Hey Gretchen! thanks for the words. I am the biggest person for messing up. I really can make mistakes and often find myself, much to my embarrasment, making the same mistake twice. But what can I say. I keep learning and well as Dori in the kid show sings...Just keep swimming...just keep swimming!
Mumsy. I really like the words to your song. I think I need to look it up so that I can hear it. I thank you for the note of reassurance that I am not being self rightious. I was purely trying to be honest. I think that the world needs a lot more of it and well sometimes throwing our own pitiful self out there can be wuite a hard thing to do. I remember as a witness I was not allowed to be human. to hurt, to be angry, and I even had to sit through someone I thought I was head over heals at the time marry a pioneer two months after dating me for a couple years. I stayed so quiet and now I am so mad at myself. I was done really wrong then and all the brothers said is for us not to bring shame on Jehovah! The nerve. You cannot even grieve without being in the wrong.
So patience that you all express for my mere human tendancies is appreciated. I think I just love you. there are so many people here that I wish lived so closer. I want to say that being a jw is such a close world. But so to and so much more is being an ex JW. Except that most exjw's know they are imperfect and that we all make mistakes. I have watched people I know that are gay and I wonder why I like them so much. I think it is because they have gone through what a lot of us exjw's have. The feelings and emotions and losses and gifts we gain by our new freedom and I think that is why we can relate to so well.
Serendipity-
I guess I should have said that I, "even though I still make mistakes and still fall into old patterns" that I still try to learn from them and need not try to hide my stupidity, or the fact that I try to hide my own feelings from myself at time. It is an awareness of how small I am in the world, how human I am and how much I need to learn. Someone just told me in anger that I need to learn that the world does not revolve around me or that I am not the most important thing in the world. the funny thing to me is that I am so painfully aware of this. I know that I am not everyones main concern and I know that it is by sheer luck or another person that has been through one or another thing I have that I make a new friend or a new love etc. So with that said, I guess I just wanted to make sure you were complimenting the right thing. I just hate it when I find out that something I thought I had learned and faced still has yet another lesson to teach me. I guess this is why we say old people are so smart. they have had solong to learn the same lessons over and over and when they think they know it all...they learn more.
I cannot imagine, or maybe I can see how someone raised in the oldeer world has had to adapt and learn from the changing times. I have a friend that was raised so racist. He has friends of all kinds, but at times his hillbilly redneck just shows. We were talking about how he told his grandchild that he is just a human learning each day and that if he seems racist he is sorry. Why just from knowing me he has overcome racist things he felt and through my friendship has come to appreciate people we know that he may have viewed as an abomination before. (did I spell that wrong?) Anyhow, this is just a few paragraphs of thought.
I am still racing on these steroids and will have to take a sleeping tylenol or benadryle as the doc said to sleep tonight. I need not give myself a migraine as I did today again. This has been a month of growth and as mad as it makes me...I will have to keep learning. And as I said earlier, it feels so good to be alive...even if it is full of lessons I want to avoid. Yeah these eyes are painfully aware that it is not all about me and I can be so damn silly and human and I am sure it is not the last time this happens.