I left the jw's when I was 19. It was not easy. My father was an elder, I had an older brother who didn't seem that "spiritual" who was just very frightened by my father. My father and I were especially close and no one expected me to leave. However, I couldn't ignore the fact that I had prayed honestly, sincerely to Jehovah (God) and something inside told me the religion wasn't right. I just started to feel it in a very deep way.
After leaving, I moved out of the house so my dad wouldn't have to be removed as an elder. I got an apartment and then for the next 10 years lived my life as the prodical son. Meaning... I partied. I wanted to live life. After all, i was going to be "destroyed". Right? My father had already told me in many different ways that Satan would never let me have anything good in this world and that I wouldn't be successful without Jehovah. Unfortunately, I didn't have any help in deprogramming, so for years I lived understanding on a logical level this didn't make any sense, but subconsciously this is what I made manifest in my life. I was the poster child for self-sabotage. Looking back, I see so many times, countless situations I put myself in, things I messed up. Doing things enough to prove to myself that I could do them, if I tried, but never enough to really complete them. Never fully applying myself. Feeling at a disadvantage. Feeling behind. Insecure because I never went to college. Feeling like there was this big secret that everyone knew, except me. Seeing people that were content and happy with their life and wondering how they got there and how they could feel that way living in a "world" that was just so bad! Didn't they see the evil all around them!. Oh, but about self-sabotage, for example, I had auditions for Broadway musicals like Rent and the Lion King, I got call-backs for these auditions and then the night before, I would compulsively get drunk and not do welI. In fact, there were so many people who believed in my talent and success (and I did a lot of off-broadway work and even some film) but I never did it to my potential. Still living their lies. Still waiting for Satan to get me. Still waiting for the other shoe to drop. I met some wonderful, kind people in "the world", but I didn't know how to trust. My whole perception of people was skewwed. I either trusted people I shouldn't or dismissed people that would've been great friends. I ruined some relationships, some friendships, just out of ignorance, out of lack of social skill ( It's hard to explain to people that you grew up not really chosing your friends. That you grew up in a religious community. They look at you like what's wrong with you, get therapy! But jw's need more than you're run of the mill therapists. And I wish, believe me, I wish that I was a rebellious child, but I honestly just loved my dad too much, and believed that what he was teaching me had to be right.)
My mother disassociated herself the year I was born. She was only in the religion for 3 years. When I was 10, she took me to audition for an equity production of Annie at our Regional Theatre. A friend was taking her daughter and my mom said we'd join them. Who knew? Not only did they love me and I eventually got the part of one of the orphans, but I was good at singing and dancing. My mother wanted me to take classes and so did I. It was the best time I'd ever had. My first real experiences away from adults and witness children. It was great too because the theatre kids didn't judge me. It wasn't like kids at school, who knew I was in some weird religion because I always sat in the hallways whenever someone had a birthday party. I was just a kid. I was still a child really, and it was the last time I remember feeling carefree and feeling like a child. Soon that would all change forever.
My father disapproved of my involvement in the play, of "being around worldly people". My parents had some arguments about it. I missed the meetings for rehearsals and performances. Then they extended the show for a week because it was sold out. I had a great time. It was such a wonderful experience. After it ended, i auditioned for a show at our Civic Theatre and got the part. That's when my father intervened. He told me that it wasn't good that i was missing meetings. That if I wanted to serve Jehovah, I needed to be at the meetings. He was right. I felt I was letting Jehovah down. I hadn't seen my "friends" at the hall for almost a month. (and I can count on one hand the number of times I thought about them, but that's neither here nor there.) I did what any self-respecting 10 year old would do. I looked into the face of my father and said no, i don't want to sing and dance if that will make Jehovah unhappy. And I dedicated myself to serving him. (It wasn't until I was 12 that my world would really be turned upside down, but I won't go into that now.) I still cry for that little girl, and have incredible anger at the man that used the power of a child's love and trust to manipulate me - though in his own way my father did what he thought was best. My father has his own story if you ask me, about how he ended up in the jw's. It doesn't make it right what he did, but I do forgive him. Only recently have I understood more and more what my journey has been about.
So, I made money and what did I do with it? I spent it. Sometimes frivilously, but mostly I would work at a job make a lot of money and then not work for 2 months, and just wander around new york (i moved there after 2 years after being disfellowshipped, it just seemed so much more interesting) floating in different circles of people, trying to observe what made people tick? I read lots of books, wrote songs, performed, but really wasn't happy. I got into some abusive relationships, had a child, and felt like an observer even in my own life. It all just didn't seem like it was happening to me. I was doing things that were not me. That didn't feel right to me. And when "feelings" became strong, they were too scary, so I'd medicate myself, waiting to hit the rock bottom. Waiting until I had nowhere left to run...for 10 years I did this... questioning myself, confusing people around me, searching for spirituality - reading everything from the celestine prophecy to conversations with god with a bottle of merlot (unless it was summer, then I'd switch to sauvignon blanc) just waiting.... just still feeling unsatisfied... but somewhere in the back of my mind my subconscious had a plan...I would hit rock bottom and then I would again, do what they all expected (what they all wanted), I would come crawling back home, broke, unhappy, seeking forgiveness, finally seeing the error of my ways, and that there truly is nothing good to be had in the world. I would be living proof.
I made the phone call to my dad after a week long cocaine binge, so I didn't have to pretend to sound messed up. I was. Dad and my mother divorced after I left home. He remarried a nice sister and had moved to GA. I was in New York, broke, drunk, had quit my job, spent all my money, ( Now as pathetic as this sounds, I still had friends in New york, offering me work, I mean great work too, being an assistant stylist on photo shoots, co-hosting a tv show for public access, another friend sang in a band and did weddings and clubs - I sang backup with her before and she was offering me gigs as well as hooking me up with 2 other bands looking for lead singers. I got accepted to college. ) but I was operating on a different clock. My friends around me didn't know I had a prophecy to fulfill. Sure I had created the destitution I was in and there was a way out of it, but that wasn't the direction I was supposed to go. I needed to return home. And my dad needed to "come running out to meet me". So I called my dad (we had tried to heal our relationship over the years, my brother too had started speaking to me again - i guess they realized they can never reconvert me if they don't talk to me) so my dad asked me if I wanted him to come get me and i said yes, and the next day he drove his car to get me. If i had to do it all over again, I would probably give myself a little more time to say goodbye to the people who had been there for me for the past 8-10 years, but my dad was insistant on leaving (they were just worldly people anyway) so he packed up all my things and rented a truck. I knew I was depressed too. I was trying to fill this empty hole and I knew I needed to go back to where it all began, for myself, to give myself this time. To allow myself this space, because after all, as much as i loved my friends and understand how they saw my "potential", I wasn't going to live a certain life, just because they thought i should either.
The first thing I did upon arriving at my brother's house, where I would stay for a week before they moved me into an apartment (My brother and father had agreed they would pay for it until I found a job), was do the rest of the coke I had in my purse. What the heck, I knew I needed to be sober to face these "demons", but one last little toot. I hit on the 151 that my brother and his wife got on their honeymoon in Caribean, and basically slept in a few days. Right away, he asked me to come to a meeting and when was I going to start looking for a job. I had to really blow up at him before he finally backed down. I mean, they really thought I came home to jump through hoops - they had no idea, that I was actually looking at them from a different angle, finally seeing them as they are. My brother told me he wished I would come to meetings just to get reinstated so he could talk to me again. He said this many times, quickly following it with, "I know I shouldn't say that". I even called an elder that he said had asked about me (the elders now do yearly sheparding calls on disfellowshipped people.) And I realized by my emotional reaction, how my brain was still hardwired even after all these years (and many attempts to scramble the patterns, if you know what I mean.) After a couple months, I finally did take that fated trip to the kingdom hall. It was for the circut overseers visit, a man my brother said was just so smart, he left my brother in awe. I looked at my brother, poor-man-child, he relives those same insecurities he had of a father he could never make happy. My brother is 31, looks 41 and acts 51. He's resigned to his lot in life, totally brainwashed, never questioning, just plugging along, enjoying his hope in the promised paradise earth, feeling confident, allowing himself to be worked to death (he has tremendous responsibilities - which he handles well) but i think the religion is just a cover for his deep emotional wounds. He was neglected by my mother and my father always chastized him. Now this is his way to make everything right for himself, to be of value... and more than anything, he would love for me to "come back". He misses me incredibly. We were like best friends. And I miss him too....but...coming back? getting re-instated? I know I can never do that.... i just don't know how to tell him. I sat at those three meetings i went too and within the first 10 minutes of the ciruct overseer opening his mouth he said 3 things that i disagreed with. He made 3 general, blanket statements that I guess were supposed to say something, but said nothing except that he wasn't being at all specific. He spoke about his very deep, spiritually enriching talk he was going to give Sunday. One of those, "your bible studies are going to have lots of questions afterwards" talks. And that Sunday I sat ready to really hear something new and it was the same regurgitated, dogma they talked about 10 years ago! It made me wonder, why do they spend so much time talking about the same things over and over, instead of really delving into the issues people have questions about? Why doesn't the "society" really educate people and inform their members? Oops, I almost forgot there's no room for truth when you're brainwashing masses. How stagnate the air feels in the kingdom hall, how bored everyone looks. Is that my brother's wife, still doing that old trick of waiting till the last two or three questions in the WT study to finally answer a question, lest she go the whole meeting without commenting! Horrors! not making comments at the meetings. Well, of course she'll get picked since it's the only time she's raised her hand and the study's almost over. You mean, in 25 questions you can't find one earlier that you'd like to answer? Well, that's just not very spiritual!.blah blah blah..... and then my brother told me how this cirucut overseer can deliver a whole talk on just two or three scriptures, he was so impressed... and i thought, they finally decided to reel it in a bit, I mean all that flipping back and forth between testaments in an effort to prove how scriptually sound your point is, can leave a lot of room for error to the careful ear and eye, eh? But sadly that's what I realized looking around at all the people, or actually the few people. I saw some familiar faces and some just tired looking faces, not many young faces I can tell you that, but no where did i see a careful face... an inquisitive face... a really interested face, or a face really trying to figure out if these things being spoken about from that platform, by that cleancut, well mannered, humble looking, soft-spoken man actually made sense... if you thought about it. Because they weren't thinking about it.... They're on autopilot. It's the Stepford Religion. They see themselves as sheep, well I'd be happy to let them know that's what they look like too, yet unfortunately theirs is a slow, happiness-sucking, joy-swallowing, day-to-day life-draining, mind-numbing slaughter. I had all the answers I needed and then some. (They were always in me anyway.) I had completed the prophecy! at least the best I could. I don't think that seeking repentance part is going to work out too well for me. Hopefully I will be free to go. Hopefully, I can let myself go now. I've punished myself enough. I know I'm not a drunk, a drug-addict, an alcoholic, promiscuous, suicidal etc.. I just tried all these shoes on (and I'm only listing the negative ones) and in a way I certainly did reflect things I saw in the world, in part because it was what they expected. It was what I was still programmed with. That it was supposed to be Satan giving me a hard time. But the truth is, I did it to myself.
I was about to leave the last meeting I would ever attend, I still haven't figured out how i'm going to tell my brother and father when they ask, but I know i'll be able too somehow, I was just getting out of my seat when this elder approached me that I had always liked and respected back in the day. He asked me to shake his hand. His voice was warm. I looked down because i felt that strange emotional wiring kick in, and I immediately identified the guilt programming flooding my system bringing tears to my eyes, so immediately I looked up right at him, because you know what, I wasn't guilty of anything, i had nothing to be ashamed of, in fact, I cry because I feel so sorry for them! So I look him in his eyes so that he can see I'm not ashamed. The interesting thing was, he seemed to be avoiding making real eye contact with me! I laughed to myself a little, and after he walked away I looked around at people and wiped my eyes. This was the beginning. Right there I was being "born-again." And the processes that I had stopped and started over the past few years, the reading books, studying philosophy, studying music, that I had started again the past two months became so important. I want to know all I can about this world! My son who is sweet and beautiful will never have to endure what I went through. I may not be a perfect mom, but I will support him in whatever he wants to do with his lfie. And most of all, I've given myself permission to live my life and write my songs, and make my music, and sing and perform and share myself with the world. This beautiful, wonderful world, full of interesting, funny, talented smart people. These are pivotal times we live in, but not quite the last days. It's just not black and white. You can't wrap this world up in a neat little package of understanding. However, I'm not going to hide behind a religion, do nothing about the chaos, because I'm waiting for "God's Kingdom" to handle everything. (How convenient!) I chose to spend my life discussing such things as the enviroment, polictics, our responsiblity as individuals, and then taking action. I believe in reaching people and touching people and encouraging them and inspiring them, but I don't think you need to "teach" people how to do what's "right". People already innately know it. We just need to be reminded. And also to enjoy this life, because it's not a long time that we're here on this earth. I'm not quite sure what's next, but I am going to enjoy what's now. I could go on and on about what I believe now, but my point is that i made it. And I have never felt so happy or content or so at peace in all my life, and not just for a moment, I mean every day, every day I've been waking up with this feeling... this feeling of possibility... of confidence... of excitement... of... of freedom and it's great ... it kind of reminds me of this 10 year old girl I used to know. She was that way.
Thank you for reading my story. I know I started writing and just got carried away. It's the first time, I've really been able to say how I feel and know I'll be understood. It's a beautiful thing. I'm glad you guys are here. Thank you.
Jill