Just as a crack baby has no say in his/her decision to be under the control of an evil substance so to becoming a JW was not a decision I made for myself. I was born into the controlled world of Jehovah's Witnesses, just as many others here were too.
I was speaking with someone today and I (being the usual good-for-nothing do-gooder I am) commented on how I feel so sad for the Afghan kids and their lot in life. The other person said, callously, "they don't know anything else. They were born there and that's all they have ever known".
So were we, as kids, like Afghan crack-babies? We were put under abusive control and we had no worldly friends, no birthdays, being made to be a spectacle of on neutrality issues, no sport, no college and on and on and on. On top of that we accepted it all because "we never knew any thing else" - yes we never knew anything but survived as misfits in society because otherwise we would not have been allowed "to play with lions and tigers in the wonderful paradise" that was coming to fill the earth.
While I realize the strength of the analogies to crack-babies and Afghan kids they the point: it's so much harder to decondition as one who grew up a JW than one who made the conscious choice to join. (please don't misinterperet this as minimizing - a post on minimizing to follow in the next few days - what you went through if you were one who made a choice).
As one example: I have never celebrated a birthday in my life - isn't it sad? I don't even know how!! I don't know what I am supposed to feel...if I do celebrate my birthday will my residual "programming" make me feel guilty? I don't even have the desire to celebrate my birthday.... "its all I have ever known"; I never had a choice and I don't know how to make that choice even now.
While one can rationalize about tangibles, like birthdays, how does one deal with issues such as the condition of dead loved ones now? As an Afghan Crack Baby I had a coping mechanism - before I could even dribble over my bottom lip, I was taught all about the "wonderful resurrection" and how a loving all powerful being was going to kill billions of people, who knew nothing about him, but then he was going to resurrect other billions because he loved mankind so much and as such I should love him unreservedly. This enabled me to reason that my loving grandmother was "sleeping just like Lazarus" was and I was able to cope with the concept of death.
Reality is now too harsh for me to face... Living with uncertainty leaves me way too coherent of the world around me.
I do not want to "know better". I want my drugs back please, Mama....
I am an Afghan Crack Baby