I am not sure when -or how- this madness is going to end. If I could have one whole day of peace I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t know how to handle it, so maybe that’s why it hasn’t really happened yet.
I just want to have the freedom to believe…something. Anything. I guess that since I was born into the Jehovah’s Witnesses and made the mistake of marrying and having a child with a Jehovah’s Witness I’m forever bound to this cult. It’s a cult and part of why I say it is a cult is because I can’t get free from it. It won’t leave me alone. I can’t ever get free. Not even when I leave.
Not only has it twisted the wires inside me, but in my oldest (13 years old now) daughter, as well. I’m literally left speechless. I can’t even explain or describe what it is like right now. I just can’t even describe.
Does God know (God are you out there?) that I just want to belong to him/it/the light…whatever? I start to wonder if this is why I can’t get free. Is it because I want it so much that I can’t have this peace? I hate when I start wanting the freedom and connection so much because it just makes the life around me worse.
I get really sad, like deep hurt inside sad when I look around and see that other people (in the United States at least) are allowed to choose their religion and practice spirituality in their own way. I have never been able to. I suppose I would only be allowed to now if I decided I wanted to be a Jehovah’s Witness. I can either be a Jehovah’s Witness or I can become a Jehovah’s Witness to have peace in my “here and now” life.
I keep trying to find where I belong, I keep trying to find my way…but I can’t ever get the space to be free enough to get anywhere. I can’t explore, I can’t sit in another space apart from the JW’s enough, whether it is because of the condemnation from my young teen daughter, or from the madness that erupts inside my brain when I attempt to subscribe to another belief system.
The only place it’s allowable to exist is -Nowhere. It’s JW or die. Or else live in a constant state of battle. This happens, you know, and there’s no back up. There is a war happening here in my middle class, middle America home….and it’s me and this system that stabs my being over and over. I try to go around with a smile on my face. I try to find a place to ask for help…but it’s really hard. And I’m trying to find my way.
It’s not as simple as standing up in a church and accepting Jesus or whatever the equivalent is for some other religion for that matter. It’s just not. that. simple.
I wonder when I’ll just be able to live. I wonder when I won’t have to fight for every breath I have. Maybe I just need to accept this is my life and the conditions its under is just the way it is now and forever. Maybe then I would have peace. If I just accepted that my daughter who I have loved, protected and cared for would view and treat me as evil because I choose to not be a Jehovah’s Witness.
I think about all the shit I see some parents do, the abuse I lived through in my upbringing. I think about who I’ve been for my daughter for the most part, as a whole…and it’s just really hard to live with her putrid hate for me just because I’m not the religion that her dad has warped into her. I don’t ever say she can’t believe what he tells her. But I’m not even allowed to believe for my self. I’m just not allowed to even sit down at the dinner table at my house and say a simple prayer without it leading to an uproar in my daughter. Because a prayer was spoken. Simply because we said grace- A moment of thanks, a prayer for peace….not to be had. Not for me.
How could I ever even explain this madness to the world? It is so far beyond my understanding.
I guess tonight I am being sentenced to exile from my daughter and possibility of peace is forfeited in my house because I am guilty of committing felony grace.
This is every day of my life.