On the Subject of Demons, I Have a Story to Tell.

by snugglebunny 46 Replies latest jw experiences

• 

  Phoebe

  Love reading your story...more please..
• 

  snugglebunny

  Continued:

  Suffice to say that we moved to Weston super Mare where Dad immediately took over as PO.

  The pretty girl – call her Marianne -I’d seen on my first visit said that I looked just like Billy Fury and would I like to come round sometime to listen to her 45’s? You bet I would!

  So we moved to WSM and Marianne and I became an item, but under an incredibly severe regime of chaperoning. I’d recently got my full driving licence and as soon as was 18 I began driving a lorry for a local building supplies merchant. I received a full man’s wage so I was able to run my own car.

  Marianne came from a dreadfully dysfunctional witness family. She was also as moody as hell herself. Her dad was my dad’s assistant and totally, absolutely inflexible about anything. He’d got 5 kids in total and everyone of them would have left the JW’s by the time they hit 20. Her mother was rated as number 1 troublesome person in the KH and she was absolute poison. She’d go out in the ministry and often took a bag of old clothes with her which she’d try and sell with her Watchtowers as she went along.

  We were in WSM for almost 3 years. I saw my dad postpone a Saturday JW meeting because it clashed with the soccer World Cup Finals. This was, for me, the start of a love affair with football that endures to this day. I settled well in Weston and drove lorries for several building companies, all under 3 tons as that was the limit for under 21's.

  Soon, dad was unhappy and he needed to do something to please Jehovah and so get rich blessings again. He needed to move again to "where the need was great". We were going to Portsmouth! Portsmouth? Where the hell was that? Half the place seemed to be bomb sites, to me it resembled Middlesborough by the sea.

  But what about Marianne? We were engaged by this time but her dad refused to give us permission to marry (we were both under 21) and he still refused to even let us go to the cinema unaccompanied. Maybe I should move, along with mum and dad, and Marianne could then leave home and move near to where our new home was to be? Hmmm..that could work.

  So that’s what happened. I was aged 20 when we moved to Portsmouth and duly set about trying to impress the local congregation where dad took over as PO. Marianne moved near to us although her father threatened to physically restrain her. Around this time my dad really leant on me to become a full-time JW minister – gawd, and I hated knocking bloody doors!

  I was given 2 ministerial servants positions, became a popular public speaker, took the WT study and sometimes conducted group studies.

  In between all this, I’d found a place to hide my car so that no-one could see it with its steamed-up windows..

  The inevitable eventually happened! After 3 years of being an item.

  Marianne confessed and the s*it hit the fan. Splat!

  We were both placed on a kind of probation - called "restrictions" nowadays. The conditions were that Marianne returned to WSM forthwith and that we were never, ever to be alone together. I was removed from WT study conducting, being a Ministerial Servant, taking group studies, giving public talks, saying prayers and full-time pioneering. I was relegated to being a turd in a swimming pool, the lowest of the low. Mum and dad walked around with tears in their eyes for weeks. Brother Tim picked up on it and would give me sidelong grins from time to time.

  I’m 21 now and qualified to drive heavy trucks. I take a job with a brick company in Southampton and am happy to spend as much time away from home as possible. If I’m away on meeting nights, then so much the better. I basically just want to settle down with Marianne, but I’m starting to have doubts about living with her moodiness. However, it’s another year before she gets to 21 so I just grit my teeth and try to work through.

  Then, a few months after she’s sent back home, I get a letter from Marianne to tell me it’s all over. It’s all my fault of course, I’m basically a total dead loss and no longer worthy of her.(she’s actually fluttered her eyelashes at a young brother from Bristol who tells her how she deserves to be treated as though she were a princess). Wow. And then I feel an unexpected sense of freedom..

  To my own astonishment I'm not grief-stricken by Marianne dumping me. I'm more concerned with a feeling of now what?

  I have money in the bank, little attachment to JW’s or my parents and there is a big wide world out there.

  So now I face up to the fact that I can't stay living with my parents for much longer. I've always paid more than my share into the family pot, so leaving home won't cost anymore than remaining. But where to go?

  The situation took care of itself. News that I was now officially un-betrothed flew around the Hampshire congregations. A couple of families with daughters of marriageable age “dropped by” the house. I got invited to a bethel (JW-speak for Wathtower HQ) boy’s weekend party which consisted of the bethel boys getting smashed before taking the last train back to the bethel on Sunday evening. And then I was invited to another “party” in Havant.

  Some party! I’d been set up to go out in a foursome. It was a blind date. Oh dear - here we go again!

  
  
• 

  Island Man

  Chook: I've never seen or experienced anything demonic, but I still can't work out what moves a ouja board.

  It's the participants that move the board by a process called the ideomotor effect.
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  stan livedeath

  love reading your life story, Bunny. i know a few in pompey, living over on the oila woite myself.
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  Giles Gray

  Loving your story.

  Please, keep em coming.
• 

  millie210

  snugglebunny
  If only this religion wasn’t The Truth.

  I agree with Giles. I am loving your story. The line you wrote above resonates so deeply with me. I cannot tell you how many times when I was in and stuck, I had that very same thought myself.
• 

  snugglebunny

  Continuation:

  My blind date partner - call her Cindy - was blond and perky and full of fun. And a pioneer! We hit it off quite well. We went on a pub-crawl and finished up in The Jolly Sailor near Southampton (the same pub in which TV's Howards Way was filmed). It always seemd slightly strange to me that JW's were prudish about almost everything except the consumption of alcohol. Pubs were a way of life for many.

  My parents welcomed Cindy with open arms. After the sulky Marianne, a chatterbox like Cindy was made very welcome. Hmm...Mum and Dad were being pleasant to me again, although I was still under restrictions from my 'blip' with Marianne.

  So Cindy and I became officially engaged and we were married in December 1968. I was 22, she was 20. My father conducted the wedding at the Waterlooville Kingdom Hall.

  Almost immediately Cindy became pregnant, she felt grim most of the time so didn’t want to go to meetings. We had a son, Mark then later we had a daughter, Samantha. The downside of our marriage was that we had absolutely nothing in common whatsoever. Cindy was volatile, unpredictable and could be very violent. She had no boundaries at all and would even row in the street. Once, at a dinner party hosted by us, she struck another JW lady around the face. They’d disagreed on the identity of the England football manager! (the visiting witness lady was correct BTW, Dave Mc Kay was never the England manager).

  Added to which, she’d taken to hitting me around the face. She was always pathetically sorry after each incident but I was later to earn how she had been on the receiving of violence herself as a child. It seemed to me that just about everyone I knew who’d had a JW upbringing was a totally emotional wreck, me included.

  The violence had become known to the local elders, so they called around to see me. I was sporting a big black eye when they came in, so I lied as to how it had occurred. No good. They pounced on it and reprimanded me for not keeping my wife "in subjection". Thanks, fellas, that really helped.

  It just got worse and worse. She scratched my car, scratched me, threatened me with a knife, hit me with a broken glass so that I had to have stitches, it just went on and on. I remember once sitting down in a transport cafe for hours and letting a feeling of total despair wash over me. I knew that I could be an irritating bugger at times but surely I didn’t deserve all this crap?

  So we both started to play the field a bit. Just parties, a smoochy dance with someone else or a quick kiss in the kitchen with another lady or fella. Nothing more though, nothing for which one could be disfellowshipped. Not yet anyway..We’re now getting into 1972. At this point, my meeting attendance is down to zero and my PO contacts my dad expressing his concern that I’m falling away from the JW’s. Most JW's are anticipating armageddon's arrival in 1975, but I'm not remotely convinced. Added to which, I’m occasionally sneaking off to a remote pub out in the countryside to enjoy a quiet pint and a cigar. I liked smoking cigars!

  I’m also having real issues with JW beliefs centering around a loving god killing off millions of people and the injustice of disfellowshipping (excommunication). I imagine myself trying to explain both of these witness tenets to someone who is rational and all I can see is incredulity that anyone could accept such cruelty. My dad offers to give me a private Bible study to address these issues. I don’t take up the offer.

  Witnesses are now contacting me to urge me to hang in there, only 3 years to 1975. He that endures to the end..etc etc.

  I’m working in a sales environment now and have had some degree of success. I’ve kept quiet about the JW connection and am thoroughly enjoying the experience of being accepted as a normal person by my workmates. It’s at this point that I begin to realise that these “old world” associations are a damned sight more pleasant and straightforward than any JW folk with whom I’ve been associating. Plus, there’s no judgementalism!

  Partying now becomes a way of life for us. Cindy and I actually get on better now because we aren’t in each other’s faces so much. I’ve taken to smoking Dunhill cigarettes and even have a gold Dunhill lighter to complete the image. We’re also associating with an ex- witness couple, Mike and Pam, who were disfellowshipped a year before. Mike teaches me a few guitar chords and I try to sing and strum Leonard Cohen and Tom Paxton. Can’t manage Kristoffersen though!

  Eventually a letter arrives from the Leigh Park Judicial Committee. Bro Snuggypoos, you are accused of associating with disfellowshipped persons! Earlier I’d walked around the local District assembly with my DF’d pal, it seemed the best way of getting my message across.

  I didn’t attend the Judicial Committee, nor did I attend the next arranged meeting, so I was disfellowshipped in absentia. My parents shunned me for a number of years after that, as did all my witness friends. By this time I'd become an ardent Portsmouth FC fan and attended every home match. So I kept busy and gradually made new friends.

  Eventually, Cindy found herself someone else and we split up..the break-up was horrendous and as I continued to have some contact with Cindy as the mother of 2 of my children, I’m skipping right over the rest of 1972 and leaving an entire 6 months out of this story. Our divorce would take over 8 months to be finalised and it was definitely not a good time!

  But sunshine was on the horizon and all the negative stuff I’d experienced was going to be more than adequately compensated for!

  
  
• 

  Wake Me Up Before You Jo-Ho

  @Chook Ouija boards are successful due to something called the Idiomotor Phenomenon/Reflex. It is derived from the terms "ideo" (idea, or mental representation) and "motor" (muscular action). The phrase is most commonly used in reference to the process whereby a thought or mental image brings about a seemingly "reflexive" or automatic muscular reaction, often of minuscule degree, and potentially outside of the awareness of the subject.

  Think of it like this: the glass on the board only moves when it has contact with hands. If no one were to touch it, would it still glide on its own?

  If you want to give the idioemotor effect a test for yourself (without invoking the spirits of the underworld), go grab a hand-held pendulum to hover over a sheet of paper that has keywords written on it such as YES, NO and MAYBE. In response to any questions asked, the small movements in the hand will cause the pendulum to move towards key words on the paper.

  Edit: Just read what @Island Man wrote above. Long story short: what he said.
• 

  _Morpheus

  Ok im hooked. More please
• 

  Old Navy

  Aye, I'll definitely agree with _Morpheus on this!
  

  Quote from _Morpheus:
  

  Ok im hooked. More please

  I think Snugglebunny has a book and a movie unfolding here.

  Wonderful stuff!