This past weekend I went to the funeral of a person who was a friend of mine that I grew up with as a J.W. I won't get into the in's and out's of the reasons why he did this but he said something in his suicide letter that really hit me like a ton of bricks. One line from his letter is , "it isn't the fact that my youth was taken from me, it was the fact that every hour of my life was packed mundane tasks that made me feel empty and sub-human".
At first I thought that was a stretch, but I thought about it, and thought about it. I actually went and wrote down what an average week of my life was like and I damn near had a heart-attack:
Monday:
07:00 - 08:00 = Get dressed for school, make breakfast and walk to school.
08:00 - 08:30 = Walk to school
08:30 - 15:30 = School
15:30 - 17:00 = Homework
17:00 - 18:00 = Make dinner before parents arrived home
18:00 - 18:30 = Eat Dinner
18:30 - 19:00 = Do Dishes
19:00 - 20:30 = Study for Ministry School
20:30 - 22:00 = T.V. alone because parents went to their room
22:00 = Sleep
Tuesday:
07:00 - 08:00 = Get dressed for school, make breakfast and walk to school.
08:00 - 08:30 = Walk to school
08:30 - 15:30 = School
15:30 - 17:00 = Homework
17:00 - 18:00 = Make dinner before parents arrived home
18:00 - 18:30 = Eat Dinner
18:30 - 19:00 = Iron Clothes for meeting and walk to Kingdom Hall
19:00 - 22:00 = Ministry School and time walking home if no one offers a ride
22:00 = Get home and go to sleep
Wednesday
07:00 - 08:00 = Get dressed for school, make breakfast and walk to school.
08:00 - 08:30 = Walk to school
08:30 - 15:30 = School
15:30 - 17:00 = Homework
17:00 - 18:00 = Make dinner before parents arrived home
18:00 - 18:30 = Eat Dinner
18:30 - 19:00 = Do Dishes
19:00 - 20:00 = Study for Bookstudy
20:00 - 21:00 = Family Study
21:00 - 22:00 = Sleep
Thursday:
07:00 - 08:00 = Get dressed for school, make breakfast and walk to school.
08:00 - 08:30 = Walk to school
08:30 - 15:30 = School
15:30 - 17:00 = Homework
17:00 - 18:00 = Make dinner before parents arrived home
18:00 - 18:30 = Eat Dinner
18:30 - 19:30 = Iron Clothes for bookstudy and clean house. Talk to the people in my house for 20 minutes before it starts.
19:30 - 21:00 = Bookstudy and 30 minutes talking to people who hang around
21:00 22:00 = Watch T.V.
22:00 = Go to Bed
Friday:
07:00 - 08:00 = Get dressed for school, make breakfast and walk to school.
08:00 - 08:30 = Walk to school
08:30 - 15:30 = School
15:30 - 17:00 = Homework
17:00 - 18:00 = Watch T.V.
18:00 - 18:30 = Walk to the corner to buy Beef and Broccoli, Fried Shrimp and Pizza. We ate out on Friday
18:30 - 19:00 = Go over presentations for Saturday morning Field Service and quickly go over material for the following weeks family study such as reading the article parents thought would help me not be a sinner while drooling as I smelled the pizza.
19:00 - 22:00 = Eat lukewarm pizza and play video games with the witnessed that lived across the street.
22:00 = Get home and go to sleep
Saturday:
07:00 - 09:30 = Wake up, eat breakfast, go over presentations again, clean house so the field service group thinks we are the cleanest people in the congregation.
09:30 - 09:45 = Meting for service
09:45 - 13:30 = Service and Return Visits (My mother said we had to get 15 hours not just the minimum of 10)
13:30 - 15:00 = We studied the Watchtower with all the Insight books and study aids because we had to make "deep" comments.
15:00 - 19:00 = Clean the house bathrooms, go to the laundromat, go shopping. We had no car so we took the city buses
19:00 - 22:00 = Watch T.V.
22:00 =Go to sleep
Sunday:
08:00 - 09:00 = Mom made pancakes that we would quickly wolf down. Get dressed for meeting.
09:00 - 09:30 = Walk to Kingdom Hall, talk to people before the meeting
09:30 - 12:30 = Talk, Watchtower Study, talk to friends after the meeting ends
12:30 - 13:00 = Walk home
13:00 - 14:00 = Frantically call everyone I knew to see if I could go to their home and play.
14:30 - 18:30 = Play Basketball (if you were lucky otherwise, just stay home and watch T.V.)
18:30 - 19:00 = Walk home from the park.
19:00 - 19:30 = Shower and wait for mom to ask if I did my personal study for the week.
19:30 - 20:30 = Inevitable personal study(Usually something along the lines of looking at the example of some bible kid that was devoted to god at an early age, or a topic that my parents felt I needed to work on)
20:30 - 22:00 = Watch T.V.
22:00 = Go to Bed
After writing all of that and realizing that somehow I left out the other J.W. related nonsense that I had to do that weren't consistent but still occasionally necessary I wonder why I never lost my mind. WTF