I grew up in a "divided household", so being a JW was hell all around. The fun parties were reserved for the kids who had BOTH parents in "da Troof". Once in awhile there would be a gathering and we'd be invited because it was a "congregation" gathering (a square dance, a picnic, etc). Most of the time, there were tons of parties that went on without my knowledge...I just got to hear about them the following Sunday. The kids did sleepovers, movie parties (where they'd pick a theme or an actor and watch those movies), decade parties (50's, 60's, 70's), picnics, tea parties for the girls. I was hardly ever invited...or if I was, I had a rotten time because I knew everyone looked down on me because my dad was worldly and we were poor. This made me terribly shy and made interacting with people very difficult. I never felt good enough.
I remember one family in particular. The mother was a snotty meddling bitch, the father was an asshole who was trying his damnedest to become an elder. What a couple of tight-asses. They were upper middle class, had a house, cars, etc. We, however, were poor and although we had a house, it wasn't the greatest...and mom always had to drive clunkers. The mother went to school with my dad and knew how poor he was when he was a kid. She was actually a total C U Next Tuesday to him in school because of it. When she found out he was my father, she was gunning for me from the very beginning! I wasn't good enough for her daughter. However, her daughter really did like me! She was (and still is) a total sweetheart (along with her brothers) and I can't for the life of me understand how she issued forth from the loins of these two uppity pricks. Her mom tried to make every excuse NOT to let her daughter be my friend, but finally she realized she had no good reason...the only way to have a reason would be to lie. So every once in awhile, I would be invited to a party or to sleep over. But I was always made a spectacle of. At parties, I was always enlisted to either help in the kitchen or clean up...like a fucking slave. Or the mother would counsel me in front of everyone about being jealous of what my friends had! She read me a scripture about it...out of nowhere! And then she said "Now, if Jennifer had a CD player and you didn't, would you throw her CD player into the ocean?". I was standing there looking like "WTF??". I have NO IDEA where that came from! Because I was poor, I was automatically a jealous person?? Also, every chance this woman got, she would try to pump me for information on my dad, his job, how much money he made, how much our bills cost... Anything that wasn't her business, she wanted to know! She was (and is still) a notorious gossip. I always said there were 3 ways to get a message around...Telephone, Telegraph, or Tell HER!! I remember we had a congregation gathering where we did skits from the Bible Story book. Well, this woman took the one about Pharaoh's daughter pulling Moses from the Nile. OF COURSE her daughter was the Princess! And who do you think got to be the slave who brought the baby from the water?? ME! She didn't even make me an "attendant" to the princess...they got to wear nice Egyptian costumes. I got to wear a bed sheet and my dad's old moccasins. And I didn't even have any damn lines! When I was going through my divorce, she tried getting information out of me as to what was going on. I didn't tell her a damn thing. Knowing her, what I told her would have been completely different coming out of her mouth and would have spread like a communicable disease throughout the local congregations.
That was just one family, though. My brother and I were never good enough...with the exception of one elder and his family that were good to my brother. They had 2 boys his age and he got on well with them. They had a lot in common. But they didn't have any girls my age. All the other girls in my congregations who were in "spiritually united" households were fucking snobs. They treated me like a leper, making fun of me after the meetings, making snide comments about my clothes. I had friends who were in "divided" households like me...one being from a "divorced and remarried" household...so her step-dad was a JW, but her biological dad wasn't. She had an entire side of the family that she went to see every other weekend who were not JW's. So she was no good, either. She and another girl whose parents did end up divorcing (he was worldly and cheated) were my best friends. We slept over each others' houses regularly. They were like sisters to me. Both of them were more accepted by the others because their families had money...drove new cars, lived in really nice homes. Sadly, I ended up losing touch with one (she left the JW's as a teen) until recently. We chat very little over Facebook. The other is still a JW with her Ministerial Servant husband who was beating her last I knew...and their children. I stopped talking to her when I found out she was a tattler... I couldn't risk being "exposed" at that time.
I had a few JW boy crushes. When I was really young, an elder's kid was my biggest crush (was actually a HUGE crush for me for a LONG time...we're talking from the time I was 8 until I was 17 lol...but his dad was removed for "apostasy", but never DF'ed. The whole family with the exception of one kid all faded...he's an elder, but the one I had a crush on is completely out). Two brothers had caught my eye when we first switched congregations. One was tall and dark and my opinion of handsome at the time (I was like 13 lol) and the other was short and light and cute. And one other was someone I had considered a good friend...I wanted more, and it seemed he did too most times. Turns out he was just a damn flirt and he treated all girls that way! I worked with his mom, so I was at his house a lot. His mom asked me to befriend his little sister because she had no "female rolemodels" who were teens. I did. He took this as me "horning in on his territory" and pulled me into the second school after the meeting one Sunday to make it clear that he "could never like me that way" and there were no feelings whatsoever. He went a step further and accused me of being friends with his sister in order to be close to him! I think the worst thing he did to me was this: He came home one evening with a bunch of sisters. He KNEW I would be there. They were all jabbering away in the kitchen and I came in to say hi. Now, every one of these sisters had their own car and had driven themselves. I didn't even have my license yet, and I was older than they were. I was closer to his age. He turns to me and says "Hey we're going to go to the mall to get some clothes for the assembly..." so I said "Oh, cool!" thinking that he was about to invite me. He finished with "there's no room in the car for you...My dad's asleep so can you stay with my sister until my mom gets home?". Fucker. His sister was very well old enough to stay alone.
So yeah... It was hell. Add to it that I was constantly bullied and harassed in school, and then beaten at home by my mother and my brother and verbally abused by my father... I had nowhere to turn to. Nowhere was safe. Not even "Jehovah's House".