The best friend I ever had and who was the love of my life committed suicide in 1986. Tom suffered from bi-polar disorder and had abused alcohol and drugs in his teen years. He became a Witness when he was eighteen, married at twenty-two, and then took his life when he was thirty-two.
The organization did nothing to help but instead only made him even more unhappy. First it piled on responsibilities he wasn't ready for. Then it humiliated him by deleting him as a minsterial servant. When his marriage started to fall apart, the elders did not direct him to get the professional counseling he badly needed.
His suicide devastated me and I grieved for more than twenty years, unable and unwilling to accept his death. I finally came to grips with it thanks to the help of another man who carefully and lovingly guided me on the path to recovery. I learned how to let go, to bury my friend at last, to not let him haunt me anymore but to rest in peace. I understand that ultimately Tom made his own choices, but this religion contributed to his death as sure as the sun rises in the east.
I barely escaped Tom's fate but that was because I made better decisions than he did. I sought professional help. I expanded my horizons and found a life outside the organization, particularly when I first went online with the Internet and later returned to college to complete my education. Finally, I accepted my identity as a gay man, an acceptance that ended the turmoil and civil war that had been going on inside me my entire adult life. All of these steps were taken without and despite the WTS. This organization is the very antithesis of good mental health. Its tenets and practices have ruined countless lives despite its claims to the contrary and I hope and wish with all my heart that it will meet the end it so richly deserves.
Quendi
