What made me stay.
Looking back, I never really believed their teachings but I was, and am very good at giving the answers that people want from me. So I answered the questions, answered the call; yet ignored my true self to please others.
The first years in the religion I went door to door, offering Bible studies to strangers. That’s pretty ironic considering I never believed what the Bible said. I realized that I was a great actor, mimicking my friend Kay. We became inseparable. So much so that there were rumors that our friendship had grown to something beyond what was allowed. At this time, Kay’s parents had allowed me to live with them, giving me my own room. Kay and I did secular work together, in addition to the ministry. Our rooms were across the hall from each other.
Before moving in, I was there often having a sleepover with Kay. It fits in with our working schedule to be together in the evening and then the next morning. We spent many hours in her room. We often studied Watchtower publications together or listened to music. The Watchtower Society was the publishing company of the religion, providing books, magazines, recordings on cassette tapes of the music that they sang during their meetings, and other spiritual food, as they call it. Once the rumors began, Kay’s father would often burst into her room to try to catch us doing something we weren’t supposed to. We never did, so he never did.
Things went along like this for two years. Then, the world stopped spinning for me when Kay became engaged to be married.
Within the religion, couples never began to date until they were interested in marriage. Imagine my distress knowing she was going on dates and leaving me behind.
I fell into a depression. Moved back home to my Mother’s home. I seldom ate and lost weight. I still had to see them together at meetings. At the time, the group held four meetings a week. Plus we still worked together, doing janitorial work every night.
I was going through the paces, trying to be strong. When, out of the blue, Kay pulls me aside to tell me that she has called off the engagement. The reason she gave me was that I had showed her what real love was and she didn’t feel it in her engagement. I can honestly say, that was one of the happiest moments of my life. If you follow this story through, you will understand how brutally savage being shunned by this person is.
An interesting thing happened at that time. The young man that was engaged to Kay, we will call him Sam, was away to the Watchtower headquarters volunteering his time to do the work there. Kay was always receiving letters from him, each a dagger to my heart. To my surprise, I too got a letter. This was not a ” hi, how ya doin’ ” letter. He wrote to tell me he was assigned by some class he was taking to think of the person that you dislike the most and confront them to try to make strides and soften that disdain. This is just another example of how emotional this event was to me, and why PTSD comes up 35 years later.
Cult survivor warrior 