefore, we may confidently expect that 1925 will mark the return [from the dead] of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and the faithful prophets of old . . . to the condition of human perfection.” (Quoted in the Proclaimers book at p. 78).

  Then there were the flip-flops about the Great Pyramid, where the length of the great passageway increased by 40 inches from one edition of the book to another (without explanation) to accommodate the WT's changed teaching from an 1874 parousia to a 1914 parousia.
  

  There's The Finished Mystery (1917, the latest publication before Jesus supposedly inspected the WT and pronounced it faithful and wise), which is a treasure trove of WT gibberish, including that "Leviathan" in Job 41 is the locomotive and that one of the distances mentioned in Revelation represents the distance between Scranton, Pennsylvania (where The Finished Mystery was published) and WT headquarters, measured by way of the Hoboken ferry. I'm not making this up! Now, of course, the WT hopes JWs never find out what's in The Finished Mystery, but then it supposedly unlocked the prophetic scriptures and had to be accepted as meat in due season from the faithful and discreet slave.

  As far as Halloween is concerned, Romans 14 says that what days we do or don't celebrate is a matter of conscience. If it's the just demonic and ghoulish aspects that repulse you, then go as the Men in Black or Forrest Gump. If the whole thing still troubles you, then don't participate at all. Let your wife do what she wants and just tell her you're not there yet.

  Threats of war can be quite frightening, but they don't mean WT dogma is true. Many of us lived through the 1962 Cuban missle crisis between the Soviet Union and the U.S., for example, and we are still here 54 years later. Can we guarantee that horrible things won't happen? No, but you can't live your whole life in a bunker.

  Regarding lost time and lost opportunities, none of us can go back and change the past. The thoughts and emotions will come, but don't let the WT rob any more of your life by getting fixated on them and what they did to you and others. Resolve not to waste any more time on them. Look forward and move forward.
  

  As far as the Bible itself is concerned, you will have to study things out and decide if you will believe none, some, or all of it, but please don't equate the WT religion with the Bible. The WT religion is the GB's changing "truth" with a biblical veneer to make it seem credible.
  
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  Chook

  Hang in there dubstepped, the JW childhood is child abuse in its self. Take your wife and yourself and shoot a real gun, do the MANY things that the religion condemned by going beyond what's written. May your life be blessed from this time on, there's no boogeyman behind every corner as JWs teach.
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  The Searcher

  Dubstepped - at 39 and in good health, (?) your past is just that - past, gone. But what a great future you've got ahead of you. Your regrets will diminish as you create experiences and memories with your new and better life.

  To quote a line from an Eagles song - "So oftentimes it happens that we live our lives in chains, and we never even know we have the key."

  Do your very best to enjoy your life!

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIU4hCxIXag
  
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  dubstepped

  Oh, believe me, I'm not worried about what the JWs or Bible has to say. However, those automatic responses are programmed deep. I've also come to realize that both my wife and I bought in more than a lot of people that we met that are out. We were thoroughly convinced, very black and white thinkers, and lived by the letter of the law, so to speak. We were both the oldest of our siblings, both people pleasers, both perfectionists with the black and white cognitive distortions that comes with that. just deeply entrenched uber dubs even if we couldn't keep up with all of the organization's demands, which ultimately backfired on them.

  I'm not repulsed by Halloween, though I don't like horror films or spiders, lol. I just don't like to stand out, don't like to be seen. It's a social anxiety thing. JWs had me all twisted up with social anxiety. Most of it has gone away, but deliberately dressing in a way so as to be seen and noticed is terrifying to me. From what I gather it can be that way for introverts anyway, but I know that the JWs made me more socially anxious as my levels of terror have gone way down since leaving them. In fact, I actually like people now. I used to kind of just generally hate everyone, lol.

  The Bible loses me right in the first chapters where creative days are figurative but a talking snake is literal. It really "jumps the shark" from the beginning and doesn't get any better when I look at it objectively.
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  Ding

  It's okay not to want to stand out or be seen.

  If that aspect of your personality really bothers you, though, and it's something you want to overcome, you might try joining a local theatre group.

  I know a number of people who are very shy who found they could perform on stage without fear because everyone knew it wasn't really them being portrayed; it was a character.
  
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  Ding

  The Bible loses me right in the first chapters where creative days are figurative but a talking snake is literal.
  

  If you don't want to have anything more to do with the Bible, that's up to you. Please realize, though, that what you said (quoted above) is an interpretation you got from the Watchtower.

  That's an example of what I meant earlier when I said, "please don't equate the WT religion with the Bible."
  
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  dubstepped

  If you don't want to have anything more to do with the Bible, that's up to you. Please realize, though, that what you said (quoted above) is an interpretation you got from the Watchtower.

  That's an example of what I meant earlier when I said, "please don't equate the WT religion with the Bible."

  I didn't really come here to debate the Bible, nor was my one quip about it indicative of the reasons that I disregard it. The Watchtower is far from the only religion to teach the very simple thing that I outlined. The story of Noah is fraught with issues. What Lot and his daughters did right after the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah for immorality was sick but tolerated. The use of women and children as spoils of war, even at God's command, gives me room to pause and reflect on the real qualities of God in the Bible. That Jesus guy was pretty cool. Paul seemed like an authoritarian douchebag. Revelation reads like a guy on bad trip wrote a bunch of things down. I realize that the Watchtower has their own interpretation of many things, like the blood doctrine for example, but it doesn't take away the many flaws of the Bible. Maybe there's another way of looking at it entirely that would help, but I don't care.

  If God wanted me to understand him and if the Bible was really this fatherly love letter to people that we needed to understand in order to please him, he should have made it more clear. He should have left some evidence like the Ark or that flaming sword at the entrance to the garden of Eden as clear evidence confirming what he had to know would sound just like fairy tales to adults later on in time. A loving father doesn't give his children a riddle and if they can't figure it out take away hope from them.

  Why did miracles conveniently stop back then where nobody had any proof of them like video? Why couldn't an all powerful God have reasoned with people instead of killing them, talking directly to them like any father would instead of sending humans fraught with their own issues? Why were so many books written well after the fact, like the Gospels?

  Look, I could go on, but as you can see I don't want anything more to do with the Bible and it isn't because of the Watchtower. If you believe, go on with your bad self and find what you're looking for there. I do still quote some wisdom contained therein, and I don't think it has zero value, but as some magical holy book from God it falls far short for me, but I realize that's just me. Again, none of that was the point of this thread.