(I've been holding out wondering if I was going to post this or not. Keep in mind this is just skimming the surface - there are many more details that I feel should not be touched upon. But if you've always wanted to know my background, here ya go...)
I was born in San Diego on January 19, 1973. At the time, my father was in the US Navy. My mother was a health nut. According to our family pictures, I have had one official Christmas during my entire lifetime. There exists one picture of me laying next to a Christmas tree at an unknown location near San Diego. This occurance would have taken place during December of 1973. During this time or just a very short time thereafter, my mother began studying with a sister from the Lakeside congregation, a Linda R. My mother was soon baptized in 1974, exact date unknown to me. This was the beginning of my lifelong travels into the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society.
I feel that I need to provide a little bit of background on my parents before I move on. Many of the things they did probably have had a direct impact on my person today.
My mother grew up a Navy girl. She was born in 1953 in San Diego. She was the oldest of 5 siblings. Her father was stationed in a couple of different places, one being Japan. She actually was able to live there for a period of time and to this day wishes she could go back there. Living in Japan also heavily influenced her life choices in how she viewed doctors in general. Couple those choices with the WTS view on doctors, and it leaves you with very few options. Prior to marrying my father in 1972, she was very much into "health food." This carried over into my years of growing up.
My father was born in 1950 in Fairfield, IA. He was the youngest of 4 siblings. He was your typical bad kid growing up, according to my sources. ;-) His time in the Navy did not cure him of his bad habits. It only helped to enforce them. Alcohol, drugs, you name it, he did it. After marrying my mother, it would be another 14 years or so until he would be forced to make a life or death decision.
I have very few memories of growing up during my younger years. The first memories I can recall are from the time we lived in southeast Iowa. I believe we moved from California to Iowa around 1975-1976. We lived in a small town called Keosauqua. My grandparents and aunt and uncle lived there. At my age, I loved being able to see my relatives almost every day. None of my relatives, apart from my mother at the time, were witnesses. We would make the journey of 20 miles to Fairfield to go the kingdom hall. I even seem to remember that there might have been a KH in Keosauqua back then. But during the time we lived there, a new KH was built in Fairfield. In fact, I'm pretty sure of it now that I think about it. There wasn't many witnesses in that part of the state, so everyone became everyone else's family. You knew the business of everyone in the hall. There were no secrets.
My dad became a carpenter in Iowa and still is to this day. Only now he is a master carpenter. He could easily have his own show like the guys from This Old House. He is that good. The family always thought I would follow in his footsteps, but my genes had other plans. It seems that I would take after my mothers side of the family. Electronics and computers would be the path that I would follow from a very young age.
Following his naval career, my father was into drugs and alcohol big time. Those were his extended family of choice. Even to this day, my father periodically relapses into drinking, but it is extremely rare. He is an alcoholic and will always be. I'm not sure when drugs became his hobby. I couldn't say. But I always knew he wasn't himself most of the time. My mom must have kept me pretty well sheltered from his habit because it doesn't stand out in my memory that well. We would always take little trips around the state to parks or just get out and drive. It was probably my mom's way of sheltering herself as well.
I honestly could say that I had family in the Fairfield congregation. We became extremely close to all. It makes me cry thinking that no one there would now give me a second look since I have become df'd. They were my real friends, not the conditional friends that many of you meet over your lifetime as JW's. As a whole, they would do anything for you if you needed the help. I have always compared every congregation that I have ever been in to the one in Fairfield. I know I used the word conditional when comparing other halls and also mentioned that they wouldn't look twice my way, but some of you know what I mean.
Around 1980, we moved back to San Diego. This must have made it even easier for my father to get his drugs, because over the next several years, his problem would escalate even further. At first, we lived with my grandparents(my mother's folks) for a short time. Afterwards, we moved to Alpine. I would stay here for the next 11 or so years. I always remembered the Alpine congregation being very cold. We had very few friends. But the families that were close to us were tight. This congregation was very clique'ish. The families with money didn't just have money, they had bank. You obviously knew who bankrolled the congregation. Mercedes cars and coupes in the parking lot were not out of the ordinary. This was a congregation where money was THE dividing factor. I never liked it at all.
The first talk I ever gave was at the Lakeside kingdom hall. This was the hall that Alpine met at for years until they finally built one up on Victoria Dr. in Alpine. I really don't have any stories to tell about the people there. Sure, there are a few, but nothing totally shocking. What can I say? It was fairly boring there.
My dad had moved into drugs big time now. Budweiser was his beer. My parents separated for a while because my mom couldn't deal with it anymore. My dad ended up moving to Pine Valley. I loved it up there because it used to be an old mining area and it had mountains and creeks. I didn't like the rattlesnakes. They were everywhere. My dad even had a dry aquarium that he kept baby rattlers in that he caught. He would feed them mice. Being out where he was, the seclusion offered him a prime space to grow his own, um, herbal plants. I also think that he dealt in other drugs as well, but I'm not sure what. He tried to hide it from me, but I knew well enough to know what he was doing.
There became a point where my dad wanted to get back together again. My mom would only take him back on one condition - that he get treatment for his drug addiction. He complied. He went into the Scripps Mcdonald Center rehab for a month. It helped. Guess who else was there? Desi Arnaz. Ricky Ricardo of I Love Lucy fame for those who don't know. I even got to play basketball with his son, Desi Jr. Lucy Jr. also came to the center. Her last name at the time was Luckinbill or something. Odd trivia that has stuck with me over the years...
My dad would eventually study and get baptized. I think he was finally baptized in 1987. I never thought that day would come. I really mean it. I didn't think he would live long enough for it to happen. But it did. And for all the bad things I have to say about the Org, I do have this to say - If it wasn't for him following the Org's rules on treating your body properly, he probably wouldn't be here today. That is the one single good thing I have to say about the Org. Not much I know, but at least it's something.
My teenage years were hell. I hated school. I did good, but I hated it. When you are raised to expect armageddon within your lifetime, and that it WOULD come almost certainly prior to the year 2000, what point is there in going to school, right? I thought that all the time. What point is there? But I was never very active in the ministry either. I figured that with all the bad stuff I did, why try and fake out Jehovah? He knew. Going down to Mexico, drinking, playing with explosives, etc etc, I was going to take a trip in a handbasket, I just knew it.
Everyone around me led a double life in one way or another. I was no exception. But I didn't fully lead a double life. Just your average teenage willies. Everyone goes through that stage of rebellion. A coworker of mine would buy me alcohol if I wanted it. A couple of witness buddies and I would take trips to Mexico to pick up contraband. None of the bars down there could care less about carding underage kids, even by Mexican standards.
My mother was pretty strict with me. Strict to the point of not letting me go out with my close friends for an evening. This wasn't just a one-time deal, this was almost all the time. I could probably count on my hands how many times I was allowed to go out with friends during a few year span. I realize that she was probably just trying to look out for my safety/best interests, but damn, even she took it just a little too far. Looking back, this sheltering likely contributed to my rebelliousness and drawing away. To any parents reading this, you have to let your kids go at times. Or else they will find other ways to explore the world, ways in which you may not approve.
I was baptized on May 11, 1991 at the Escondido, CA assembly hall. I wanted to wait until I knew I was ready. Unfortunately, the www wasn't widespread back then. Even BBS systems were still small potatoes. And I never even thought of looking up any JW lists. If I had, who knows what I may have found. It wouldn't be another 5 years until I found H2O, and another 2 or 3 until my mind became unlocked.
I graduated from high school early and went to a local community college to learn my trade like a good little JW. All while I was growing up, I had a natural gift with drawing. Not artistry, but mechanical and architectural. If it could be built, machined, or created from scratch, I could draw it from sight, perfectly to scale. In high school, the first three years I took drafting. I immediately became the teacher's pet that entire time. I remember being in class whipping out kickass drawings when other kids would be there acting like they would rather be somewhere else. I took home 4 first place awards from the Del Mar Fair(San Diego County fair now) in those three years for drafting. I figured that this was going to be my career.
Long before school, I was always surrounded by my mother's family of engineers. My grandpa first broke me into computers with a TRS-80. My own very first IBM PC clone had a 4MHz CPU with a 10MHz turbo! And we didn't just have a dot-matrix printer, we had a daisywheel for those near laserjet quality letters! lol I was always into electronics from the time I can remember. My grandma and grandpa would get me Heath kits to put together. My mother said that when I was two or three, I would take apart the kitchen table and chairs, legs and all. I admit I still do the same with other things today.
When I entered the local community college, I of course took up drafting. After roughly two or three semesters, I began to feel that I didn't want to be stuck behind a desk all day long drawing. I stuck with it for another year or so, but then I started slacking off by working more and playing volleyball at the beach. I eventually just dropped out all together. Remember, I was still looking forward to having armageddon come - why bother with schoolwork?
Prior to all of this, I went through that phase that most guys did at that time with car audio. Although mine wasn't really a phase. Armed with my electronics background, I received my California resale license the day I turned 16. I found a couple of wholesalers and went to town. I had what seemed like an endless demand for car audio through my friends and schoolmates. I could easily undercut the local car audio shops by almost 50% and still make good money. Add in the installation fees, and that went straight into my pocket, tax free. I was bad in that I only paid taxes to the state on what I sold. I was living with my parents - what the heck, right? That little business provided a nice little income for my age. I continued doing it up until I moved to Colorado in 1992. I also received one of the earliest certifications in car audio. Back then it was the MEA that issued the tests and certs. Now it is the EIA. I guess that makes me part of the old school crowd?
I moved to Colorado in the fall of 1992. My parents came too. I eventually moved to Monument and was in that congregation for a couple of years. This was the congregation that I turned 21 in also. Talk about the parties. Wow. Those kids knew how to party. Particularly the younger ones. Most of my time there was a blur. J-E-L-L-O took on a whole new meaning for me.
I worked for a brother doing auto upholstery when I first came to Colorado. I convinced him to add in the car audio aspect to his business and he did. We only did a few cars, but they were pretty nice since I was able to do the upholstery around the system. Eventually I left the brother and went to work for a local car audio shop. I hated it there. The owner was a sleazeball and didn't know how to run his shops that well. Lucky for me, an ad appeared in the local newspaper looking for a service tech to repair cell phones. I applied for it and got it the same day. I had always wanted to add the cell phone aspect to my arsenal of knowledge, but back then, the carriers made the rules and the rule was that no one would touch the phones unless they were an authorized dealer or rep. That left us little independent guys out in the cold. But now it was a whole new story. And this is where my career really started to take off.
The mountain areas of Colorado was growing with cell phone users. We used to take turns going up to the Frisco and Grand Junction stores to service the phones. This became a full-time deal. So I ended up being the lucky candidate to take this position up in the mountains permanently. I ended up in the Silverthorne congregation in 1994. They were still meeting in a converted doublewide trailer for the hall. Around 1996 a new hall was built, a quickbuild. It is located on Rainbow Dr. in Silverthorne next to the recreation center. Really nice looking hall(I did a lot of the drywall finishing - previous trade of mine - and some of the rock work outside).
A little after the move up to the hills, my job was beginning to be phased out. Lucky for me, one of our cell site techs wanted to move down to Denver. I took his place. My *new* job took me all over the western slope of Colorado. My assigned area was from Loveland Ski area on the east side of the tunnel out to Glenwood Springs and down to Aspen, over to Grand Junction, down to Montrose, and over to Gunnison and Crested Butte. Talk about a lot of windshield time. I drove constantly. But during the winter months, I did get to play quite a bit. I always towed a snowmobile and ATV. 90% of my sites were snowmobile access during the winter. There was always time to play a little. ;-)
In 1996, my would-be wife visited some friends that she grew up with in Texas. I was renting their basement apartment. Many flights, long-ass drives, and huge long-distance phone bills later, we were married on the Ides of March in 1997. A year later, I took a job in Houston, TX for a new start up telecommunications company. We lived in Seabrook and was assigned to the Dickinson congregation. As I mentioned earlier, my finding of H2O occured while living in the mountains of Colorado. At the time, I was what could be considered an apologist, vigorously trying to defend the organization. After a year or so of being shot down repeatedly, I then began to simply read the board. Many questions and issues would arise and I had no way of defending them in my head, let alone on a public forum. The blood doctrine would later become my achilles heel, the straw that broke my conscience.
Somewhere around 1999 or 2000, I ordered Crisis of Conscience from Barnes and Noble. I kept the book under the seat of my car. Every morning when I would go into work, I would read a few pages in the parking garage. Some days I would just sit there and cry over what I had read. I would cry because there were things I knew that were wrong in the organization, things that I could never explain - I just felt something was wrong - and Ray explained what that problem was and how it originated. The blinders truly came off. All the while reading this book, I would get physically sick. My body was tearing itself up inside. I was also depressed. All this from merely reading a book. I immersed myself into my work so as to get out of going to the meetings. I still attended, but sporadically. As far as the brothers were concerned, my job demanded me to work quite a bit. They understood.
I switched jobs and eventually transferred back to Colorado to build out a new wireless data network. This time we ended up in Denver. The congregation we were in was Greenwood Village. We shared the hall with the DTC congregation, the same congregation where my best friend was. If I made you think I worked a lot in Texas, I worked even more in CO. By this time, my mind was pretty much free. Avoiding the meetings was my goal. I barely remember showing up a lot of nights. Sundays were the only days I might have gone. Here again, the elders basically let me be. There was only one that tried to study with me...that didn't pan out. The tech bust caught my company at the wrong time and I was laid off in Sept. 2001. I was off for a month until a recruiter got me to come to Michigan. I took the job and have been here for the last 4 and a half years or so.
Michigan is where all hell finally broke loose. Without going into the specifics, you can read about what happened leading up to my df'ing last year here(another very long post). I intended on posting this back on my 6th year anniversary for being on this site, but I put it off for whatever reason. In the end, it feels great to be free. The hardest part about leaving the org is fading. For anyone trying to fade, it may take quite a while. You may experience depression, anxiety, nausea, etc etc. But once you are completely and totally free, it is worth it.
I think that is all I have to say for now.
Josh W. (yep, I'm cursed with those initials for life)