Matt 16:25 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
As I began awakening I went through all the stages of grief. It started out with waking up at night with slight panic attacks and the feeling of OMG I'm X years old and I've got a wife and kids and a mortgage, I've stuck with a boring job because I thought the end was so close and here I am still thinking I'm not going to die in this system...but it looks like it's probably going to happen. Weren't we supposed to be perfect by now???
I'd pull myself together and press on, thinking that if I built up my faith more, I would see things differently. I turned to the literature for guidance and comfort only to find that the subject matter, horrific pictures and ridiculous logic contained within their pages, only made things worse. I followed the advice one elder gave me, to read the book of Job and find comfort in how Job was tested and how Jehovah rewarded him in the end. In my mental state, this was the worst thing I could have done. To think that Jehovah's solution to Job losing all of his children, was to simply replace them with new ones, was even more horrible that I had remembered. How could a loving father to whom I was desperately praying to for help, think that this would be enough to make up for the horror of having all of your children crushed under a collapsed house?
Then I began having panic and anxiety attacks at meetings and assemblies to the point that certain Kingdom songs would start me blubbering like a big baby (so embarrassing). It got to the point that I couldn't go out at night, watch the news, or see a movie that had any kind of violence and especially one that had any kind of religious or futuristic theme. I was a wreck....barely able to go to work. Out of sheer determination, I'd make it through the day but would go straight to bed as soon as I got home at 4 pm. I couldn't bear to be awake one minute longer than absolutely necessary. No one could figure out what was wrong with me. I had a lovely wife and kids, a nice home, good job no dept, etc,but I was acting like someone who had the weight of the world on my shoulders.
This went on for years. I had good medical benefits at work but spent thousands out of my own pocket on medical Dr's and Professional Counselors and different medications. Nothing worked....I couldn't tell them what exactly was wrong with me because A: I was still in denial and B: I didn't want to bring reproach on the Organization or Jehovah's name. More than one professional told me that I had the symptoms of someone who had been raised in an abusive or alcoholic family or had been through some sort of psychological abuse as a child.They told me that I should commend myself for being so strong because most people who were suffering at the level I was for this long, would be divorced, drug or alcohol addicted and jobless. Somehow I managed to keep it together for the most part but it took everything I had. At this point, I sort of attributed my strength to "the truth" and Jehovah but I was beginning to question that too.
As I said, this went on for years. I managed to eke out some fun times and have a happy family life and I managed to keep the show on the road, but inside I was sick at heart and my stomach was in knots, even though on the outside I was able to mask it.
Long story short...a series of back to back JW related disasters happened to several family members that became a perfect storm of undeniable proof the what my body had been telling me all along, was in fact true. I received an email from a long time JW friend that was meant to be encouraging. That email was about Beth Sarim and how interesting it was to see the early history of the Organization and how much the Society has progressed since then. I was shocked....how could I have been a lifelong JW and a former Bethelite without having heard of this before?? I suddenly realized that I was up to my ears in a huge and cruel HOAX and my body had been telling me so for years.
It took a few more months, but I finally stopped going to meetings and having anything to do with JW's and JW related activities. I admitted out loud to my wife that I no longer was a JW. She, thankfully was reaching the same point herself. A week after my last meeting, the anxiety was gone....vanished like snow off a ditch and hasn't returned since. I realized that what was happening these past few years was that I was coming to grips with my own mortality. I had been deceived into thinking that I was never going to die and that I had all the answers to life's big picture questions. What a rude awakening I had...instead of coming to grips with my own mortality over a lifetime, I had done it all at once ! The scripture quoted above started to make sense to me. I had come to a point where although I didn't want to die anytime soon, I was no longer dreading it. I had more peace of mind than I've ever had. I realized had gained my life back because I was no longer afraid of losing it, which is a very freeing thing to happen to a person.
I stopped going to those weekly funerals called meetings, at the Kingdom Hall and immediately improved. I still had some residual JW worries and wondered if my life would fall apart without Jehovah's favor. Instead, within a short time, I got (and still have) the best job of my life. I even sort of wondered if maybe Satan was helping me but thanks to this site, I've seen behind the curtain that was intentionally kept in place to keep trusting people like me, shielded from the real truth.
There is much much more to this story but I hope the part I've shared here will help anyone who is going through what I did. I'm living proof that one can survive the desperate upheaval one often goes through when leaving Jehovah's Witnesses. I have no social network or friends with whom I share a history with and I miss that but I'd never go back to the living hell that I was once in.
