Well, I've been on on this site almost six months now...I spend hours reading the posts most days. Sometimes I contribute my thoughts/comments...but I think this is the first time I've started a thread. Let me please, share something with you all. I have sent my prayers for those that have expressed their pain on here and perhaps you will do the same for me, as I really need them right now.
When I was "in the Truth" it was my WHOLE WORLD, and I LOVED IT. I did not grow up a Witness, I was already 18 and a born-again Christian when I met and started to study the Bible with Jehovah's Witnesses. I was living with abusive family members....and after years of depression and suicidal thoughts, they brought HOPE to my door.
Those "in the Truth" became my friends and took the place of my family, but they became the loving effectionate family I never had.....I thrived on this. I realize that many of you did not have that type of experience, but for me, I was fortunate to have loving brothers and sisters in my cong that sincerely loved God, and though tied down by a man-made organization with all it's inevitable imperfections they took good care of me, showing me the love that Jesus taught.
How I eventually got myself DF'd is a long story, but it started with flashes of "something's not right here" that built up to a point where I was very confused. I was Df'd October 7th 1999.
As many folks are, I was absolutely devasted when I was Df'd. I got myself into trouble with a guy at work who had been trying to pursue me. I was out in service with my BookStudy conductor, my PO, and the new CO who was visiting.....just me and them...I jokenly told them I was out in service with the "power team." I was kinda living a doublelife at that point, and having a very strong conscience I had to come clean. I had started to miss meetings which was highly unsual for me, going to work instead to me my boyfriend, as he worked a different shift then I did. As usual we stopped for a coffee break at Dunkin Donuts out in service. I don't drink coffee, but I sat with my BookStudy conductor and he looked me in the eyes and asked how I was doing and I blurted out "I have a Wordly boyfriend." His jaw dropped. I had just transferred from my home congregation in NH down to his congregation in MA but yet my love for Jehovah was obvious and the friends loved my personality, very happy and overzealous. He could not believe that I, of all people, could be telling him this. He replied with "you know you'll be marked and have no friends." To which I told him I didn't have any friends (having just moved there the only one I had gotten to know was the sister I was renting a room from) and no-body knows about him anyway." When we got back in the car, my BookStudy conductor repeated what I had just told him to the other brothers (CO and PO.) They asked me humiliating questions about how far things had gotten physically, and being embarrassed, I lied and led them to believe he had not touched me in a way that I know they would consider fornication (though I had not sleep with him at that point yet.)
That was Saturday morning. The next day, Sunday, I went up to an Special Assembly Day I had been invited to my my home congregation. The sister who studied with me, who was like a mom to me, had led me to believe that her part in the assembly was about a study that I have started and turned over to her.
I foresaw that I was going to be disfelloshipped. As I mentioned before, I have a very strong conscience and I had to come clean about my involvement with my worldly boyfriend, and I was so numb, rather then sorry for my actions, that I knew I deserved to be disfelloshipped. I had a nagging "somethings not right here" feeling about the Org's ways and teachings on occaison, but it was only after I was Df'd that I realized the WTS is not the FDS and that they are not "God's sole Channel of Communication" as I was taught.
So, I went to that Assembly in my mind, to say goodbye to dear loving friends that I knew would never speak to me again, lest I get reinstated. That would have been hard enough....but...
I get to the Assembly Hall (Natick, MA) and everyone from my home congregation keeps coming ip to me and telling me not to freak out when I hear my name from the stage. I thought that was really wierd because I that the talk was about a study, so what if I happened to start it.
Well, my dear sister's talk was about ME. The whole talk was about MY LIFE. She had another sister play me, reinacting studying with me, and how I came into the truth and how I gave up my "born-again beliefs".
I sat there with my mouth gaping open........I could NOT BELIEVE THIS!
Then, at the end of her talk, she said regarding me, "AND SHE'S DOING GREAT RIGHT UP TO THIS DAY!"
I wanted to die right then and there. I wanted to stand up and scream, "no I'm not!!!!" I wanted to cry but I was too numb inside.
And as if that was not bad enough....after that there was a surprise guest speaker, a member of the Governing Body (I think it was Bro Barbor...but I'm not sure.) I was dying of guilt right there in my seat.
During the lunch break everyone kept coming up to the sister who studied with me, who just did me this great honor, giving a talk about me and how wonderful I was doing in the Truth, and when the brothers were congratulating her, she would turn to me and say to them, "this is the real _______!" giving me the credit. Certianly if I had known that this talk was all about me I never would have let it happen.....but since I had just moved out of the circuit, it was a total surprise to me. To add to the this horrifying time of shame for me, it was the last Assembly for my old congregation's CO, and I loved that CO. Him and his wife were everybody's favorite, very humble and approachable, and they were brandy-new to circuit work, with our circuit having been their very first assignment. Knowing I was about to let them all down, and to make look silly for commending me when I had stumbled and fell.....the pressure was unbearable. I kept saying "I don't deserve this" and my friends kept replying "yes you do, don't be so humble, you deserve it, you're so encouraging to others....etc."
I left early, I worked third shift and I had to go home to sleep before work. I hugged my friends goodbye (forever) and I drove away listening to the soundtrack from the movie Titanic.....I knew my ship was sinking and I was so numb I felt like the iceberg.
As soon as I got home I called one of the elders and confessed that I had technically commited fornication. The PO had just left the country on vacation, but he told me that they could assembly a judicial committee without him. The elder was kind to me, he really wanted to help me, but I was not ready, I was not sorry yet.
So, figuring that I was being Df'd anyway, I went ahead and slept with my boyfriend. I knew I was settingly for less then I deserved. I'm a hopeless romantic type. My spirituality had always been very important to me. My boyfriend was already showing signs that he was cold and not the loving person I wanted. We were complete opposites in every possible way. When my supervisors at work got wind we were together they could not believe it. Beside the fact that everyone knew I was Witness (who preached at work to anyone who asked a question and wanted to talk about it), my boyfriend was an Atheist, and he was a tall, handsome, Dominican (he was black and Spanish). Here I am this short, religious, white chick.....too different worlds collided.
I knew that the judicial hearing would bring an interrogation of personal questions about what I had done with my boyfriend, so I figured that sleeping with him would just make it easier on me, because I could just say I did it and not have to go into details about what I did etc. I sleep with him for the first time on a Thursday night in the backseat of my car, in the parking lot before work. Worst mistake of my life. I thought I was smart and we talked about history and all that stuff before hand. Like many folks, though, that info was incomplete. Almost immediately after, I felt something was not right. Several days went by, I had my judicial hearing (I think that was Sunday), they told me that I was going to be disfellowshipped. I accepted that I deserved that. In my delusions, I had a vision that me and my boyfriend would fall in love, he'd become a Witness and we'd move to the Dominican Republic and I would either get reinstated and he baptised or I was "start over" and go back into the Org that way, via a study with an unsuspecting publisher. WRONG, that was not to be. By Tuesday morning I was in agony. I could not wait to get home from work (I worked in a 24 call center that provided techical support for cell phone customers.) I got home and then went to the emergency room- my boyfriend had given my herpes.
Okay, so now I'm about to be shunned by everyone that I love, and I have a cold, uncaring boyfriend who just gave me an incurrable virus that made me feel like I was being branded alive in the crotch....gee could it get any worse? YEP!
I am promptly disfellowshipped, and I then cling to my boyfriend, afaid to lose him though I know he does not love me, I figure maybe someday he would. I lived with a sister, but she said she didn't feel I was threat to her spirituality so she let me stay. The only one that knew about my little virus was my boyfriend. Though he did not love me, he was very upset that he had done this to me, like most guys who spread herpes, he had no symptoms, so he did not know that he even had the virus. Since I had not had sex in years, (and that guy had been a virgin I was with years before, we had dated for years) there was no chance that I got herpes from anyone else.
When the annoucement was read that I was Df'd the congregation let out a collective gasp....I was the last one anyone would have thought was get Df'd. As if the mark of shame was not bad enough, I felt branded too by the herpes, as it it was a mark of shame that would be with me forever, branding me with pain and suffering.
I stopped going to meetings and threw myself into my work. I spent all my other waking hours taking care of my grandparents, who lived across town from me. They were the only family that I was close to, but they are racist as many elderly folks are, and they would have killed my boyfriend if they knew what he did to me or how he treated me. BUT I still clung to him, feeling like he was my last chance to be loved, hoping someday he would love me. He constantly told me that he'd call...but never did, it was always me persuing him. I felt so isolated. I did not want to be friends with the world....the only outside contact I had was the occaisional visit to my boyfriend's house or to work. The people I worked with were into drugs and drinking and clubbing and the like, and that was not my thing. I also had to endure every girl there hitting on my boyfriend, as he was the hottest guy and everybody wanted to get in his pants. I was SO TORN inside. I wanted to stand up and SCREAM!
Time passes, and I am numb inside, the pain is all I can feel. To make things more terrifying.....2000 was fast approaching and with the Y2K fervor feeding some of the friends had felt that the end was coming.....I thought that I was headed for death at Armegedon.
Months go by. Y2K was no big deal (what a releif!) My grandfather dies of ALS (Lou-Garig's Desease)...I was yet again devasted. I had no one to shoulder my grief.....I went to the funeral...torn, because I didn't want to further hurt Jehovah by going to a house of false-worship.....as if what I had already done was not bad enough.
My grandmother was lost without my grandfather. I tried to spend as much time with her as I could. I went over her house after work each morning. My had a huge fight, and she said I was the "laughing stock of the whole family because of my ("n" word) boyfriend" to which I wanted to kill her, but I held back my rage. Sure my boyfriend was a jerk to me, but that was not because of his ethinicity. I went over to my grandmother's house a few days later to make peace with her. My grandmother had worshipped me my WHOLE LIFE, and I was very close to her. I did not want to fight with her. I left on good terms with her, and the next night she had a massive heart attack and died in her sleep. I was shocked. How can this much stuff happen to one person? I was in denile, I could not accept she was gone, though I saw her in her bed, dead as a doornail. She looked so peaceful. Again, I had no one to comfort me. I would open my mouth to cry and the pain was so overwhelming that no sound could come out, that is the sound of a soul in utter despair. I could term to Jehovah, I figured he didn't want to have anything to do with me. I was under so much stress I had to go on Valtrex continuiously to supress the herpes, which cause stabbing pains and dull aching pain down my leg randomly on a day to day basis.....just when I was having a not-so-crapy day...bam.....the painfull reminder that I was a fornicator and getting what I deserved.
I worked so much overtime that I paid off my car and bought a 2000 Toyota Celica, GTS. (I LOVE THAT CAR.) Kinda went nuts with that car, when I had had a Ford Taurus before, but I figured I didn't need a good car for service anymore. I moved into a new apartment, and got a new job within a few months.
I was in training at my new job at work, and I was very very depressed inside with the one year of my getting herpes and being Df'd coming up so I was planning on killing myself. My mentor at work sensed that I was depressed and he reached out to me, telling me about how he started going a church that really helped him. I was very skeptical, I already felt that I had failed God several times in my life. I felt that the pain I was going through was something I deserved somehow, and that somehow my suffering was my punishment. He prayed for me, without me knowing it. I kept his invite to myself, good thing too because I found out later that one of the girls that worked there was a JW in good standing, and that would have made it much more ackward for me had I known that when she was still working there.
Long story..I broke up with my boyfriend, decided to go to my mentor's church, and had hope for the first time in a year. I also began to pray again for the first time in a year. The church was a nice non-demoniational type that I was sort of use to from before I had become a Witness. I felt at home the first time I visited. The second time I went, I broke down and cried and I truly repented for my actions over the past year. A family in the church then took me in, and I moved down to an apartment in their basement. A year of healing and growth ensued. I attended that church and I got a lot out of it. I found a support group online, for woman only (I had not found this one yet.) During that time my work moved my department from Boston to Rhode Island. I decided to move, and accept a nice bonus for going, rather then lose my job. I moved to where I am now, but I was encouraged to find a local congregation to attend. I never found a church that I felt comfortable in though. I do have one that I can go to if I want, but no place that I could call home and feel accepted, so I kinda put that on hold.
The next year was mostly work and almost no play. I've found it really hard to find decent friends. Most of the people I work with think that a good time is going to a club etc, and that is not my thing. I also have severe asthma, so I can't go anywhere that anyone is smoking, even if I wanted to. So, I remained isolated for the most part. I was so alone, I got two parrots, I had had too much loss in my life and I wanted a loving companion to share my life with that wouldn't die on me etc.
So it's been just me and my parrots (macaws) for the past year and a half or so. Most weekends I wouldn't even leave the house. About a year ago, I decided to go back to meetings. I missed feeling really good spiritually, and I told myself that I could keep the stuff that I disagree with about the Society to myself if it meant getting my friends back. I attended every meeting for a month. Then I had surgery and I was not up to sitting through the meetings. I said to myself "why am I doing this? I don't want to be here" so I stopped going.
Fast forward to this summer. It's been years since I had a loving relationship and I don't want to be alone for the rest of my life.....I've worked hard to heal and my peace with myself and who I am and with my relationship with God.
So, I met someone through an online dating service. I thought that everything was perfect....too good to be true. I dived in. He accepted that I have herpes, which was a tremendous relief to me. Everything seemed great...the he just disappeared....long story but I was left devastated again. I cannot explain how much that hurt. (As if I did not already have abondonment issues.)
I decided that I was just going to go back to meetings, get reinstated and never look back.
That's when I found this site, and started reading and taking it all in.....which kept me from going back, because I knew that I could not REALLY be myself if I went back and got reinstated.
About three days after that all fell apart, I met someone else on that same dating service. I explained that I had just had my heart ripped out and that I was not ready for a relationship and that I was just looking for friends at that time. Over the next few months him and I became close friends and I knew I had found my soul-mate. I just knew, there was no question. Then, the unthinkable happened. He had a nervous breakdown. See, he had also had three deaths in his family, both his parents and his grandmother, the year before, but he never greaved....it was locked up inside. Around the one year anniversary of his mothers death he had a meltdown. He told me that he could not handle a relationship and that he was numb and just wanted to isolate himself. I love him and before his breakdown he loved me and we were planning out our future together. We both know ourselves very well and we found the perfect match in each-other. I'm 25. He's 35. We've both been alone and had a lot of time to figure our-selves out.....and outside of work, we are the alone close friend each of us has. Well, it's been two months or so since his breakdown. He's been in couseling, and has started to feel better. I have been patient and supportive to the best as I can. I pray for him and think of him often and we talk occaisonally, but I had not seen him for six weeks when he came over on New Year's day. He spent the night here, something that he'd never done before. I thought that things were getting better and that he was "back" from his pit of depression and starting to feel like himself again.
Then...
He calls me tonight (well, techincally it was last night, because now it's three in the morning here, but I can't sleep and I need to share this....so here I am.) He tells me that he can't handle any relationship right now and he feels like an iceman, cold and wanting to be alone, isolated. He tells me that what happened New Years' cannot happen again.
I love him. I keep hearing in the back of my mind....."be patient, and just take one day at a time and things will work out eventually."
BUT, I can't handle being pushed away again......I've been through to much....a small fraction of which I have just shared above this you.
And so now, I'm sitting here. Numb and in pain. I feel that dull aching pain, runing down my leg. I feel exhausted, but I know I cannot sleep. I have my headphones on, listening to "Alone I Break" by Korn, off their new CD "Untouchables."
I an fighting the urge to run and hide in the Org.....I MISS MY FRIENDS!!!!!!!!!!!! I FEEL SO LOST!!!
Alone I Break (asI think the lyrics go)
Pick me up, been bleeding too long.
Right here, right now
I'll stop it, somehow
(chorus)
I will make it go away, can't be here no more.
Seems this is the only way, I will soon be gone
These feelings will be gone, these feelings will be gone!!!!
Now I see the times they change, leaving doesn't seem so strange
I am hoping I can find, where to leave my hurt behind.
All the $h!t I seem to take, All the love I seem to break,
I have lived the best I can, does this make me not a man (woman)?
(next line I can't tell what they're saying"
I stand alone (next line?)
(repeat chorus)
Am I going to leave this place? What is it I'm running from? Is there nothing more to come?
Is it only blackened space? What is going to take it's place? I'm not going to win this race.
I've been stopped up in this place, what is it that I've become? Is there something more to come?
More to come?
(Chorus)
Well, one can only accept their world has fallen apart so many times before they lose their mind.
That's how I feel, I'm going to try and go to bed. If you managed to read all that, please pray for me, please.
Thank you. I know that I am not alone, but I feel very very alone right now. Alone I break.
Truth2Me