Minimus:
This is a really valid question. I have seen some be so angry, and some embrace their new lives and feel no regret. Some of us have lost 20 years, and some have lost a few. But we all have to agree that we've all lost something, and our lives will never be what they could have been, for one reason or another.
For me, I was raised in it since 3. It altered my whole "what-coulda-been." I've always been a very happy-go-lucky person my whole life. The seriousness of the Borg ruined my childhood in the way that I always thought EVERYONE was good, and the repeated brushes with reality really made me cynical. One guy, on another post, said the Borg killed his imagination, but it only sparked mine because I was LIVING an imaginary life, and I had to fantasize what life on the outside was like, much like a prisoner. The Borg said everyone IN the Borg was good, and being in the Borg was good, so I was good. When I got out, I realized that there was stuff on the outside that was REALLY GOOD, and it was fun, and it felt good, and it wasn't right cuz the Borg said it wasn't right. But it felt right. But there was also some really really bad stuff, that I had no idea about. I would have had an idea about it if I'd been allowed to live a normal life.
See, I am not one of those people that lives by the facts all the time. I only have my instincts, which I was blessed with. I never knew WHY the Borg was wrong, but I knew it felt wrong since I was 9 years old. I couldn't articulate to you WHY it was wrong, just that it FELT wrong. I read "Survival of the Fittest" which I borrowed from the KH library at 9, and then my little 9yo mind started rotating. Alot of it made a lot of sense. Like I articulated on another thread, my sense of justice was severely insulted when I had to wear some baby diaper on my head (no sanitary napkins or kleenexes available) when I was asked to say the prayer in front of my Father, who was a Greek Orthodox, and four unbaptized brothers who were younger than I. They were *all* less than I was, religiously and chronologically speaking, and I still had to wear a thing that babies shit in, on my head, just to show subjection to people who were "inferior" to me. It bugged the crap outta me that the boys were given free reign of the house because they were boys (and potentital elders) and I was made to be their maid servant. If the house wasn't cleaned by me by the time my Mother came home, I was beat within an inch of my life, or severe verbal abuse ensued.
I was also a very big tomboy. This wasn't necessarily a JW thing, but a Greek thing combined with it. My Father came from the old country, and girls weren't as important as boys, so for the whole time growing up, whenever the boys got bicylcles or motorcyles, I got left out. THey got bicycles. THEY got motorcycles while *I* got to clean their piss stains off the bathroom walls behind the toilets. See... when you're a Greek girl, if you want to make something more of yourself than a housewife you are questioned, condemned, and thought an oddity, much less when you are a JW.... It became painful for me when the sport that I enjoyed most, rugby, was forbidden to me by them because I had started to develop breasts. It was even worse when I found out that my Aunt and my Mother were monitoring when I would start my period so that I could be declared of age, and they could start to tell me I couldn't do this or that, that I SHOULD do this or that, it was devastating to me. It made it so my Grandmother could fix me up with an old fart Greek in Toronto that ran a cookie stand to marry. I wasn't having any of it.
I was my Mother's first child. I think she probably initially thought I was cool. But after she got a boy and found out that that was my Father's delight, she probably just dropped me to the wayside. The more brothers I got, the more responsibility I got, and the less attention they paid to me. I was just their hand-maiden after that. Don't get me wrong: I LOVED my brothers. There's lots of good memories with my brothers. I was very responsible at the age of 9. She was leaving me to babysit them, but c'mon... FOUR babies at the age of 9 to babysit while she went out in service? After that, I was nothing more than a maid to them. I spent alot of time teaching my brothers to read, have manners, all that stuff. We had our Grandmother living with us, so she helped alot, even though she couldn't speak English. She was funny, I liked her alot.
I have alot of anger because of my childhood. Like I said before, it's hard not to exhibit that anger when confronting people. I am a very able person, very healthy, and smart. It's hard for me not to let that anger out when confronting people. I try very hard to rationally make decisions, but sometimes it's clouded by my feelings of anger from before. I can honestly say that I would not be above coming to blows in a fight because of my deep anger. I have made a promise to myself, over the next year, to not talk about politics, religion, or money... when the subject comes up, I excuse myself.
That's what makes ME unpleasant.
CG
