Posts by rather be in hades

35

Was your fade easy or difficult? Let me know ur fade story

by dazed but not confused in

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when i started to fade it was pretty easy for me.

rather be in hades

no problem dazed. i really like the topic. it's fascinating. i always thought no one would ever understand me, but being on this site and some of the others, i feel like here i can find people who do. so far i've had 2 therapists and a psychiatrist and each time, it always came back to the organization. doesn't that seem odd? that for some reason, i always came back to 'god's organization' when trying to describe why i hated life. that's not a very loving god. the past year was absolute hell on earth for me and two siucide attempts, the loss of some people close to me and especially the passing of my grandmother, man i hit rock bottom. it took me from about 18-26/almost 27 but finally i feel like my mind is clear and i can comprehend what it was i went through, lost and what i can do to regain my life.

how is it a loving god would put us in a position that we'd have to shun family members?

how is it a loving god would force me to believe in something i have no proof in? the miracles issue really bugs me. i swept things nder the rg for so many years. i love science and math and there was no way i could reconcile what i knew about evolution and the big bang. i mean there's no way as a jehovah's witness that you can reconcile those two things. clearly there was a big bang and if i remember right, the creation book mentions the universal expansion signature that radiates throughout the universe...which i could've sworn was proof of the big bang. the cognitive dissonance was strong within me. somehow i managed to believe in both evolution and the big bang, and i could believe in genesis (maybe i didn't but i never had to defend it thank god). i just told myself both were true...somehow. honestly i'd say neither one necessarily proves there is no god, just that the bible is a crock of shit.

how is it a loving god would say that homosexuality is wrong, yet there's a mltitude of people who are born gay? is that a loving brden to place on someone? is that a loving way to test someone? actually, i thought jehovah didn't test us...

why is there tobacco on the planet if god says don't do it? ok i don't like smoking but still...

why is there marijuana if god would say never do it? yea i'm a hypocrite. i love my brownies though. nothing better than trying to understand some weird math while high. i'm a nerd...

frankly, the whole issue of letting the system continue, ok well at any point that god decides now is the time, someone is not going to havfe a chance at learning before armageddon starts. there's no logic in that at all and i always swept it under the rug. there's so much under that rug that i have no idea how i was able to put anything more under it.

i just don't understand how god would give us an instruction manal for life, bt make it so convoluted that we have bddhists, christians, muslims, jews, shintos, and within christians...you have baptists, catholics, pentecostals, jehovah's witnesses, protestants and even within those groups, you have off shoots like opus dei and southern baptists. you have methodists, deists, etc. yet we're all spposed to be jdged according to a set of rules that clearly no one understands.

wow i went off topic. sorry about that. thank you for the topic. i definitely look forward to seeing more responses.

76

WT recently settled out-of-court with 5 victims of JW serial molester. Court documents now available to post on any website

by AndersonsInfo in

on may 20, 2010, a lawsuit was filed in san diego, california.

defendant, the watchtower of ny, settled out-of-court for an unknown amount of money with the plaintiffs just weeks before the candace conti trial began at the end of may 2012 in oakland, california.

the law firm representing the five plaintifs in this case was .

rather be in hades

yes i am very thankful too. thank you so mch for your hard work and the library of information on your site is incredble

35

Was your fade easy or difficult? Let me know ur fade story

by dazed but not confused in

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when i started to fade it was pretty easy for me.

rather be in hades

mine was very difficult. i spent a lot of time kicking myself over being so stupid and for throwing away my childhood. i still do that to this day, but at least i'm starting to forgive myself...5/6 years later.

my fade started when i was 18. i was sick of how many of the jws acted around me. i think if we're honest with ourselves, in this day and age, MOST kids raised in lead double lives to an extent. ok so that statement leaves a lot of wiggle room, so in my experience, i'd guesss at least 2/3 of the young ones start leading doble lives and bounce on out. kids in prominent jw families, kids who were the type to be on district conventions and circuit assembly parts...were some of the most egregious offenders. now i'm not saintly by any stretch, however i have to say, if you're gonna be a jw, then for godssake act like one. it's NOT cool to call yourself a jw, to put up a false facade that you're some high spirited pioneer from a family that's at the top of the jw food chain, yet condoms fall out of your purse at a party...i can't imagine why a jw would need that if they aren't married...

that though, wasn't the biggest stumbling block for me. it was the way people treated me. i was absolutely sick of that. i gave up my dream schools in order to stay faithful and i felt that i'd always have the love of the congregation. turns out that love is a fraud. so my fade started when i was 18, the day i left the congregation i grew up in and moved to a congregation that had even less love for me. at the time, i started hanging out with some guys i met in a local college, we were taking classes together, and i stopped hanging out with witnesses. eventually i slowly faded away.

before the final meeting though, my mom convinced me to go to therapy. at the time i was really strggling with depression. little did my mother know, it had more to do with my loss of faith than anything to do with a simple physical imparity. everyone wants to throw fcking pills at you like that's the cure. how about getting out the goddamn cult? but i digress...

i started therapy and every session, at least at first, my therapist would want to talk about my father. now i'll be frank, my relationship didn't end with him on a high note. it actally ended with me legally changing my middle and last name, getting a restraining order and almost in me beating his head in with an aluminum baseball bat. so she was jstified in trying to get me to talk about him. however, i would each time say, well i didn't have a good father, but he's not mch of an issue for me. i didn't REALLY live with him and it's not like he was in my life every single day.i DID always go into how unhappy i was, that i had no real friends, that i was lonely as all hell and that my childhood scked ass and that i was losing faith. oh, but i always managed to say, please don't tell my mother about what i said. as a jehovah's witness, i'm not supposed to be saying anything bad about the organization. odd during my therapy, i'd always swing back to that interesting point. i'd always talk about how nhappy i was not going off to college, not doing...normal kid stuff. i mean, it's no big deal to miss your prom if you're from an area when there is no such thing as prom, but we're social creatres and dammit i'm from an area that has proms for their students. everyone goes, it's a rite of fucking passage. your first date, first kiss, first snogging (i love that word). all rites of passage. i always thought michel de montaigne was interesting. his concepts of normalcy and how that plays a major factor in how we humans work always struck me as spot on.

eventually it was clear that therapy alone wasn't gonna do it. i was either gonna have to get out and correct my life, or take some pills. i opted to take some pills. i mean, leaving just means everlasting destruction. so i started seeing both a psychologist and a psychiatrist. i'd see each person once a week and that still wasn't cutting it and finally, i'd say after a year of blffing to everyone and putting on a fake smile, i said enough is enough and i'll never take the pills again. i'll also never set foot inside a kingdom hall again.

so i stopped, but as that one thread says, 'the day you leave the hall is not the day the hall leaves you.' my decision tormented me and there were many times i'd defiantly look up and tell god i'd rather die than serve you for another second. i could never worship a god that did such heinous things like wiping out cities and peoples in floods and catastrophes. my god would not create such an amazing universe of such complex and intelligent beauty, but make such a convoluted set of rules in a book that was open to interpretation that clearly had false teachings in it and there's no way my god would force me to believe in miracles without direct proof. what nonsense is that? "oh yea, i know yo didn't see 'em cuz you're 2000 years too late, but trst me yo, my little boy came down to earth and he was healing the hell outta people. no pills or nothing. it was a miracle...like that wheat i gave to the watchtower."

so there were a lot of really gly ups and downs. the scales started falling from my eyes and i'll admit, i started panicking bc i started feeling old. i know it's silly to feel that at 20 or so, but here's the thing, up until that point, i realized i had not experienced life. at all, that everything i thought and believed was a lie. i felt i had to catch up and instead of motivating me to be gung ho and grab life by the short and curlies, it sank me into frther depression.

fading is easier for some than for others. i think it depends on just how deep you were in it, what you sacrificed along the way for it and i'm sure there's a ton of factors that go along with it, bt for me, those two things really rocked me in a bad way.

62

Floyd Kite's "Enduring the Tests Within God's Organization" (1980)

by Leolaia in

thats a big test.

can you think of the test that that would put on gods people?

its a big test, its a big test.

rather be in hades

kite was my book study conductor in the early 90s when i was little. this talk was an interesting one and it's hard to imagine i would have fallen for this sort of logic. i was thinking of showing it to my mom, but on second thought, i think she'd end up further in than she already is lol.

60

New here

by konceptual99 in

jw
friends

i am new here, been lurking for a while but felt compeled to join as i would like to comment on more and more of the topics i come across.

by way of an introduction here is some info about me.. i am an active jw, married with a family, living in the uk.

i serve as a ms and have done for many years.

rather be in hades

welcome :)

it's not an easy transition. i do ask you, do you have children? if you do, for their sake, i would say get them out of the jw mindset sooner rather than later so they can adjust to life outside the watchtower organization. yo don't have to cut that part out of your life cold turkey, bt some on the sly after school activities and such would help as you transition out of the jw lifestyle. the sooner they learn how to be 'normal', the better. and for clarity's sake, that doesn't mean going wild, having sex, doing drugs, etc. normal just means...being a normal teenager. stressing about school, making friends, after school junk, you get the idea. if they want to strive for university, you'd be able to encourage that. we tend to literally think of the worldly people on the outside as godless heathens, even thogh it's not explicitly stated in such terms, that is the connotation that worldly people get and it's just not true. not every teenager is having sex with multiple partners at once while doing blow and keg stands simultaneously.

if you don't have kids, then you can take your time. there's no rush getting out of the mindset. i'm currently trying to figure out a way to get my own mother out and even if i were able to snap my fingers and say, 'you're out of it!' i would still tell her to keep on the grin and bear it out for a while as she gets comfortable being away from the organization. all your friends are there. with not friendships and support sytem on the outside, it's a bit tough. how does your wife feel about everything? having people outside, or people making the journey with you is very helpful. if i didn't have friends outside of the jws, honestly i'd have probably ended back in there, but twice as miserable and ten times more depressed.

i do hope all is well. take time with the forum and enjoy yourself. read everything with an open mind and don't take anything for face value, verify stuff. see that it's true. you can find the old watchtowers online.

27

The Civil Rights Struggle: Put it to Rest

by prophecor in

jw
friends

we have been priveliged to have the first black president in the us to serve in the white house.

with the wrestling of the 50's and 60's, king and the kennedys.

race riots, vietnam, the drug culture of the seventies, and so on and so forth, isn't it time we all took a deep breath and take into account all that has transpired between where we are and where we've been?

rather be in hades

and you want to point fingers at others for ad hominem attacks?

61

Trying to talk to my mom - really discouraged, need help.

by rather be in hades in

jw
friends

so, i'm new here and i've decided to finally tell my mom the truth about jws.. and sorry for the long post.

i'm at my wits end.. here's some background:.

i grew p in a congregation in california, i'm not a born in, though i was raised in it from 5 - about 20. arond 20 i pretty mch faded out, bt the emotional ups and downs were jst all too much.

rather be in hades

i'm not exactly trying to sneak them past.

the main idea is for me to get things off my chest. for me to be able to tell her in no ncertain terms, 'this shit fucked me up.'

that is 99% of my goal. to tell her, she raised me in a cult.

i would, however, like to be able to say it in a way that maximizes the potential that she breaks out of it withot me having to go the bible study route. i REALLY don't want to have to drag this out, though i recognize that i most likely will, hence me thinking of going the 'well yu can look at it like it's a bible stud/count your time! hehehehe' route.

i'm looking for that improbable best of both worlds. the fast method. i know it doesn't exist, bt i would like to brainstorm a way to break their logic quickly, or at least in a way that lets us start strong on the way to breaking loved ones out of this nonsense.

i don't have the cult mind control book and would love to get it. unfortnately, that's not going to happen anytime soon and i do believe the time for me to say tough things to my mother before she gets used to being able to talk to me whenever will close before i can get to the book. before this month, i litereally refused any contact with her since october of last year and i know that hurt her. it hurt me. especially since my grandmother passed away in january and we have yet to talk about that.

honestly it bothers me more than i let on. my grandmother died in january and i was so disconnected from my family that they didn't even tell me ntil the next day. they tell everyone my grandmother was apparently practically comatose and everyone got to pay their last respects but me. even though i'm on the other side of the country i wanted to tell her i loved her before she pased away. even though she might not have understood, even if it was only over the phone. i've been in a dark place for years. i was in sch a dark place and i retreated further and further away from my family trying to become something new. to start afresh. as though the old me, the jehovah's witness me, never existed. i've spent years frustrated trying to explain to my aunt that i'm not depressed, that the medication NEVER helped me. not one bit. i always woke up feeling awful no matter how high the dosage, no matter how long i took them. i was simply raised in a cult and all of a sudden plopped into the middle of a reality that i had no idea how to process, how to move, or live within. all those years of torment praying to god for friends. young ones in my hall that i could be friends with, to have a group to be around. that pain was pointless. there was no jehovah. i might as well have been praying to ren and stimpy. i lost my chance to say my last words to my grandmother because of all of this craziness. i cannot imagine that i would have developed in this way without the influuences of the jehovah's witnesses. the bond i had with her before the witnesses was incredible. after the witnesses, it got to the point where we couldn't communicate all that well. now think about this. how many children in multilingual households where a family member barely speaks any english, cannot speak the other language in the house? it's virtually unheard of bt i lost my ability because i wasn't around my grandmother all that mch anymore. some of that is natural. but the way i went was too far.

i was a stupid child. by that, i mean i did stpid things. like climbing trees dangerously high. dangerously high to the point that even as an 8 year old i would think, 'this is kinda stupid, i shold probably not keep going.' of course i would keep going until panic wold almost set in. this being sothern california, the trees weren't nearly as sturdy as the ones in goergia, those were some good trees. now, perhaps this is silly, but i shudder to think that if i fell from one of those trees and needed a couple pints of blood to save my life, i shudder to think that my mother would have let me die. and yet here i am, having realized it's all a crock of shit, i cannot believe, that i would have agreed with her then.

these talks between me and her are all about me. it's for my benefit. i'm juust looking for an off the wall, theoretically maybe this will work, method while still leaving myself some wiggle room for future conversations.

for sre, i know not to be confrontational and direct. most of the time i'll be asking questions and the only doctrine i would consider debating has to do with proven failed prohecies. i would like some help developing a way to break the logical fallacy of the perfect organization, run by a perfect god, printing erroneous bs which is ok because they are infallible men. that one blows my mind. why in the fuck did i believe that? how does that work? lol.

76

WT recently settled out-of-court with 5 victims of JW serial molester. Court documents now available to post on any website

by AndersonsInfo in

on may 20, 2010, a lawsuit was filed in san diego, california.

defendant, the watchtower of ny, settled out-of-court for an unknown amount of money with the plaintiffs just weeks before the candace conti trial began at the end of may 2012 in oakland, california.

the law firm representing the five plaintifs in this case was .

rather be in hades

how can we access those public docments? i would love to show my mother

61

Trying to talk to my mom - really discouraged, need help.

by rather be in hades in

jw
friends

so, i'm new here and i've decided to finally tell my mom the truth about jws.. and sorry for the long post.

i'm at my wits end.. here's some background:.

i grew p in a congregation in california, i'm not a born in, though i was raised in it from 5 - about 20. arond 20 i pretty mch faded out, bt the emotional ups and downs were jst all too much.

rather be in hades

LOL Gate F would have been a lot more enjoyable if I was one of the cool witnesses instead of one of the ones standing outside it looking in hahaha.

Oh well. Either way, the sisters did dress quite nicely in the Southern California sun.

I have thought abot going after basic biblical teachings. I opted against it for some reason and I'm not sure why. I think I figured that at this point, she's too attached to the bible as god's word. to her, it's infallible and goes before all else. I think I figured it'd be easier to go after the craziness in the WTBTS first. Maybe it would be easier to talk about Jonah, but I have a feeling she's going to pull the, 'It's a miracle!!!' line out and I'm not sure how to counteract that.

Actually, if I had money, I'd build a tank and offer $1,000,000 to anyone who walks across the tank of water with only divine intervention. I'd also charge $1.00 per try. Maybe set this up in a nice touristy place that's hot with a beach nearby so people will want a dunk in the pool...

Without that tank, I'm left with: it's a miracle and god stopped doing them nowadays nanner nanner nanner.

I coud go the Genesis route and attack creation. There's too much evidence for evolution to call it a swag or even a properly formulated theory. It's an easily proven fact. The Noah's Ark is a good one too. It's absolutely impossible, bt I'm afraid of the miracle nonsense.

Thanks for the sggestions though. I'm definitely gonna think about the creation aspect. I think I'd tell my mom to just pretend ntil she's comfortable with leaving, if it ever got to that point. I thoght about that aspect and even though she's still young and I'd bet my stepfather would leave it with her, most of their friends are jws. Leaving for me in my 20s when things are already in flux in life is one thing, but when you're in your 40s, it's entirely different. I'd caution her to take her time...if she ever saw the light. My one isse would be for her to make sure she puts reality in front of fantasy. That she'd take blood if she needed to, or what have you.

76

WT recently settled out-of-court with 5 victims of JW serial molester. Court documents now available to post on any website

by AndersonsInfo in

on may 20, 2010, a lawsuit was filed in san diego, california.

defendant, the watchtower of ny, settled out-of-court for an unknown amount of money with the plaintiffs just weeks before the candace conti trial began at the end of may 2012 in oakland, california.

the law firm representing the five plaintifs in this case was .

rather be in hades

what is ini the public domain files? does it explicitly show that he was molesting children before and after being appointed an ms and an elder? I would love to show my mom this as it blows out the water the idea that elders and such are appointed by holy spirit