Hello everyone.
I just wanted to introduce myself and share my verbose story. My name is Kyria, I'm 29 years old, originally from the Pawtucket/Lincoln Rhode Island congregation in the states.
I found this board yesterday, and am completely blown away by what an amazing place it is. I can't believe I didn't know about it before now. I love reading other people's stories and I am really looking forward to sharing experiences with people who understand my background. It seems like I've been hiding all this for so long. Even when I tell people about my past, it's just "telling". There has been no one in my life to say "Wow, I remember that."
I was raised as a Jehovah's Witness, baptized at 16, disfellowshipped at 23. I did the typical "married at 18" thing, to a brother who was 8 years my senior. I dropped out of high school, and we started dating when I was 16. I think I told him I loved him and said we should get married about a week into the relationship! We had absolutely no concept of how to have a relationship. His role model was a mother who stayed in a physically abusive relationship for the congregation, and mine was a mother who stayed in a psychologically abusive relationship. All we knew was that we were both lonely and wanted out of our houses.
On our first anniversary, I told him I didn't love him anymore. His response was, "So? What are you going to do about it? You can't divorce me." It's so twisted that a husband would "keep" a wife who just flat out said she no longer loves him. So twisted that I couldn't bring myself to leave for almost 4 more years. I remember I used to constantly beg him to cheat on me so we could get divorced. I used to sit at home and drink all day and cut myself. This was my life.
I didn't leave all at once. I didn't have an epiphany, I didn't even have doubts about the Watchtower teachings. I had bad associations.
The Witnesses are right to be so crazed about "bad associations", they know that once their members see that "worldly" people aren't all Satan worshipping crack-whores, they're going to start drifting away. I began attending a local poetry reading where I met some of the sweetest people I've ever known. Slowly I began to realize something was missing from my life.
I had an affair with a poet with the express purpose of coming home and telling my husband. I was so excited coming home from the hotel. The sex had been horrible, but all I wanted was freedom. Of course, he decided to "forgive" me, and I realized that I was trapped forever. I decided to kill myself. I never got around to it, but ended up in a mental hospital for a week. Of course, I didn't really want to die - I wanted to live! The psychologist in the hospital was smart enough not to mention my religion too much. She merely hinted that maybe I might not be happy as a Jehovah's Witness and that I would have to make a decision as to whether or not I wanted to stay with my husband. Amazingly, I was able to think clearly enough to decide I needed to leave.
The night I left, my husband called my parents and told them what was happening. They drove to the house and stood screaming at me in the driveway saying "Do you want to die at Armageddon?", my father calling me a whore for cheating. I tried to run, but they physically held me down on the ground and forced me back into the house. I slept there that night, plotting my escape.
I have a lot of blanks at this point. I know that I walked down the middle of the street to a friends house, and that he wouldn't let me in because it would be "inappropriate". I know that I made a frantic phone call to "the affair" and begged him to let me come live with him (this is how much of a child I was, I I really thought he would just let me move in with hiim). But I don't remember the rest of this night. I may have called one of the poets I knew. Eventually, I ended up staying with a poet and his mother who thankfully letting me stay in their guest room while I deprogrammed a little. She was a nurse and a feminist activist, and thought of me as a battered woman. I don't know what I would have done without that. Thank god for those "worldly" people.
I went to my meeting to get disfellowshipped. It blows my mind now that I even bothered to attend, but I was still under their mind control. After the meeting, I drove to a place called Lincoln Woods, where I took out a bottle of whiskey and drank myself into a stupor. I walked into the middle of an open grassy area where I had my final conversation with Jehovah. I yelled into the sky that I hoped he could forgive me, but that I just had to leave. I felt no malice towards the congregation at that point. In my heart I thought that the people who were till JW's were right. It just wasn't right for me. It's amazing that I was able to leave while not truly understanding why. It was only a year later that I slowly began to feel anger towards what had been done to me in my youth.
I haven't spoken to my father in 3 years. He doesn't know I was married, or that I've moved. He won't call me, and, though I'm sure I could call him, it's just too stressful to think about now. This haunts me day and night. At the strangest times I'll get some kind of flashback or feeling of overwhelming guilt. Sometimes I'll see an old man in a hat and just burst into tears.
My mother is now trying to get reinstated because of "the way the world is now" (smacks hand to forehead). It's amazing a lack of historical knowledge and the war in Iraq will do to a person. I knew something was wrong when we went out to lunch and she decided to drive me past the old Kingdom Hall. Talk about passive aggressive. Hopefully I won't have to stop talking to her too.
Lately I've been coming to terms with my past. I feel like I'm finally a whole person (well, almost... I'm really close!) I left my husband DJ of 3 years just 6 months ago and moved to New York, due to fear that I might be making yet another relationship mistake. I still have remnants of the brainwashing, and one of my issues is that I get far too intimate in relationships far too quickly! I also haven't experienced dating at all, and it seems like all my boyfriends are just father-figures. Although I love him, I'm still trying to decide if I've experienced enough of life to truly settle down just yet.
Since I never graduated high school, I had to do a little fancy footwork to support myself. I fibbed a little on job applications (hey, I was already disfellowshipped, what could it hurt?) and eventually landed myself an entry-level job at a dot com where I taught myself computer skills. Now I have 5 years of web design experience under my belt and I'm doing pretty good! I continued writing poetry, but eventually stopped performing it because I got interested in standup comedy. I don't talk about my religious past in my act, but I am currently working on a one-woman show about my JW past which I plan to perform in Boston and New York very soon. I also write for a NY humor magazine called Jest, which landed me a nice contracting job writing for VH1. Go figure. The girl who almost didn't make it out alive now has a tv writing credit! So now I'm just making my way here in New York just waiting to become famous so I can be worshipped like the false idol I know I really am ;)
I wish there were a way to tell people who knew me who are still in the organization that I'm doing well. I know the mindset when they think that you're gone. I didn't get chewed up and spit back out, and I won't ever come crawling back to the Kingdom Hall. In fact, any problems I had in leaving only had to do with the fact that I was completely unprepared for life by the Witnesses! My family is the one who made me helpless, that made it hard for me to succeed in the normal world. At 23, I had to turn around and try to learn all of the skills most normal people have been collecting since childhood. I started at a distinct disadvantage, but I give the Witnesses a big ol "F You" when I say, hey, I made it anyway!
Leaving was the hardest thing I ever did, but I'm so glad to have had that kind of experience in my life. I gained an insight into parts of human nature that you can only understand by experiencing them. I know I have a lot of neuroses and I still suffer from depression, but I'm proud of who I am. There's something to be said about the knowledge that you are strong, that you made it, that you got through it. I have met so many good and amazing people and learned so much about what true spirituality means. I've even come to a point where I find religion to be interesting again, although I don't think I could ever bring myself to join any kind of organization.
So many people have their lives all set out for them. Their parents pay for a nice little college education and they set about to get a nice little job and a nice little house with a picket fence. Although I envy that stability, I don't envy the worldview that comes with that tidy little life. I like the way my past has molded me into a woman of eclectic experience and strength. When people want to know about me, I always have a good story to tell.
Thank you for this website!!