Sorry it has taken me so long to return to this topic!
Roybatty, I was actually pretty active in my cong. In fact I Aux Pioneered the last month I was in the cong! I was kind of railroaded into it my my parents, but I suppose I thought I would do it for that month and maybe I would change my mind about leaving. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t, but as it was such a permanent decision to make, I didn’t think it would do me much harm to give it one last shot.
As it happened, I stuck to my FS schedule for about two weeks, then thought ‘stuff this’ lol. Even though I never made the 60 hours, I still managed to convince my dad (who also was the cong secretary) that I had done all the hours when I handed in my report.
Maybe this is what makes my situation so unusual? I just went cold turkey. Up until the day I moved out I had been attending all meetings, participating, and going out of FS. I suppose I was quite ‘high profile’ in the Cong. I think I also had a talk during that final month too. I tried to get out of it because my householder was Sister Perfect which would have been bad enough under normal circumstances!
I think looking back I was always considered something of a ‘golden girl’ by the older cong members and the elders. Even when I was DF’d, I attended the judicial meeting and had a hard time convincing the three elders that I had actually commited the ‘sin’ I was about to be DF’d for!! My best friend in the cong had DA’d herself a few weeks before and the elders thought she was influencing me and we had conspired to get me thrown out too. The Elders REALLY didn’t want to DF me. They went round in circles for ages just trying to talk me out of leaving them no choice.
My friend was always looked down on. She wasn’t baptised and only a year younger than me. I was the ‘spiritual’ one, she was the ‘weak’ one. That’s how they saw it. But that wasn’t true. They didn’t see all the times she dragged me out on FS, they didn’t see her forcing me to do the WT study prep with her.
One time we were sat together at a meeting and we both got a fit of the giggles. As much as we tried to hide it, our shoulders were going up and down ten to the dozen and there was the occasional snort to be heard as we tried to stifle our giggles. After the meeting I was on my way out of the KH when Sister Old Bag took me to one side, having been sat directly behind us, and said “You can do better than associate with her, you’re worth more than that. Don’t let her drag you down.”
That made me really angry, but it summed up the cong attitude towards me and my friend.
Even after I was reinstated (my friend never returned) I wasn’t treated like a second class citizen because I had been DF’d. Everyone welcomed me back with open arms. And yes, it was a quickie reinstatement. The elders on my original judicial committee called it a ‘short sharp shock’. After all, I was little miss perfect and how could they possibly hold out on me for longer than three months?
LDH, I think this really was a case of the ‘wink wink’ rule. In a weird way I am pretty angry about it. Okay, so I have benefited from it, but what about all of you that haven’t? And just because I had an elder for a Dad, why should that make a difference. Of course, I don’t wish to be DF’d, but if I was in my ex-cong and had witnessed all this happening to another Elders daughter, then been thrown out myself on a whim, I would be pretty angry about the double standards!
Orangefatcat and others who have experienced similar, my heart really does go out to you and it makes me all the more angry, especially now I have been able to learn about others experiences.
As a ‘newbie’ here (in post terms rather than timescale, I have been lurking for months) I feel a bit strange joining in, but I will make an effort to participate and get rid of this awful ‘newbie’ title lol.
We all make a mess of our lives from time to time
It's part of the process that you stumble as you climb
