A while back I posted my experience about running into an old JW friend who revealed to me he had left the "Borg" and told me all about why he had.
Today he e-mailed me something he had written and I want to share it for the sake of those who are going thru something similar. I think it helps to know that we're not alone in our turmoil.
This is just an excerpt...
Speaking for someone raised as a Jehovah's Witness and at one time a very devout believer willing to die and even worse I would have even allowed my own children to die for the most sacred of all of Jehovah's Witnesses teachings, the 'law on blood', this is just one of many sacred laws that Jehovah's Witness adhere to. They do not allow a blood transfusion for themselves or anyone else in his immediate family under his charge.
When I was faced with a choice to remain faithful or allow my baby girl to die for this sacred law, my choice was to be faithful and let her die. But as things turned out she did not need to have the transfusion and is healthy and happy today. But leave no doubt about it I would have let her die, if that had been my test. I knew God had the power to give all that one had sacrificed back to me in the resurrection.
This is the same type of thinking that has filled the earth with terrorists willing to do anything for their Gods. I understand them perfectly. I was faithful to a fault. It is unimaginable, this type of thinking to the ordinary person, the power that the Jehovah's Witnesses Organization has over it's members. Everything in a believer's life is programmed by the Society and its teachings. Easier it would be to cut off ones arms and legs than to go against one of the core teachings. At least if he cut off his arms and legs his family and friends would be there for him to give him understanding and comfort.
Unimaginable emotional pressure from family, friends, and even ones own mind grips a Witness like pangs of a pregnant woman when he first starts to doubt. His mind races, his physical body hurts. He can't think of anything that could possibly be worse. He starts to doubt his own sanity because the Society speaks for God and to doubt the Organization is to doubt God. The only thing left that could ease the pain is eternal death but even then he knows this could not erase the emotional pain that some how the pain would manage to still be there. The only way to remove his doubt is to prove to him self that he is wrong and the Society is correct.
That's what I tried to do. The only way I could erase the emotional pain from my mind was to study harder and prove my thinking was wrong. So I started to do the unthinkable, that is, to study my doubts by using not only the Witness publications but also outside publication and the 'I' word: the Internet.
Desperately I tried to find something to hang onto, just one fact to hold onto was all I asked, just one. When a member is to this point he becomes paranoid like the character in the novel 1984. The "thought police" are watching at all times. You can trust no one, not your wife or husband, not even our own kids and especially no one in the congregation. When you talk to other Witnesses you watch every word you say trying not to slip up. Because if you are found out the Elder's will hunt you down like a rabid dog. This independent thinking can't be allowed to foster. An example is what you'll become to the rest. The Elders will excommunicate you-- a fate that is equal to death. Your life, your friends, your family would be gone the only course of action is to move on without those you love or to lie and admit your thinking is wrong. You become a person without a face. No one's there to help you.
The mind control is overwhelming; it completely controls the inner self. To break away is equivalent to peeling one's flesh off with his bear hands. So desperately you guard your secret, you must hold it close or be found out. But facts cannot be ignored no more than one can raise a dead man. The only thing I had left was to admit to myself I have been mislead. It would have been easier to have found out the earth was flat as to believe the life saving spiritual blood that issued from the Society could have deliberately lied to me.
I have read many stories of individuals that have left the Organization behind and their stories echo the same fear, and emotional pain, the guilt that I have lived through. I have lived though the pain of loosing my brother.... He had a long life ahead of him. Then loosing his boy years later.... Then...my brother's daughter was killed. She was nine months pregnant when a drunk driver killed her. She was the last heir of my brother. My brother's wife hangs onto the resurrection hope so dearly and to see her grieve is like tearing ones heart out piece by piece with his own hands.
As hard as all of this has been it was nothing close to the emotional pain that I have went through and am still going through since I have found out what the Society has done and is knowingly still doing. I have constant nightmares that leave me emotionally drained. I wake arguing with my older brother over facts that he admits are true but he can't admit to himself. If he thinks the facts are wrong why does he not love me enough to prove to me the facts are wrong? I am dead to him. He has not spoken to me in years. I feel sorry for him. He is punishing the wrong person. It is not my fault that the Society has done the things they are still doing.
Thank you, my friend, for letting me post this.
~Merry