Sometimes i feel like a second class apostate...not that anyone has ever said anything to make me feel that way, i just do, you know what i mean?
I left the JWs because i just couldn't fight my flesh anymore. The battle inside was going to kill me literally. I just wanted to explore the things i never did as a teenager, i married far too young and when i realized this i destroyed a lot of peoples notion of me, none more so than my then wife. In all my confusion as to my identity, what i wanted, believed, was doing etc in my 'mid life crises' i left her and the religion to sort myself out.
In two years apart i struggled to find a reason to go back to her or the JWs. I didn't indulge in sex all over the place or do drugs. I got drunk and very sick once, enough that i won't do that again. I danced a lot, chased women but never slept with them. I had a dance partner desperate to get in my pants for 6 months.
What i found was inner peace though. I taught myself how to paint with oils, and was free to paint what i liked, not dictated by christian morals or whatever. I fancied strip clubs and found i could go with a free conscience. I never changed as a caring 'decent' guy though. I just got a little lost for a while.
When i found my authentic self, it was a me that was totaly unacceptable to my estranged wife, who frankly, told me i was in the gutter of humanity. She would have me back as the old me and as a JW.
I couldn't do that, either of them, so i committed adultery with that dance partner to free the wife. I felt she had a right to find somebody better than me, one who would live with her forever thinking she was the best thing in the world and love her as i did not. And so it was that with a week i had divorce papers served on me and was disfellowshipped to boot.
Now, through it all, i never stopped believing that the JWs were the one and only true religion. 100% they were right and i was a shit that was gunna die. I almost went bush never to be seen again. Until a little more than a year ago i was still firmly convinced that they were the one true religion. My now wife could not say anything negative about JWs even though she knew i was never going back to them. I would defend the WT to anybody.
Then i find JWN... You know how it makes me feel sometimes? Like i wish was one of you guys who found out they were a crock of shit while still active and got out for noble reasons. You left for the real reason! It is a sham and you found out! And some of you even got your whole family out too!
You guys are my hero's.
So now i do my best to get my kids safe from this pile of shit religion, one i think i will and one i think i will lose. I am full of indignation for this lot for so many things, among them that i never got to be a normal teenager and young man. That i was totaly dumb and questioned nothing.
I came to 'apostacy' (am i one really? Do i 'qualify' even? I was out for a dozen years and it's not like apostacy stopped me going back...i was never going back anyway) as a result of trying to get more time with my children. There are times i wished i left my religion and my wife for noble reasons, not because i was having a breakdown.
I needed to share this...been on my mind a while now.
Oz