Yeah a formal introduction okay:
Well I was taught the 'truth' until I was about 8 years old. then alot of stuff happened and my parents weren't really into it anymore til my later disfellowshipped mom got her husband to study when i was 16. I started studying too and got baptized after giving up things i loved, like Tae Kwon Doe and studying Japanese and masturbation (yeah right). I had been through parents divorcing several times and a breakup and some major depression when i started studying was on some pills.
Well I got really into it and ended up living with my grandparents and I started pioneering there. just kind of leeched off people and pioneered a few years there and finally got a full time job later and had to quit pioneering. I was dating again after a year after another breakup (cause she got disfellowshipped) and felt the need to take being a man seriously. so I was working 48 hours a week for the first time in my life and still tried to pioneer for two months. I wasn't sleeping much at all at the time and one day while was in service I was real grumpy and it was raining and only four of showed up for service so I said our congregation was full of pussys! I actually didn't know what pussy meant lol. An elder gave me an odd look and I felt I should stop pioneering and start sleeping.
well so I eventually married this girl and started having some major health problems 2 years later. so bad I couldn't make it out of my apartment on some days cause my breathing got so bad. doctors couldn't fix it and I straight up wanted to die for about 5 months. my wife started cheating on me and I couldn't work finally she left, and I still loved the death of her so I tried to get confort from the elders. and they told me each one must carry their own load. which pissed me off cause I had helped alot of people whenever i could and still do.
So one day I was moving my stuff outside because I had to leave my apartment and had no where to live. and a friend saw and said I could stay with him. He is a JW. So I did for a couple months. wife took the car so I had to walk around town struggling to breath all day trying to find work. But couldn't find none. had lost about sixty pounds in two months. so freaking depressed I couldn't even taste food at all.
Well this was in illinois. my grandparents came to visit me from tennessee and they said I could come back there with them. Jobs weren't so bad to find there so i did. I found a job within 3 weeks in tennessee. It was very hard though my health was extremely bad. I eventually worked three jobs at once and then found a better job in a warehouse. literally had to stop by the bathroom in the middle of working to throw up at times because of how bad i was feeling. couldn't take a full breath at all on the vast majority of days.
Eventually I got hired in permanent and got health insurance and doctors found out I have gluten intolerance, asthma and acid reflux.
So I had a friend in the congregation who was newly reinstated and we hung around alot, so he was going to ohio to see his girlfriend who does american sign language. well I went with him to be his chaperone. even though he is 15 years older than me. And there I met another girl who did asl who I now just married recently.
While we were dating, she came to visit me in tennessee. well we held hands at the hall and the elders got onto me about holding hands. what struck me was that neither of them had a bible with them and I was specifically asking them what is wrong with it. No bible. just quote some old magazine or something. What was really strange was the elder kept telling me to just get engaged and then we can hold hands. and I told him that my stepfather was greek and when I went to his familys reunions the men and the women would kiss my face. and in the bible the men tenderly kissed their families. and said how in some countries it is not improper for even men to hold hands so why would it be a problem to do it with someone im dating?
He said people would assume we are married if we hold hands. I said I wouldn't assume two young people holding hands are married. but they insisted.
well later they had a meeting because they were so low in servants and elders they had a meeting for brothers to try to encourage them to reach out. and the whole thing just seemed wrong. once again maybe two scriptures loosely used the whole hour and a half.
finally I said this is starting to get ridiculous. So I just started researching.
And that led me here
