To make more sense of what woke me up, I'll give you a very brief back story. I had a sister a year older than me that passed away when she was five and a half years of age, she passed away in April 1973. Before her death mom hated the JWs with a passion. She was familiar with them because she has a cousin who is one. Anyways using my mother's grief as an opportunity, her cousin informed her of the 1975 lie, that being that in the fall of 1975 God would usher in his system of things and put an end to this old system of things. Also, and more importantly, she would be reunited with her baby girl that had passed away, because the dead would be resurrected. But the catch was that only baptized JWs and their minor children would survive the big A.
Going to the meetings as a kid, and even well into my teens I would suffer horrible nightmares, and they were always the same two dreams. At the time I couldn't figure out what would cause those dreams, and for the longest time I could never figure out why. The elders and my mother's explanation was that Satin was attacking me in my sleep, thus the reason for the nightmares. These were so bad that even when I closed my eyes (such as during a prayer) I would have flashes of these horrible scenes in my nightmares. They revolved around death.
Now to the part that work me up were actually two stages, and they both involved my eldest son. He was 5 years of age when one night he woke up screaming from a horrible nightmare. At first, he didn't want to tell me about it, but I told him that if he talked about it, it would help forget about it. When he told me about his dream, I was in utter shock, because word for word it was the exact dream that I suffered as a child.
Then a couple of months after that my son became gravely ill, so I rushed him to the ER, at first they thought he would require surgery. For the next eight hours, they wanted to observe him, and they admitted him to the hospital, and he spent a week there. So for a few hours, I was in full panic mode. I attempted to call up my local body of elders, but could never reach them, instead I talked to the wife of one of those elders, whom I thought was my friend. After telling her what was going on, her only reply was, "What do you EXPECT me to do about it?" When I heard the tone in her voice, I told her nothing and hung up the phone. I told my mother what was going on, she said she couldn't make it down (we lived about 2 hours away). Even though I later learned that she came right through my town twice when she went to visit my sister who lived 3 hours away. She didn't even bother stopping in to see us on either way through my town.
Fortunately, my son didn't need surgery, but for the next month, we had to keep him at home so he could get better and not come into any viral issues like someone's cold or any number of other issues. He did make a full recovery. Not once did anyone from my congregation came by or call to see how we were doing. The last meeting I attended, none one bothered to ask how we were doing, but rather that I better make sure I make it to the upcoming district convention. Something that was said to me, caused something to click in my head.
Shortly after that, I started my research on the Watchtower. I discovered many things, such as the many failed date settings, how they take the scriptures out of context, and many other things. I also figured out why I was plagued with nightmares, and that my son had the exact same dream, and it was for sure not Satin who was causing them. In case you don't know what I'm talking about, just look through all the pictures in their literature dealing with death and destruction. When it finally dawned on me that the "truth" was not the truth, I saw nothing but red, I was so pissed off, that I immediately threw away all my Watchtower literature, and wroke my dissociation letter. I did wait a couple of months before I sent it in because I didn't want to do that under the emotional state that I was in, after all once that decision was made known by the Watchtower, there was no going back.
