I am only twenty years old, and up until I was seventeen I was an active jw. But my family has a long history with the jw's.
I'm going to start when I was eight. When I was eight I had one older sister and brother. My older sister passed on at the age 14 because of suicide.
This happened in 1991 and this is also when the real troubles started with the witnesses. My sister never left a note or any clues as to why she ended her young life so quickly. So we only had small clues as to why she did.
One of them happened to involve a married man in the congregation. We found out from her friends that the man was telling her that he loved her and that he was going to leave his wife and kids to be with her. They told us that he went as far as to have sex with her...he then told my sister he was going to stay with his current wife.
If that isn't an outrage in itself the elders in the congregation didn't even punish this man, I mean what right did he have to do that to her??? He had no right; the brothers went as far to threaten my mom and told her that she would be disfellowshipped if she brought the matter up again.
My family was very active with "brothers and sisters" and we held a lot of the social gatherings and what not...so I as a young innocent girl had my world torn apart and then dumped on my head like a pile of bricks. The world didn't seem so bright, full of wonderment and playmates...when in less then a year, your father dissociates himself, your parents divorce, you move out of the countryside into town, and all of the people you thought were your friends turn their back on you....ARRGH that felt so good to spit out.
My method to deal with this was to hide inside myself. I hid inside up until grade 10, my mom fell into depression from the past and always struggling to make ends meet...for the longest period of time we both just let the world past us by as we hid in our rooms...
My mom got disfellowshipped because she was seeing a "worldly" man who treats her better then any jw would have...my brother got disfellowshipped three years after he left the religion...I was never baptized because I wouldn't let myself until I knew I was ready to make the commitment, despite all of the pressure to do so.
So after seeing all the crap I decided that I didn't want it anymore and just drifted away.......
I couldn't see how a god would ever want to separate families, cause oppression and depression, and all the other things that happen.
I have developed a lot of different views on things now and still hope to keep moving...
Here's to hope
T.A.M
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