My parents told me that they were divorcing when I was in my early teens. I went off the deep end for a few months, started drinking and some other illegal activities. I started studying with the JWs when I was a teen. Due to my parent's bitter divorce, though, I had already given up most of the teen rites of passage to care for my sisters and brothers while my mother worked. I married young, partly because I decided that if I was going to be raising children, they were going to be my own. In my inexperience, I imposed my own rigid morality on myself, as part of what I considered to be "mature behavior", and what I was studying with the JWs helped me in my justification for doing so.
In my late twenties, though, I had an early midlife crisis in response to how some events in my life were being handled by my "spiritual counselors". I started doing all those stereotypical things-dressed outlandishly, bought a sports car, colored my hair for the first time, stayed out listening to music at the bar until the wee hours of the morning (I never ordered a drink in a bar until I was twenty-seven years old, lol), bought porn mags, got my belly button pierced- basically did everything legal thing that teens usually try out that is frowned upon by the organisation in protest.When I was in my thirties, I started going to college, learned that it really was okay for me to think for myself, and bailed-not only from the religion, but from being peacekeeper, caretaker, and enabler for my sisters and brothers, and for my parents, who were still at each other's throats.
But I still drive a sports car, color my hair,...
This Life is Grand!
