Were You Really HAPPY in the borg.???

by Latte 25 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  RedhorseWoman

  Happy? Not really. I always felt inadequate. I felt I should be spending more time in service....more time studying. I felt guilty if I read a novel, or if I just didn't feel like using every vacation day to go house to house.

  If I did well at work, I felt guilty for enjoying success (could I be materialistic?) I didn't feel I had a spiritual life at all--I could never measure up to the standards that would make me truly acceptable to Jehovah.

  I felt like a salesman (gee, I wonder why), and I HATE selling. Anything that I truly enjoyed took time away from "kingdom pursuits" and I spent a lot of time dealing with frustration, guilt, and a sense of failure.
• 

  AmazingProgeny

  I was fairly happy. I was raised in it and as a kid never really thought about what the beliefs about Armageddon meant for the rest of the world. I did hate going out in service. I was really shy and that made me totally uncomfortable. I had a lot of fun with my friends.

  I was 19 when my family and I left. It was at that time that I became more aware of things and really started to realize how awful it was.

  Now, it makes me sick to think that, according to the borg, people (including kids) will die b/c they chose the wrong religion. That is just sick.

  AmazingProgeny
• 

  joelbear

  I loved having Bible Studies at people's homes because I loved to teach. When I was a kid, I also loved placing magazines and Truth books, I must have placed 1000 of them. As I grew older, I began to dislike the door to door work and stopped offering any publication that I couldn't start a study with.

  I loved witness get togethers. We had a blast at ours when I was a teenager. We played some great games and had some great times. We used to play this game called Poor Kitty. One person had to get down on the floor and pretend to be a cat. He/she would go around and the other players would have to pet them on the head three times and say poor kitty without smiling or laughing. If they smiled, they had to be the kitty. I was great at this game. My secret weapon was crippled cat which always broke them up.

  I hated meetings and assemblies because I hated to sit still. Very rarely did a talk interest me. There were not many good speakers. I liked giving talks and reading the Watchtower for the Watchtower study. I am a good public speaker and loved the attention too. I hated intermission time at assemblies too. All my friends were busy trying to find husbands or wives which left me on the outside. Assemblies brought out different characteristics among the witnesses I knew. I remember assemblies as popularity contests.

  I hated being different in school. Between being a JW and a homo, I got tons of abuse at school and was often frightened that I might be beaten up or hurt. It never came to that, but I was verbally threatened almost daily.

  Like Jimmy Buffett says, Somes of its magic and some of its tragic.

  All in all, what made me unhappy was my family life more so than my witness life. None of my family behaved the way witnesses were supposed to, yet they insisted on perfection for me. It was this hypocrisy and other hypocrisy that I saw that led me to say adios.

  hugerroooss

  Joel
• 

  Latte

  RHW,

  That's just how I felt! I barely ever read a novel.....I have just started to read more lately.......it's so therapeutic.

  The guilt, and feelings of being unworthy are the pits. I am so glad to leave this behind, ones own self esteem is very, very important. If you like yourself then others will too! (so says my sister)

  Latte
• 

  Francois

  No, I despised it for the waste of time it was. I was frustrated with the brain-dead strictures.

  I did like the getting laid at assemblies part, though.

  Francois

  Where it is a duty to worship the Sun you can be sure that a study of the laws of heat is a crime.
• 

  Mulan

  Yes, as a child, I was very happy. My entire extended family were dubs, and since they became that, when I was 5, I don't really have anything to compare with.

  When I was married, the first 8 years were difficult, because my husband was a part time meeting attender. In 1970, he got the spirit I guess, and moved ahead very fast, and was appointed an elder in 1973. He quickly got many responsibilities in the congregation, circuit and district. That was great, and I loved that......but probably for the 'glory'. But in many ways, I raised the children alone, because there were so many meetings and meeting parts he had to be part of. He was the School overseer for years, and then the WT conductor. He was very serious about those jobs, and studied very carefully. I still think that's why he was open to hearing 'truths' that others don't want to see. Too many things didn't add up for him.

  When I pioneered, I loved the first year. Very exciting. After that, it was pure torture. I finally quit because I just couldn't justify spending the time doing that fruitless work. I would spend literally days, without talking to more than two or three people at the door. I felt my family deserved better from me, than that. A good meal, and a cleaner house, for example. And a mother at home when my son came home from school. Three years later, we began our journey out of the Borg. So, for about 20 years, of my marriage, I was happy. I guess that answers the question.
• 

  metatron

  Let's see
  Depressed as a child, then as a teenager.
  Depressed as a regular pioneer
  Suicidially depressed as Bethelite
  Depressed as MS

  Had a few moments happy as an elder, giving talks,
  setting things right until I discovered that everything
  (including my 'friends') was a sham.

  and now
  happy to be free

  metatron
• 

  jurs

  no!!! like RHW i felt guilty about everything. sometimes i would even think about leaving so i could enjoy life a little and just be destroyed. but i didn't because i was a mother and the only JW in my family and i thought it wouldn't be fair to my kids that i take them away from Jehovah. also my prayers were like reruns always telling Jehovah i was sorry for not doing eneough !!!! jurs
• 

  Mommie Dark

  HATED every second of it. I hated being scared to pieces by the Paradise book and hated every boring minute of the 'family' study in the Let God Be True book. Hated the hypocritical tightassed weirdos presiding over the cong. Hated field service, thought it was a really rude thing to bang on doors telling people they needed to buy these crappy books to keep God from killing them.

  I hated being the freak at school, sitting in the hallway during holiday prep and sitting in the office studying while the other kids had their holiday party or pep rally. Hated missing the field trip to a cathedral to hear a real classical orchestra, hated not being allowed to join the choir or sing a solo in the intramural competition, or play drums in the band. I hated getting sneered at by Jdubs for winning the district spelling bee and going to the regional competition; hated being humiliated by an elder's daughter who made it sound like I had done something unsavory and shameful by competing and (gasp!) winning!

  The guilt and fear would overshadow the resentment, and then I would hate myself for being 'ungrateful for Jehovah's fine loving provision.' Then I would try again, even harder, to immerse myself in the bullshit and pretend it was 'happifying.' The fear and guilt convinced me I couldn't love or serve God anyplace but inside the cult, so no matter how bad and incomplete I felt, I kept going back.

  I really hated raising my babies in that alleged 'loving provision' by those shitty horrible rules, and my last few years inside the cult were a churned-up mess of cognitive dissonance, trying to be grateful for what was killing my heart and my babies' joy in living.

  For all the problems and challenges life has thrown at me since then, I'm still infinitely happier than I ever was inside the cult. I have a great marriage and a good honest relationship with my kids. We aren't perfect and we never ever claim to have The Answers. And we don't need, want, or search for a salvation package. There's nothign to need saved FROM. This life is all we have, and we do what we can with what we have. It's simple but not easy. And it's a million times better than being a walking advert for one of America's wackiest millenarian cults.
• 

  Big Jim

  From the time I was eight years old when my parents started studying I was very disgusted with the fact that my parents chose a religion that took so much away from life what was really the most fun things like birthday partys, haloween, Christmas, involement in sports etc.

  And then to make it worse in 1973 due to I guess the 1975 false prophecy my dad quit his very good job at Union Carbide to move where the need is greater in a town with a population of only 1,200 where we built a Kingdom Hall that took almost 2 years to complete, I was the designated kid helper I had to spend all my Saturdays and after school hours working on that project.

  I was the only boy in the congregation which meant I had no friends, and of course you know bad association was forbidden so I was basically isolated. I went from being a a,b student to a all F student the same year we moved there.

  Living in a town that small any thing you do is noticed so field service was a nightmare from hell because you would always run into someone from school and then become the laughing joke of the class the following day.

  I made a decision when I turned 15 that I was going to quit school and go to work, and that i did, I also made a decision that I was going to have friends witness are not, and I did. These decisions so angered my elder stepdad that he told me it was his way are the highway so I took my last paycheck and a suit case and stuck out my thumb and ended up in Houston TX living on the streets and homeless for almost 5 years. I hopped freight trains and hitched all over the Country I was free at last, and of course that freedom had a price that was a very high one.

  Anyway I ended up finally being permitted to return home at 20 years old to a stepdad that despised the fact that I was back. When I cut off all my hair and went to the first meeting an elder who's daughter used to be my girl friend pulled me back to the cold room and began to interagate me asking me why I returned, he said that I was nothing but a con man trying to weasle my way back in to the congregation, boy that sure made me feel welcome.

  So to shorten this I ended up being reinstated from my disassociated status got married to a pioneer sister that I am still with, became a regular pioneer and MS myself, went into a business with a wordly man who stole our life savings from us, and from that point on I quit going to meetings, grew a beard and started to try to understand why I was not wanting to be a JW anymore, well research backed up doubts that I had anyway so here I am just doing my own thing and quite happy. My wife is a very miserable woman at this point she wants me to release her from the marriage by commiting adultery, which I have not and do not plan on it.

  The Non-Truth has caused me many many pains and continues to cause me problems.

  My wife has threatned to leave me and so I turned the tables on her and told her that if she takes my family away from me that I would do everything in my power to teach all four of my kid's the truth about the Non-Truth. Which scares her half to death.

  The JW religion sucks and has given me many heart aches in my life I could probally type for 10 hours and not tell all the horrible things the JW religion has done to my life, but I will not because I must move on with what is left of the rest of my life.

  Peace be with you my friend.