I was just reading some of my old diaries and wanted to share it particularly for anyone who feels despair, who is locked into the society through family and especially for any young lurkers still in. I wrote this shortly after I turned 15. Comments in brackets are my own to clarify.
Tuesday 1st May 1990
You know I frequently wish that there was some arrangement whereby you could go to sleep and never have to go through the trouble of waking up. I don’t believe one can ever actually be truly happy. In the truth it’s all superficial – you’re told you have to be happy, so you do go round like the world’s biggest hypocrite with a plastic smile on your face.
People always ask, “What’s the matter Nina?” What am I supposed to say – I don’t know what is the matter. Do I say “Oh I was just contemplating the most effective, painless suicide methods!” They don’t understand – no one does.
Why is everything a big thing? A letter means I can’t pioneer! (I had written a letter to a pioneer brother called Martin inviting him to my local assembly and was put on private reproof for this.) It’s all stupid, foolish.
I wish I was controlled by a computer, then all I’d have to do would be press a button and reverse my life back to nothingness and never have to go through the rigour of existing.
I wish people would hate me, then I could at least enjoy hating them back.
Everything is wrong.
I can’t correspond or communicate with Martin ever again. Mum and Dad make me claustrophobic with their over-protectiveness, dutifulness, formalities and suspicious minds.
I’m supposed to feel elated, spiritually upbuilt because the PO has gone and arranged for me to work on the service with the CO’s wife. Well I’ll make sure he never makes that mistake again. I think I’ll assume the “its no good, the area between my ears is vacant” attitude.
I wish I could just skip a few years of my life so I could do what I want for a change without having to answer for blowing my nose without permission. I’m so dumb I just don’t have the guts to do anything about it.
Why is life such an effort? Why can’t I cry? Why is life just a conglomeration of emotional highs and lows? I don’t even want to do the pioneer hours now, I feel so discouraged. Why can’t I achieve the eternal bliss of being encased with wood six feet deep?”
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I know there must be young ones out there who right now feel like I did that there was never going to be an end to the ridiculous restrictions on your human rights and that life carried no joy. About a year after this I did try to take my life but was rushed to hospital in time and saved.
My point is that it’s normal to feel like this even if you don’t understand why. Yeah its part hormones but it’s a big part not being able to live your life normally and being so encased by the strictures of the organization it squeezes out all your natural joy.
BUT life does not have to be like this. I never experienced true happiness until I left. That’s not to say life is a box of chocolates forever more once you leave, but you will experience eventually true and beautiful and unconditional friendships and relationships. No matter how hard life gets in the aftermath of leaving I never want to die. At least each day is within my power in a way it never was as a believing and then a non practicing but believing JW.
Fight for your freedom and don’t settle for second best. And personally I think that all of us who have suffered one way or another from the Big Brother domain of suspicion and dobbing in of the Watchtower regime and found whatever means that we have to escape are special and more compassionate for others. So your time there wasn’t wasted. It taught you a valuable lesson of hardship and a special appreciation for freedom that many people take for granted.
When something in your gut says that the way you or someone else is being treated is wrong, listen to it and stand up for yourselves and for your fellow human beings. Another valuable thing you learnt was to stand up for your religion despite ridicule. Take this lesson and use it to never turn away when you see an injustice being enacted to someone else whether it’s at school, at work, in the congregation or in the street.