Hi! I haven't posted here in ages, so I doubt anyone remembers me. In any case, my name is Rochelle, and I used to be a Witness. I started studying with them at age 17, got baptized at 18, and left at 24 or 25 for a lot of reasons. I think the biggest one is that there were just too many rules, and too few of them made sense. I left to preserve whatever remained of my questionable sanity.
In any case, I'm 29 years old (my birthday was yesterday; took the money my parents gave me and spent it on a Playstation 2 game *g*), very much female, I live alone except for my cat (my bestest friend in the world, named for a Final Fantasy character), and right now, I'm trying to undo the damage that life with an alcoholic parent and my seven or so years as a Witness did to me. I came back to this forum because I think it might be helpful, and I hope that I can help others as well.
If this board gives out a prize for unique religious histories, I think I stand a decent chance of winning. *g* I was raised as mostly nothing, wanted to make God happy so I became a JW because of their strictness, ended up LEAVING because of that strictness among other things, became a Pagan because the JW God was such a jerk that I wanted nothing to do with him (or, for awhile, men in general, but that's another story), and then... I ended up as a Christian because it turned out that the god they'd shown me wasn't God at all. But I'm not a traditional Christian; that's just not my intended path. It's a little complicated, so if you're bored and curious, you can get the details from this part of my Web site. You might want to start with "My Story" since that's how it all begins.
Let's see, what else is there...? Oh, yeah, the miscellaneous stuff. My favorite foods include sushi, pizza and chocolate, but not all at the same time. My kitty's name is Kuja. I don't have a favorite color since I like them all. I love Hello Kitty, and I still watch cartoons. I'm an aspiring writer. My favorite musical genres are alternative and metal, and my favorite band right now is 12 Stones. I haven't yet heard a song of theirs that I didn't like.
Nice to see so many new faces -- and to recognize so many familiar names.
Love,
~Rochelle.