Chapter 40
So Doc you can see I’m screwed
I took her advice and in the spring of 2001 went to a psychiatrists. I had only two sessions with some guy I found in the phone book.
He didn’t say much as I told him about my bizarre fifty year journey as a Jehovah’s Witness. It only took me two hours to tell the story. I don’t think he said a dozen works the whole time, as I just poured my guts out. It was strange indeed because I had never verbalized everything that I went gone through to anyone before in my whole life. He set there with no judgement, as I told him the same story that I have related to you here in this book.
Even though he had no judgement, I couldn’t help but I felt he looked at me as if he was interviewing some kind of alien from a different planet. Hearing the words pour out of my mouth, I totally realized how strange my life must have sounded to a normal, healthy non Witness person. Someone who wasn’t raised with all the fears, judgements and dogma, I had been subjected to.
With him not saying a word, and by my own description of the events of my life I realized for the first time how truly crazy my life had been. How crazy I have been.
Unlike what the society said. “The psychiatrist will try to persuade him that his troubles are caused by his religion.” My psychiatrist never did. He never said a word about my totally dysfunctional religion. He didn’t have to. I could see it in his eyes. We both knew it. I had been living in the twilight zone. For me it seemed very real. For him it was like watching a horror story on television. It was interesting but he was totally disconnected from it all.
At the end of the story, I just sat there. Neither of us speaking a word.
After a couple of minutes, I finally said. “So, Doc as you can see I’m screwed either way, if I stay in the religion or if I leave it… I’m screwed.”
Without any expression on his face he said. “Your right.”
That is the only thing he could say. He wasn’t going tell me what to do. How could he. In the end it would have to be my decision. Either decision would have serious repercussions. He was wise enough to know that it couldn’t be from any suggestion from him.
So I got in my car drove away.
I’m sure the good doctor had a great story to share with his wife that night. “So honey, what do you know about the Jehovah’s Witnesses? I got a story for you. If there is a wackier religion on the planet, I don’t know what it would be?”
When I got home that night, I was the one that looked like a deer in head lights when my JW wife asked me how it went at the psychiatrist office.
“Great honey you were right. I’m all cured, it was my wacky mother after all!”
There are many signs that will tell you when your marriage is doomed.
I believe lying is the number one thing. I don’t care how many more years you are together when the lying starts your days are numbered.
Did I have a choice though? I guess I did, if I had wanted my marriage and JW life to end that night. I wasn’t ready for that just yet but it would be here soon enough.
For years before that I had made the most power prayer a person can make. “Please God send me where I needed to go.” I was basically asking God to tell me what to do next. No, I didn’t throw the baby out with the bath water. I still believed in God. In fact I now consider myself more spiritual now than ever before.
For years, I thought maybe my place was inside their organization because for sure they wouldn’t listen to people who were out of it.
Whether I like it or not I had taken the red pill which of course would free me from the enslaving control the “Borg” like religion. However living the "truth of reality" can be harsh and very difficult also.
On the other hand, I could see how the blue pill with its falsehood and security but most of all the blissful ignorance of the illusion, could be attractive to millions of people too.
There was no way to go back so no blue pill for me anymore.