I have been disfellowshiped since December 2008. I wrote a letter apologizing in June 2009 and then a few months later in September, I wrote another letter asking to be reinstated. I met with the judicial committee and they said I have made some good progress, but not enough time has passed and so at that time, they would not be reinstating me. Before the brother could finish talking, I got up and walked out of the room in tears. One of the brothers followed me outside. I wonder if he did that so that I wouldn't damage their cars on my way out of the parking lot. I told him with tears and snot running down my face that it doesn't seem to matter how hard I try, nothing I ever do is good enough. He tried to tell me that everyhting will turn out alright and I wil be back and have a chance to have real friends, blah blah blah.
I had quit my job and spent the year holed up in my room because I still live at home with my family and I hate the way they have treated me since I was disfellowshiped. Sure, they still associate with me, but its like they are blaming me for the family falling about, which is ridiculous because the fact that we haven't been a real family for years is the reason I ended up doing the things that got me disfellowshiped in the first place. My dad had to step down as an elder and he's even moodier and depressed than he was before. I thought that now that he wasn't an elder, we could be a real family again since he would have more time to spend with us. NOPE! THANK YOU FOR TAKING MY DADDY AWAY FROM ME WTS!
I cut off all ties with "worldly people" in order to prove to my parents that I really was changing. But all this time spent by myself, trying to get another job (bad timing, since I quit during a recession), trying to prove that I am truly repenant and can be a good witnesses again, has made me hate myself, hate my family, hate Jehovah's Witnesses, hate Jehovah (God), pretty much hate everybody in the whole entire world! I have wanted to just end everything and just kill myself. Why should I stick around when my parents look down on me, people who are non-witnesses are not good to hang around and the witnesses in the surrounding congregations thing they are doing me a big favor by avoiding me like I'm the plauge? But I have always stopped myself because my little sister would be the first to find me and she is already messed up, thanks to this religion messing up my parents, and they, in turn, messing us up. I also knew that if God existed, he would not want me to take my own life in such a selfish way.
A few weeks ago, I was feeling pretty low as usual. So I decided to go online and see how other disfellowshiped witnesses were coping and how they were able to get the courage to get reinstated. Well, I certainly found what I was looking for and more, much more! I can't remember the first website I found, but from there I found freeminds. org www.4jehovah.org and many other websites and videos on youtube that I have been visiting since that night. I've checked everything that was said and compared it to what I found in my watchtower library at home. Everything I found was exactly where they said it would be and it said exactly what they said it would say. At first I was shocked, then I was angry! Now, I am sad because I am 22 years old and I feel like my life up until this point has been a lie! I have been so sad and confused for so many years and my life could have been completely different than what it is now. I have wasted my teen years. I wanted to be a cheerleader, I could have finished college by now. I chose not to be friends with some good people who still check up on me. They don't care about what I did. They care about me and they know how depressed I have been.
Reading this post makes me angry all over again, esp. the part about stoning! Oh, how loving of this so-called "God's visible organization". I tried to share some of what I was learning, like the real date of Jerusalem, and she went online to see what I was talking about and she said I was reading "apostate" information. I tried to tell her that there were other religions around 1919 who had already using God's name, not celebrating birthdays and holidays. She wouldn't let me look it up on her laptop. I guess she thinks the information will corrupt her hard drive or something. The only thing she cold tell me is that they are imperfect men, but we still need to listen to them because they are the "faithful and descrete slave". I asked even if they are wrong? At the point she just said we can't talk about spiritual matters and so the discussion ended. She came to me a week later, after talking with one of her friend that lives in NC. At the end of January, we will be going to the two day circuit assembly and she will see her friend there, who's daughter was also disfellowshiped and reinstated. She aksed me to think about writign a letter to be reinstated so that I wil be able to associate withe everybody. I told her I couldn't do that because it wouldn't be sincere. In my mind, I was thinking, why would I want to be around people who abandoned me in my time of need? I wanted to kill myself, while they almost broke their necks trying to get away from me. I felt dirty and that God hated me. But after I started learning about the real truth about God from the Bible, all the pain and hurt I felt just went away. Even that first night, I felt like a huge burdon was lifted off of my shoulder. I just realized that I have consistantly been happy every since that day. I have been depressed at all! I will never go back and I hope one day my paretnts will found out the real truth about "the truth" and leave too. But in the mean time, I hope to get a job so that I can get out of here!
