Hmm. Guess life isn't like a box of chocolates, after all. This box tells me exactly what kinds of chocolate I'm getting. Guess the chocolate industry took offense at Forrest Gump's oft-repeated words.
Anyway, I started having very vivid dreams night after night, not that long ago. I could remember dreams for several nights in a row. It stopped eventually. But this week it seems to have picked up a bit more.
This time, I dreamed that the Thought Police had finally caught up to me, and we were sitting down for a preliminary to the judicial hearing. It was the COBOE and my field service group overseer (why did they make these titles so long? And what happened to 'all of you are brothers'?). The room wasn't like any Kingdom Hall I'd ever seen. It was green, the kind of green that you see in maybe an elementary school or a hospital or a prison. There were books on a bookshelf behind the FS group overseer. The COBOE and he were playing 'bad cop, good cop'. They greeted me, which seemed more like a formality than something they felt was necessary, because this was going to be all business, nothing more.
I felt terror, genuine terror as if I was about to be executed. Before it got beyond that greeting, I woke up.
I know all about mind control, fear, guilt, shame. I know that this religion is using those tools. Why am I still afraid?
I won't discuss too many details of my marriage, knowing that it's obviously beating the crap out of me. I chose it for that very reason. My wife doesn't know that, but it's written all over my face every time we must go through a cult activity like family worship or the day's text. But some of the folks here who used words I didn't like hearing were certainly very right. I was wrong to go through with this because she deserves better. She deserves to feel like she makes me happy. Which she does, so long as the cult doesn't interfere. (See '2010 Calendar of JWs' for how well that's going.) She's already talking about leaving me for her daughter's sake.
I worry for her daughter, as she allows her to be held by so many other people, when she doesn't recognize the risk of child molesters being in the congregation. I grew up on the inside too, and in my experience, there was only one brother who seemed just a little off-normal, who would put his arm around me, or let his hand drift a little too low for comfort down my back. Not sure what that was about. I mean, for a guy, the hand shouldn't really drift below the shoulder, in my mind. When a guy's arm is around a boy's lower back, that's creepy to me. Anyway, I just hope that doesn't become a problem for her.
Sometimes, being awake is a nightmare, with the knowledge of having spent my whole life in a cult sitting on my shoulder every second. An unhealthy obsession. I actually like going to work just to be free of even my wife's cultic influence. Fact is, I also wanted to see if I could get her out of this. As many chances as I've had, I've done little more than drop subtle hints and end up arguing with her over plain statements of the Bible that she ignores in favor of Watchtower doctrine, even as I point out the inconsistencies.
Well...figure this'll descend into my getting some hurtful comments again, but it's alright. Figure we're all hurting here, one way or another. Some are better able to handle it than I am. ...
I wonder if my subconscious is that terrified of being caught and tried for apostasy. I still wonder sometimes if this isn't all one horrible dream I'll wake up from. Seeing reality, seeing the Society's own literature saying all kinds of things...it never stops breaking my heart. The thought that millions of decent people are living like this...believing it all without question...it is a great injustice to man. I'll never come to terms with that.
"Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily--life is but a dream."--as mentioned in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.
SD-7