Coming out of this religion nearly killed me.
Every single core belief I ever held has been mangled, strangled, drawn&quartered, dipped in pitch and burnt and reduced to carbon ash. My mind and heart got buried in the soulquake; a protoplasmic blob of rage of pain of stifled grief was all that remained of the human who was born me in Lodi Ohio. The physical shell, despised, abused, has tried to quit a couple of times. Burn baby burn!
Somehow though the old animal portion refuses to die, despite my best conscious and subconscious efforts to delete, delete, delete it from all realities, seen or unseen, evident or otherwise. The quivering naked protoplasmic questioner who survived the emotional crash-n-burn just refused to sigh & fart its last. Go figure the tenacity of hillbilly rootstock...
Recently I find myself filled with a deep love for all you other people: the survivors, the strong ones, the hurt ones, the confused, even the stubbornly blind ones. I find that for the first time in a long time, there are other things to feel besides rage and contempt for others or self. It's an interesting sensation. I had almost forgotten what 'feeling' other things was like.
It isn't balance. The rubble is not all cleared, there is still a mountain of debris between that naked protoplasmic bit of the original divine spark and the Clear Calm Center. But the survivor inside is struggling to stand in the hard-won space, and the ground isn't shaking. I may not climb the mountain but I can by god shake my cane at it!
I am homebound, mostly bedridden, a wheezy wreck. My beloved oldest sister, Judy, is dying of cancer at home. Circumstances have conspired to keep me from going to her. We have snail mail and that's our only contact. THe last time she wrote me, she said our JW sister Brenda has been calling regularly and had come to visit and brought food! Judy dying is no longer Judy shunned! We make these small steps. Love conquers evil in tiny ways. This makes me absurdly hopeful this warm breezy spring morning. Although I cry really often, in sorrow over my darling sister's pain or frustration at my own, I sometimes cry at the joy of feeling something, anything, besides fear, or guilt, or old buried stifled griefs.
You people are mostly ok. Except for Lurkey-loo: dude, you still suck, in spades. Get off the nasty shtick, you aren't finesse enough to pull it off.
AS always,
Mommie Dark
still crazy after all that Prozac...