“I can’t do this anymore,” she said.
“What do you mean,” I replied.
“Talk to you. It has to stop,” was her explanation.
“Oh,” was all I could choke out.
This was the last conversation I had with my mother. It was following a lovely visit where we talked and laughed and shared pictures. Of course, she probably got in a lot of trouble for that. She’s a Jehovah’s Witness and I am disfellowshipped.
Disfellowshipping is the practice this group uses when someone commits moral sins or questions the teachings of the organization. I have the special honor of having been disfellowshipped twice in my life, once for each of those offenses.
My mother and father divorced when I was @ 6 years old. For a few years my mom dated other men and eventually married my step-father when I was 10. I don’t know the whole story, but at some point my mom wanted some kind of religion in our family, and my step-father, being an inactive Jehovah’s Witness, said that’s all he would do. My mom started studying it, was baptized into it, and away we went.
When I was a teenager, I lived a double life. I went to the meetings at the Kingdom Hall, the building where they hold their meetings, three times per week. I did all of the studies. I knocked on people’s doors. I am VERY good at fulfilling a list of requirements for how to behave in a certain way. If you have a checklist for how to do something right, I’m your girl.
However, all of that focus on how to be a good girl, but knowing deep inside that I am filthy, led to a sea of turmoil inside my damaged soul. I looked for ways to rectify this struggle within me. Thanks to the sexual abuse I experienced as a child, I knew I wasn’t really the morally pure, sweet girl everyone thought I was, so I let that play itself out by putting myself in dangerous situations where I knew I would be violently violated. When people talk about a girl that was “asking for it,” I actually was…sort-of.
Eventually, I couldn’t deal with this war inside me anymore, and I told my mom who I really was…in a way. I didn’t really tell her the whole truth. Maybe I should have? We’ll never know.
My “sin” was taken to the elders, and they helped me see the wickedness of my ways. I was genuinely sorry for who I was, so I was only marginally punished at that point. I couldn’t participate in the meetings I attended until I was deemed appropriately repentant.
Things went from bad to worse. I moved out of my mother’s home and got my own apartment. I drank too much, ate too little, took drugs to keep myself awake so I could work two or three jobs in order to make rent, and regularly got myself raped, so I could feel “like I got what I deserved.” I had obviously not learned the lesson I was supposed to from the elders’ punishment.
This led to me being disfellowshipped and shunned. I’m sure they thought that this would help me realize how much I needed to change. Being isolated for everyone I ever loved should have been an appropriate consequence for all of my bad choices, I suppose. It did not have the desired effect.
After a 28 day stay at a luxury rehabilitation facility for my eating disorder and corresponding drug use, I met a charming young man at one of the various “anonymous” meetings I attended. He had given up drinking and taken up beating women. He was perfect for me. I moved in with him and no longer had to go find men to treat me the way I knew I was worthy of. He took care of that on a regular basis, until one day I received a call at work that my father had been in a terrible submarine accident.
(to be continued)
