[This is the true story of my life. I'm posting it in installments. The final installment will include post-script-type thoughts, with acknowledgements to those who've helped me along these last two years, as well as those who've been an inspiration. I hope you enjoy reading. -dp]
Chapter 1: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/155373/1.ashx
Chapter 2: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/155429/1.ashx
Chapter 3: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/155490/1.ashx
Chapter 4: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/155940/1.ashx
Chapter 5: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/156292/1.ashx
Chapter 6: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/156570/1.ashx
Chapter 7: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/156717/1.ashx
Chapter Eight
I had conquered death. I stayed true to my promise by not accepting blood. It was an exercise of true faith; no more would I question my own devotion to Jehovah. The privacy and sanctity of my own spirituality was becoming complete.
But something lingered. I couldn’t take my experience as a sign that I wasn’t supposed to die, that God spared me, because that would have been the same as believing in predestination. So my experience was just blind chance. It could have been anything or anyone. That was OK, though, I could live with that. The hard thing to accept, however, was that my willing sacrifice to offer up my life meant nothing in the long run. It was still all about finishing the marathon race, squeezing in through the narrow door, through Armageddon, and into paradise. And even then, it would be another thousand years until we were given our final test; who knows what form that would take. As I sat through the meetings at the kingdom hall after my brush with death, the constant emphasis on works—never quite being able to do enough, and living with the sense that everything I’ve been through still didn’t matter—slowly grew into a frustration with Jehovah God. I felt like I was thrown back into the epic struggle of man against himself and everything else. Even after everything I had been through, I was back to square one.
Am I good enough? Will you accept me through my undying sins? I begged you to make me into the man you wanted me to be....
In the weeks after I left the hospital though, I was still flush with victory. I was done—at least temporarily—with contemplating life’s big questions. The morning after I spent the night in the motel Angela and I went to breakfast at the Denny’s across the street. Before we went in, I noticed little flowers out front that I hadn’t seen before. Many little things started to flood my senses. I grabbed the door firmly where most people would have handled it, embracing any germs I would have previously avoided. I don’t remember what we talked about that morning, although I do remember reading the “Daily Text” with Angela. A man sitting in the booth next to us noticed we were talking about the Bible and asked us to read him the scriptures we were considering. We did, and he nodded his head in contemplation.
Angela later dropped me off at my sister and brother-in-law’s house. My sister greeted me with a flurry of emotion and then started talking about how hard it was for her while I was in the hospital. Later, my brother-in-law took me aside and explained that I wouldn’t be able to stay. He said my sister’s health couldn’t take it, also bringing up a time when we had an arguments a couple months before, when I had told her she was crazy. She had been trying to manipulate Angela again, bringing her in close with lots of attention and then trying to convince her that she needed to change in some way. She was explaining that Angela was a “taker” and not a “giver,” but that this was something that she could help her change. By that time Angela and I were deeply attached and I felt for the first time what it was like to see my sister try to manipulate her. I had said a few angry words and then stormed out of the house. Later, Angela told me that my sister thrust her finger in the direction I had left and said “that’s who you’re marrying!” as if my actions were all that condemnatory. There were many of these kinds of incidents, too many to relate now. It was just one more example of how one minute everything with my sister could be gleeful and happy, but the next minute embroiled in anger and madness. Angela told me about some of the things that occurred prior to my coming back from Florida, things which, if I were in her place, would have caused me to leave much earlier than she finally did. Angela pitied my sister because she believed she couldn’t help herself. I, however, having grown up with two of these kinds of women, had little pity to spread around in this way.
I took what my brother-in-law said quietly, accepting that I was no longer invited to live in their house. I had a hard time believing it was really because of an argument we had before, and wondered if it weren’t due to the fact that my sister could no longer be the center of medical attention. I remembered how my mother walked with a cane down the hospital corridor, so frail, as I helped her along, barely able to carry myself.
That night I called the presiding overseer of our congregation and told him my situation. Within a couple days he found a couple in the congregation that could put me up for a few weeks. My car (I had traded the van for it many months ago) wasn’t running and was stuck in my sister’s driveway. I needed to move out of my sister’s house, though, and so moved all my things into the car, at least knowing I could lock it up and not have her rooting through my stuff.
I still had daily radiation treatments to go to, and my only means of making these were by having Angela drive me. She had temporarily quit her job when I went into the hospital and wouldn’t be able to resume it while shuttling me back and forth every single day, so she had to quit it entirely. She also was being kicked out of her apartment; her roommates, who had majority-rule, needed the space for their parents who were emigrating from Mexico. None of these matters bothered us overmuch, however, for obvious reasons. She moved in with the family of the brother who bought me the suit for my wedding; an exceedingly loving family with whom we shared much of our time together in the next month. It was due to their kindness, and the kindness of the couple who took me in, that supported us during my initial recuperation.
My treatments were to last for thirty-five more days. Each day I would wake up slowly, get a little something to eat, sit and watch TV, stand outside and watch the birds alight on the little tree in the backyard, and wait for Angela to pick me up. She would have everything arranged for our trip, with a little cooler stuffed with healthy foods for us to eat. Food was something she always got extra excited about, I think from having repaired her relationship with it after so many years when it was her enemy.
We would drive to the hospital in LA, find a spot in the parking garage, descend down into the oncology department, sign in, and then wait for my turn under the machine. The actual procedure was only around thirty seconds, but those thirty seconds affected me in profound ways. My energy level was close to nil, and I reached a plateau where I could make no more advancement in my recuperation. The radiation was having its effect on the tumor, but it was also having its full effect on the rest of my body. Gradually though, I gained my weight back, only now it was more fat than muscle. My face began to turn dark red where the radiation was cutting in, as well as on the back of my head where it exited my body. My hair was falling out of this area, and the burn was creating a weirdly-shaped swath of purple and red from the front of my left check all the way around to the back of my neck. My skin was sensitive to the touch and my eyes and mouth were dry.
These were impatient days. Our wedding was interrupted and all of our initial plans for it fallen to pieces. Angela had hand-painted dozens of invitations, all unique with colorful flowers and birds. They had been sent out weeks prior to our first wedding date and were now void. We tried to pick up the pieces but soon realized any wedding we would have would be a minor version of the one we were going to have. Most people who we invited could no longer make it, having arranged for time away and then having it cancelled.
We were also preoccupied with knowing where we were going to live. Neither of us had any prospects. I called my real father and asked him if he thought the town where he lived in Oregon would be good for us to start out in. He heavily discouraged us from moving there, citing economic reasons. I had heard he had a little secondary unit on his property and asked in a round-a-bout way if we could stay there for a little while. It was unavailable for some reason. We began running out of options. One day, however, Angela called her parents.
Angela had moved out of her parent’s house when she turned eighteen, unable to cope any longer with their detachment from her well-being. She was struggling with anorexia and thought that if only she could break out and make a change, move to another town and make new friends, she could bring some objectivity and control back to her life. Things didn’t work out exactly as she hoped, but that is another story. Suffice it to say her parents didn’t really know her and she didn’t really know her parents. But she called them anyway and they sounded ecstatic that we would consider coming to live near them. Their garage had a bedroom built in one side of it, and they said they would be happy to make a few changes to make it more livable. This was the first sign that things would work out for us, and it was a tremendous relief. They lived in our hometown; neither of us was too keen to move back there, but this was a negligible detail given our circumstances.
We had been seriously tempted to just go down to the courthouse and get married with a couple friends as witnesses. We were already spending most of every single day together and for all intents and purposes were married. A wedding seemed like a needless event, mostly for everyone else than us. I recalled the day when we were supposed to be married: it was one of the first times that I awoke from my deep sleep in intensive care, still intubated. Angela was at my side, holding my hand. She whispered in my ear that it was May 25th, our wedding day. From that moment on, none of it mattered to us. It was just one small thing part of the outside world with little relevance to what we had together.
I kept changing the dressings on the hole in my neck. Standing in front of the mirror, peeling the tape off my skin, I learned to love myself in a way I hadn’t known before. Everything that had happened in the last two or three years seemed incessantly rushing back at me, every word said, every facial expression, every extreme moment zipping past my head out of the mirror. Amidst it all my identity seemed forever out of reach. But it was alright, I could live this way, I thought; as long as I could identify the things that would keep me advancing, keep me moving forward out of the morass.
Finally, it came time for our wedding. Angela’s mother had shipped her twenty-five year old wedding dress for Angela to wear; it fit exactly. We hadn’t time or wherewithal to send out more invitations, so we made phone calls and found out who could make it. Since my brother and his wife had come out from Bethel during my hospitalization, spending so much vacation time and family leave, they could not make it. I couldn’t help but feel slighted; his coming out during that time was more to comfort my mother than anything else. In fact, nearly everyone converging at the hospital during my stay was more a comfort to themselves than to me. They could be present during my time of distress, but not during my time of happiness and celebration over death. It was the same with my father: he said that a traveling servant (called a “circuit overseer”) was coming to visit his congregation and that he really couldn’t break free to make the long drive again from Oregon. I didn’t try to make him feel bad for not coming, but did call him again a few days before the wedding to make sure he couldn’t come. Again, no, he couldn’t make it. I accepted his choice, but realized if I were ever put in his position I would do differently. In his mind it could have been something he sorely wanted to see, but just couldn’t do. He could have really felt that it was truly impossible. But this idea of accepting ones’ fate and of impossibility was foreign to me now. I was also a little humiliated for calling and asking him again, a feeling that would linger.
I have since met my father twice, very briefly, when he came driving through town. He was getting involved in a new multi-level marketing scheme and wanted my help in selling a miracle cure. I haven’t talked to him in a few years now and have no desire to. I have made many attempts to come closer to him and for us to get to know one another, but I now feel that it’s a waste of time and energy, an indiscriminate path down absurdity, obscurity, and irrelevance. He was never my father. He has done a few good things for me, but those few good things were nothing compared to my step-father who took the time to cultivate in me good qualities as a young man, to discipline me, to set an example for me. If it weren’t for him, I would not be proud of who I am today.
Somewhere inside me I want to know my real father and be close to him, but that place is deep, deep inside, and is filled with fragile childhood memories like bouncing along in his old truck, sitting next to him with my feet dangling over the edge of the seat... the scent of his old flannel shirts, his arm around my shoulder. His carefree nature, stories he would tell, jokes, whistling tunes with the radio. My little boy treasured the times when he was with his father, but he couldn’t communicate this. And now, more than twenty years later, neither of us can go back there, can we?
James would come though, as would his father and another friend of ours, Brian, the one who came to pick me up from the airport when I came back from Bethel. They arrived in town late at night before my wedding day. We went and got some beer and then jumped into the hot tub where I had been staying. The three of us, James, Bryan, and me, sat and drank our beers into gleeful inebriation. It didn’t take but a couple to affect me; the radiation that finally ended the week before had temporarily reduced the capacity of my liver to cleanse contaminants. We talked about serious things, stupid things, told jokes, laughed, got emotional, and celebrated not just my own impending marriage, but my survival and all those other things in life that changed us in ways we understand for years to come.
James was dating the girl he had been interested in when we came back from Florida. They would most likely be married soon. Eventually, they did get married, although it wasn’t under the best of circumstances. They had breached appropriate pre-marital conduct according to the Bible and Watchtower Society, and were married with only their parents present. His fiancé was disfellowshiped and he was publicly reproved, although spared from disassociation due to what was deemed as a repentant attitude. I was supposed to be his best man, but now that his wedding would be in shame I could not, and would not, go. I remember when I found out what they had done; I hugged Angela and silently wept over the possibility of losing my best friend. Eventually his young wife would be reinstated and we would all come in contact again, but I had never liked her and neither did I ever feel that she liked any of us. I resented her, knowing she was going to try to create James into the husband she wanted. I felt that she didn’t know what made him great, that she only saw him as something less than herself and her own ambition.
James and I call and talk every once in a while, telling old stories, reliving our time in Florida, laughing at all the same things we laughed about years ago. But our lives are on different paths now. Regardless, I have never had as good a friend as James and doubt I ever will, since his place in my heart is for him alone.
Angela’s parents came down for the wedding along with one of their boys. Their eldest was disfellowshiped some years back, and our host—the presiding overseer of the congregation whose backyard we were using for our wedding—would not have him in his house. We had wanted to invite him despite the rules about not associating with “such a man,” but there was little we could do in our situation. Angela’s parents were at first very angry at the affair, having maintained their relationships with their son despite the Society’s admonition to cut off communication, even with ones’ own children who have left the house. Despite this sad complication, her parents decided to come as did her younger brother, Kevin.
When I first met Kevin we seemed painfully shy, private, but incredibly thoughtful, creative, and quick-witted. Right away I knew we would become good friends. I almost wish I would have been younger or he older so that we could be closer without me being such an older brother to him. During the time that we were to live on Angela’s parent’s property we would spend much time together. I came to see that he had great potential for intellectual and artistic achievement, but as several people in Angela’s family, there is a lack of self-confidence and fear of failure. Because of this, Kevin would have a hard time extending his effort at making life into what he wanted by risking failure and trying new things. I’m afraid that by my influence he has become more self-conscious and overly concerned with the serious things in life. I see in him the makings of a powerful man of action and self-reliance, and am waiting for him to see it in himself.
My sister and her brother-in-law also came, despite her ill health. She had previously tried to get me to push the time of the wedding back from eleven in the morning to the afternoon, but I was running low on sympathy for her at that point. I knew that no matter what time it was going to be at, she would barely make it, as her life was built on pushing the clock back, disregarding the world that ran on different time. She wore an exotically old dress from the 1920s, her newest online purchase and one of hundreds stuffed away in stacks of boxes up to the ceiling. It must have been hard for her to come to the wedding, being outnumbered by so many people detached from her own chronic suffering. I was deeply indebted to her and especially her husband, but knew Angela and I would not willingly return to their house. I now had extra reason to avoid her manipulations by protecting Angela against the more corrosive influences in my family.
We have since seen my sister a couple times, and have even gone to their house when my brother and his wife, and my parents, converged for a little family reunion. The reunion, however, consisted of my sister speaking only to my brother and his wife, with my parents and Angela and I sitting to the side, limiting our discussions to only those things which we could get through without stirring up any kind of emotional turmoil.
My family had become inexorably fragmented after all the years of manipulation and contamination by the twisted, wringing hands of my sister and mother. Most of their problems were reflections of the other as they were for so long wrapped up in unending battles against each other and themselves, to the detriment of the rest of the family. A mother is the core of any family, I have since learned, and if she is bent on invasion and control of the lives of other family members it can have no effect but to segment and divide. Since Angela and I have been married, attempts at manipulation from my mother have abated significantly; however, I believe it is due more to the absence of regular and meaningful communication. Knowing this, my mother clings to any connection she can feel with me. But time and time again has proven that anything beyond this will lead her to nervous and obsessive codependency.
I have my mother in two places in my heart: In one, she is mad, angry, loud, untrustworthy, two-sided, controlling, bitter, and delusional. In the other, however, her soft, transparent hands caress me, and she whispers gently. She believes in me, trusts that I will always do my best to be a good man, realizes that I and those I love have made me into the man I want to be, that I am passionate, with weaknesses that are above all human and things to accept as strengtheners of my character, and that although I have lost the faith she raised me in, I have never tread a path against the truth in my own heart.
I was raised to know the truth, but also to not trust my own heart. I never realized until now how those two beliefs could only have as madness their product in human souls. I cannot live with a split in my mind. I cannot breathe on a machine. I cannot have control over my body, and perhaps not even my mind, but I will never give up control over my heart.
Angela and I said our vows under an orange tree, its fruit ripe and full. We prayed after we devoted ourselves to each other, as I would pray the same today to the God that I knew as a little boy.
He was not a figment of my imagination, or of anyone else’s, but he was, and always will be only my God, and I will not share him with anyone else. He is to Angela something different than he is to me. But he serves a purpose that I can only hope will spiritually unite us again.
For now, however, he is only mine, named or nameless, vengeful or creative, full of righteous anger or of bleeding love.... Is my own heart a reflection of him, or is he a reflection of me?
She was beautiful. She began crying when I said those things... when I slipped the thin, humble band onto her finger, her voice trembling.
We packed what few things we had into her small car, hugging family and friends, taking the few last pictures, slowly closing that page of our life.
The engine was running and we crept slowly down the street as everyone waved. I loved every one of them.
We were headed north along the coastal highway, perched on a cleft in the jutting mountains, the vast blue deep sweeping away to our left. The traffic moved slowly and it seemed we would never get out of town.
Eventually, however, it was all in the rear view mirror, and no matter how slow we moved northward—that eternally good direction—our hearts were free to rise and risk life, contentment, sanctity, and wholeness, finally complete within the other.
Silence reigned between our occasional words. She drove and I sat in the passenger seat. My seatbelt... the dashboard... the odds and ends in the glove box... old keys, maps, pens, pennies, so many constant remnants. I reached over, brushing her hair that was done up with pins and combs. I gripped her thigh under the steering wheel, feeling the warmth of her flesh. The sun was descending close to the watery horizon, turning everything golden and white, like the glow of the throne of God.
I would breathe and exhale. Nothing remained to weaken my heart... nothing.
___________________________________________________________________
I want to thank everyone on JWD for their support. If not for everyone here, I would have had a much rougher time when coming out of the JWs.
Especially seattleniceguy for saying the right things at my most vulnerable time, Galileo for giving me the impetus for writing my story by sharing his experience, Awakened at Gilead for more courage and support, and Barbara Anderson for her support and advice. Also, to all ex-Bethelites--you know how it feels to reach such great heights in the faith and then fall completely away.
May all of us resolve the emptiness left in our hearts from losing our faith.
-dp