Ok. I thought I would share my story with any who chooses to read it.
I was born in
My family, which consisted of two parents and three children (I am the middle child), moved from to when I was about 7. We attended meetings and went in service and until I got a little older, most of my memories of meetings and such are like snapshots, not full motion videos. What I remember most about that time is that I tried hard to please my parents and to be a good little publisher. I had a worldly friend in the 3 rd grade who always asked me over to her house on the weekends and I always told her ?no?, but I never understood why. The one time my mother allowed me over to her house, it was on the condition that I would ?witness? to her. I even got to stay overnight! One of the best weekends of my young life! I lost touch with this friend and found her again in Junior High. She committed suicide when we were 16, but that is another story for another day.
So, where was I? Oh, right. Childhood, and growing up as one of Jehovah?s Witnesses. I have a vague memory of my mother being disfellowshipped at some point (maybe when I was 9?). My sister tells me that my mom had an affair and that was the reason for the disfellowshipping. There is a pretty good chance that I will never know because I don?t have the courage to ask my mother about it and even if I did, she would probably not tell me the truth. All I really remember about that time is that it was summer and we were shipped off to my grandparents? house in while my parents worked things out.
I got baptized at a District Convention in when I was 14. My sister was supposed to get baptized with me, but they wouldn?t let her because one of her ?friends? had gone to the elders and told them about how my sister had been sneaking out and partying with worldly people?of course the ?friend? (an elder?s daughter) was only asked if she knew this for a fact and I doubt she ever got into trouble for being the one who came and picked my sister up at 1 in the morning to go party with their friends. I knew about the sneaking out, but I wasn?t going to say anything. I was devastated when two elders came and made my sister leave the seats set aside for baptismal candidates. No one would tell me what was going on until later. I went ahead and got baptized, but what should have been a joyous occasion, started to feel like the biggest mistake of my life. That was the first crack in the wall.
I did pretty well in high school, got decent grades, and had one witness ?friend?. By the time we were seniors though, she had gotten a job and was only going to school for half a day. Her parents were both witnesses, sort of and weren?t as strict as mine. She had worldly boyfriends and went to football games. Not me though. Not allowed. I remember once at a district convention, I was talking to her and the guy whom she would eventually marry about getting baptized?neither of them were baptized at the time. In a moment of false security, I told them both that sometimes I regretted getting baptized when I did and that I should have waited. That was all I said, but they looked at me like I had just told them that I call Satan on his private line and eat babies for breakfast! I never mentioned it again to anyone. She moved to the year after we graduated and married this guy. I truly hope they are happy. I have tried to locate her, but to no avail so far.
After high school, I made friends with a girl who was a year younger than me. Her name was Cari and we always had a lot of fun together. We led a classic ?double life?. To our parents and everyone in the congregation, we were little angels. We went in service, we went to meetings, we studied together, gave talks, all of it. But we also snuck around, meeting her boyfriend (an elder?s son), getting older strangers to buy us beer, etc. I remember one incident pretty clearly, partially because it began my downward spiral, but for other reasons as well. My parents were out of town and Cari and I decided to have her boyfriend, her boyfriend?s sister and Cari?s ex-boyfriend over to have a little party with us. I remember at one point in the evening I was looking for my keys and Jesse, Cari?s boyfriend, said he would help me look for them. Stupid, naïve, girl that I was then, said ?OK? and for some reason, we went to the backyard. Well, the short version of this is that yes, I had sex with him. My best friend?s boyfriend! What the hell was I thinking???? Not to mention the fact that I didn?t recall any mention of the matter of contraceptives. But the biggest thing was, what I had done was a TABOO thing. I was baptized, I was going to get df?d, my parents would never forgive me, and Jehovah would never forgive me. I was now ?bad? and I had given in to temptation and I was convinced that my life was OVER. Cari ended up finding out about it somehow (scary how fast things get around) and while she didn?t break up with Jesse right away, she did turn me in to the elders, ?for my own good?. I had to tell my parents about all of this and I lived through hell in the days leading up to my committee meeting. When I went to the committee meeting, I asked my dad to be there. I was a minor after all and absolutely terrified of the elders. I talked to the elders and they asked me all sorts of questions and I answered them and then they asked my dad to leave the room. It wasn?t until several years later that I realized just how sick this situation was?here I am, 17 years old, having just had my first sexual experience, not even really sure if it had been against my will and these 3 MEN want my father to leave the room so that they can ask me VERY detailed questions about this sexual experience. I don?t even remember the questions and even writing this now is very upsetting to me. I ended up being publicly reproved and although Cari was there and drinking and messing around with her ex-boyfriend (another elder?s son), I don?t even think that she received the congregation?s version of a slap on the wrist. Another crack in the wall.
I moved out of my parents house and pretty much continued to do whatever I felt like doing, except that I hid all this from my parents. I was lonely, I had no real friends. Jesse would stop by sometimes if he was too drunk to face the prospect of crawling in his bedroom window or just needed some attention. Although I don?t know what he was worried about?his dad was an alcoholic who drank enough every night to pass out?as an aside, we (Jesse, me, his sister, his brother and my brother) would make bets on whether or not he would spill any wine after he passed out in his chair, still holding the wine glass?he never spilled a drop. And Jesse?s mom had (has) bi-polar disorder and would medicate herself so much that she was dead to the world. Anyway, I guess my only real mistakes with Jesse were telling him where I lived and letting him past my door. What happened after he got past the front door was between us, or so I thought. I figured it was not any of the congregation?s business if I could eventually make my peace with Jehovah. Although, by that time, I was beginning to have my first doubts about his existence. My next mistake was telling someone (I thought I could trust) about Jesse?s visits. She thought she was doing me a favor by telling the elders about me and about some other things that happened the previous year. I was disfellowshipped that time, but my eyes were dry when I left and I remained almost silent the whole time. I remember two of the three elders there that night. One had been a friend of my family for a long time. I used to baby-sit for him and his wife. My brother and his sons were friends. He was fond of me, wanted to give me another chance. The other elder, the one I called the Fire and Brimstone elder, wanted to give me no quarter and was more persuasive in his arguments and so I was df?d. It was kind of a relief in a way. I was a pariah now, shunned by all and I gave them no less or more than they expected.
Unfortunately, for financial reasons, I had to move back in with my parents and they began pressuring me to try to get reinstated (for them to do any less would have been against their grain and besides, they were probably getting pressure from elders in their congregation). To maintain some semblance of freedom, however, I decided to continue attending the congregation I had attended before I moved back in with them. I convinced myself that my previous feelings of depression were due to the fact that I had not been doing what I knew to be right. I handed in requests for reinstatement on two different occasions and the second letter bore fruit. I was reinstated just after the district convention. My old friends welcomed me with open arms and I thought that I was happy.
I moved away from parents? house again and still continued to go to meetings, although I was still keeping up with my double life, too. Funny to think about all the ?trouble? I got into?it was never with worldly kids, it was always witness kids and most of them were the children of elders and pioneers.
My sister (who by this time had two kids and had been df?d and reinstated and then had started the slow fade) was losing her lease and so we decided to try and live together. So, we moved into a cool big house together and I helped her with her kids. I switched congregations and was only as active as I had to be to keep the elders off my back. My sister and I partied together and would often have our brother?s band over and they would play in the garage and we would sit in the backyard and drink and smoke. We would also sometimes have witnesses from the congregation over. I remember this one particular time when we had a ministerial servant and his wife over for dinner. We all got to drinking and both the MS and his wife got pretty piss drunk. Whenever she would leave the room and it was just the husband and me, he would come on to me. It made me uncomfortable and pretty mad. I am not going to lie and make it sound like I am some prude. I will admit, I was attracted to the guy. But he was MARRIED, and I was friends with his wife and a he was MINISTERIAL SERVANT and no way was I going to go down that road! Because, I knew that even if he wasn?t married and something happened between us, I would be the one that everyone would blame. Other than the touchy-feely ministerial servant, I was having fun, but felt guilty all the time. I was definitely a fence-sitter and it was eating me up. I didn?t like feeling like a hypocrite, leading a double life. So, I had a talk with my sister and she told me that if I was ever going to be truly happy, I had to make a decision?get out now and get on with my life, stay in and make a go of it and probably be miserable or truly put my heart and soul into it and be a good little JW (she also followed this with a ?baaaaa?). I knew immediately that she was right and I also knew that I would never be able to be a jw-clone. I had seen too much hypocrisy, too much elitist intolerance, too much repressive, sick behavior toward women and children, been the subject of too much gossip, been caused too much pain, seen or read about too much horror done in God?s name, seen too many families torn apart by how the elders tried to ?keep the congregation clean?.
I knew that I could handle leaving the organization, but I was worried sick (literally) over what this was going to do my parents. I told them anyway and they were naturally very, very upset?blamed my sister for putting these seeds of doubt in my head (as though I could not possibly have an original thought and was unable to see things for myself). They wanted to try to answer my questions and they couldn?t. My parents are both pretty smart people, but when we started discussing the role of women in the congregation, my dad couldn?t explain to me why the society felt that women had to be subservient to men or why I couldn?t speak from the platform. He asked me,
?Do you really want to be responsible for preparing and giving an hour long talk?? Thinking that that would make me say something like,? Oh, no, Daddy, you?re right, men are far more equipped to handle talking for an hour about things that we women have no clue about and I would never ever want to carry a microphone around?I might break a nail or injure my door-knocking hand?. What I really said was,
?Whether I personally want to give a public talk is not the point. The point is, it would be nice to be given the CHOICE! You know as well as I do that most of the sisters in the congregation are twice as smart as the brothers who are supposedly in a ?leadership? position.? That was about as bold as I could be because like I said before, I am not a boat-rocker and I was pretty passive when it came to my dad. I guess I was pretty passionate about what I was saying that day though, because I had no problems getting on my soapbox.
My dad threw his hands up in the air at that point and said, ?I can?t talk to you if you are not willing to listen to reason!? Huh? Where was my Mom? I couldn?t believe that she was happy about having to always defer to my father. Why didn?t she come out and defend me or stick up for my dad? Well, because she couldn?t and maybe, just maybe, she would not have been able to stick up for my dad because she would have known that what I said made sense.
A few months after my slow fade, my sister and I parted ways (totally unrelated to her encouraging me to break from the JW?s). I moved in with a (male) friend of mine and I started to try and live my life outside of what some on the JWD forum call the ?borganization?. I was having the time of my life, but the elders were still trying to hunt me down and either win me back or get a letter out of me. I avoided them successfully for awhile?I remember once my roommate (also a fading JW) and I had some friends over on a Friday night and they had all crashed at our apartment. The elders chose that Saturday to try to contact me. I thought it was hilarious when one of the guys staying over opened the door to the elders in just his shorts and blearily told them that I was still in bed, where any self-respecting young woman of my age should be on a early f***ing Saturday morning! I don?t know what they thought about the other two young men crashed out on the living room floor, but I bet I could tell you what they were thinking of me??
Then, one day my dad comes by my work and wants to talk to me. He starts to ask about Ryan (roommate) and tells me that he heard some disturbing things about us and he starts hemming and hawing and couldn?t quite ask me if I was sleeping with Ryan.
?Dad?, I said, deciding to put him out of his misery, ?Ryan is gay, OK??
I do believe that was the first and ONLY time I have ever rendered my father speechless. I felt bad toying with him and letting him be all awkward...but it was also somewhat satisfying to see the look on his face.
After that, I got tired of hiding from the elders and wrote a letter and told them to come on by. We could have a chat. They came over, Ryan was with them and I handed them my letter and told them that although they probably felt the need to try and change my mind, my mind was unchangeable and that I needed to find some things out on my own. They left and that was the end of that.
It wasn?t the end of my recovery though. Like a recovering alcoholic or addict, I will always be recovering. I am not bitter about my time in the organization; in a way, it helped me to become the person I am today. I don?t have bad feelings about my parents. They taught me many fine things. I know that they love me and I know that while they cannot accept that I don?t hold their beliefs, they have accepted the fact that I will never be coming back to be with them in the ?Truth?. They probably think I will die in Armageddon, but I guess it hasn?t occurred to them that Armageddon is probably just a marketing ploy from the boys at the WTBTS. They have made a certain kind of peace with me and we now have a functioning, if superficial, relationship. My Dad is finally an elder. I almost forgot to comment on that. For years, he had been doing the work of one, but because we (all of his children) weren't obedient little robots and had been reproved or disfellowshipped (except my brother--who was never baptized), or both, they would never appoint him. I was almost 18 the first time I got busted, and my sister was over 18 the first time she was reproved. I guess they figured if he couldn't control us, he couldn't control the congregation? And although I wish he would put his efforts to a different use, I am still proud of my Dad. Both of my parents, really. My mom is really a lot stronger than I may have made her sound.
I pretty much had to start my life over, deprogramming myself and gaining my beliefs through my own searching and research. If feels empowering to know that NO ONE gets to tell me what I believe or that my beliefs are wrong or bad. And no one has any hold over me. I answer to myself.
I moved to for awhile to gain emotional separation from my past. I met the man who would become my husband while living in . We have been married for three years now and we are very happy. We moved (back) to Oregon about a year and a half ago. It was he who helped me to begin learning about critical thinking and while I still felt weird about doing things ?against? the WTBTS, it was with his encouragement that I finally read ?Crisis of Conscience? by Ray Franz. I felt as though my eyes were finally completely open. I had been thinking that the deceit and lies were just perpetuated by the elders in my local congregations, but I realized it was the whole organization!
It feels good to be able to tell my story to a group of people who will nod in agreement and say, ?I know what you mean?. It?s kind of a long one, thanks for reading.