gypsygraver
JoinedMy indoctrination started in utero, I kid you not, my dad would read me their publications while I was yet in my mother's womb. I didn't swallow it hook line and sinker until about 7 years later though. We were your typical JW family (I know not all jw families are like this, but far too many are.), psychotic mother, alcoholic father with two kids who still live at home, myself, and my sister who is 9 years older than me. My dad got disfellowshipped for his drinking problem which was spawned from trying to deal with an emotionally abusive wife, which in turn made him become physically abusive to my mother and sister. (This next part is purely hindsight speculation as I was very little at the time and not fully informed of what was happening.) My father filed for divorce and my mother said no, so he had an affair which prodded her to sign the papers. (end hindsight speculation)Somewhere between the divorce and his difellowshipping he went to prison for four years for blacking out and beating my mother to a bloody pulp as well as allowing my sister to sample marijuana in the safe presence of a parent. At this point my mother was awarded custody of my sister and I and she successfully turned my father into the devil in my eyes. The abuse against my sister by my mother got worse and worse, with episodes such as my sister crying in hysterics with her feet against her bedroom door while my mother chopped furiously at the door from the other side with an axe, this being just one of many similiar instances.... My sister moved out at 16, my mom remarried my dad's non-witness cousin after dating him for a total of 6 months. So we moved to Kansas where I was baptized at the age of nine. Shortly after moving to Kansas, she was put on private reproof for fornication and marrying an unbeliever and when that eventually didn't work out, the small town doctor and judge put her in a mental institution for 8 months. I still attended meetings as an elder and his family would pick me up from my foster parents and my faith was stronger than ever as was my desire to be back with my mother. Eight months later she was released and we moved back to the desolate and very country town called Yoder 45 miles from any form of real civilization where we had lived just prior to moving to Kansas. As I had entered double digits, she had started to emotionally and physically abuse me as well and so I rebelled at 11 years of age by starting to smoke cigarettes, weed, and occasionally meth as well as started wearing spikes, black lipstick and reading up on witchcraft as well as re-establishing a relationship with my devil of a disfellowshipped father whom I was advised by the elders to no longer associate with. At 14, one of our fights finally landed me in the hospital with 11 stitches to the back of my head. My first taste of freedom then ensued when my disfellowshipped father was then awarded custody. My freshmen and sophmore years of high school were two of the best, funnest and most wild days of my life. I completely abandoned the JW faith (except for the guilt that every now and then would creep into the back of my mind only to swiftly pushed back to the darkest recesses where it would eventually resurface.) AT the age of 16 I fell in love with the guy who was my first kiss at the age of 13 and we were engaged after a year. He had some major issues that got him into serious trouble and he wound up in jail. During this time I looked around and what I saw scared me. My father had also adopted a crack addiction and my fiancee was a criminal. So I started going back to meetings again. I tearfully confessed to the elders all my supposed wrong-doing and was put on private reproof. My fiancee got out of jail and I got him to study with one of the brothers from my congregation. Eventually we fell into what the WTBS calls "porniea" and out of shame I for a short while quit attending meetings. I decided i had to "cut off the hand that was stumbling me" as the bible says and decided to move 1, 000 miles away to North Dakota to live with my psychotic mother who was again in good standing. Leaving on that Greyhound was one of the hardest things I've ever done. I tearfully hugged and kissed my lover as well as my father and boarded the bus. I looked all over for them so I could gaze at them one last time through the window but they had walked over to my window already. My fiancee wrote in the dirt on the outside of the window, "I love you", my dad crossed out the I and put "we", at which point we were all sobbing like hurt children and the bus pulled away. That was the last time I ever saw my fiancee. It took them 6 months to get my publisher's card and hence it took that long before I could confess my most recent deviations and during that time I was an exemplary witness, going out in service as much as I possibly could and bringing 4 of my fellow classmates to the memorial so that by the time the elders got my confession, they decided not to disfellowship me due to my "fruits" . I behaved for about another year and a half until I started dating again. I met the guy who was practically perfect in every way, and we fooled around a bit. I felt guilt ridden and confessed all that had occured to the elders. I was to be disfellowshipped and he was to be put on private reproof. I was devasted. He and I had an overnight visit after that wherein I was his first and then subsequently he too was disfellowshipped. We broke up shortly thereafter and I moved back to Colorado. I had every intention of returning to the religion, but I wanted to get everything out of my system and out of the way so I could live it up before returning. I was terrified of being alone through the reinstatement process so I sought out ones in similiar circumstances on the internet and finally ended up on myspace where i found all kinds of support, but it wasn't the kind I was looking for. None of these people wanted to go back and I did. I would argue with them and feel like I was right they were wrong and cruel to boot as tehy had no tolerance for my closed-mindedness. One of these people reasoned with me and asked if I'd had a chance to read any of the so-called apostate literature. Of course the answer was "oh no, never." She posed this questions to me, "If the society is infallible, then that means they can't be proven wrong, correct? What are you really afraid of?" So I got the book Crisis of Conscience at the library and very reluctantly read the first chapter. It made me feel like I was reading a year book at first. I cross-referenced as much of the information in it as I could and it was all factual. The story got more and more disturbing as the unveiling of the corruption that is the borg (org, whatever) was unveiled. Further unveiling came about with more research and friends I found on myspace who showed me the official document showing that the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society was indeed a member of the UN and a plethora of other bits of information showing just what the WTBS really is. By the time I had finished, I was angry, but more than the anger was the wonderful feeling of liberation. Of being truly free for the first time in my life. I said to myself, so if that religion isn't the right one, which one is? I then engaged in a truth-seeking journey that started out by researching the origins of the bible. I found out after reading many books that it and religion in general is nothing but a sham and I now only subscribe to my own brand of spirituality and I must say, I have never been happier.