u/Common-Alps-4115

TW: Suicidal Ideation, but I’m not in active danger anymore. I take medication for it and am on the waitlist for Therapy etc. (still takes 2 years till I have my therapy spot)

I try to formulate it as carefully as I can. If you do struggle with it, just know you’re not alone and actively call for help. Annoy the people on the phone if needed.

•••••

I’m still in the deconstruction phase, since I only recently woke up. I talked to my sibling about my doubts and findings yesterday… and she agreed with me.

In retrospect it feels like Paradise wasn’t really that much of a motivation to stay alive and I don’t know how I made it that long, with how bad my mental state has gotten. (I have a support system outside the religion, thank God, but I genuinely don’t know where I would be without it.)

The exchange of work to reward seems very imbalanced.

Being a JW can work for some people, I’m not denying that… I know of those who’ve been in prison, who needed a clear set of rules to follow and instant community to get back on their feet and stay there.

But I have to say, personally, I feel like the view on life and the world itself is extremely Nihilistic. It reminds me of the Slave-Morality by … Nietzsche, I think. We suffer now, for a reward later — they torment us now, but will be punished in death. (Extremely simplified, it’s overall fascinating though.)

Just make it to the new world, just stay in the religion so you won’t be destroyed in Armageddon — Don’t by any means think of leaving! This world will be destroyed regardless and you can’t do anything to help people, except to try and bring them onto the ark of faith by preaching.

I never got a feeling of awe, that would bring me to tears at the thought of Jesus' sacrifice or Jehovah’s might. It just felt very… sanitized? Very theoretical, like a lesson at school, where you just sit down and listen. The world is bad and you should distrust everyone, because the devil could be behind a friendly face to tempt you. It felt like I was the opposite of prepared for life, when I got my first job and started Uni — the biggest stumbling block was people being nice, without expecting anything in return.

The only times I got emotional was during some videos where people talked about their terrible experiences — because of empathy. Because it physically pained me to hear what they went through.

The only times I really felt that feeling of “transcendence” was when I was feeding the homeless, but that’s not something that counts as “helping people” if you go by the convention and congregation speeches.

And as a woman, I can’t really do much more than prove my faith to the congregation through the ministry anyways (and I had to stop it so often, because of my panic attacks and sensory issues — mostly by sunlight and sounds).

The fear of how the love of your family, your own parents, won’t be enough to choose you over the organization didn’t exactly help, even when I was mentally in. It’s conditional to the faith, I know. I still hope I can speak to them about my issues…

They aren’t bad people, but you can never be sure, if they love their faith more than you… because it’s tied to this extreme fear factor of not surviving Armageddon.

And it tears at you even while you’re mentally in the religion — Emotional bonds are very shallow. Friendships are encouraged to be mainly, because you share the same faith.

How many connections are real and who will just shun you the moment you slack off or leave, because they won’t choose you?

Not just that, but I just wasn’t able to connect with people as deeply as outside the congregation. Most congregations had people decades older than me, which meant we didn’t have much in common. The age difference was just too big to actually have shared life experiences.

Paradise, the new world… in comparison to the loneliness that ate me up inside, just seemed like an invitation to end it, leave the “bad, devilish world” behind without the pressure on my shoulders, I felt like I couldn’t carry any longer.

I made plans when I would be alone, thought it through, wished to be the victim after someone wrote a threat on the walls in the school toilets.

Maybe it was just better to wake up in the new world? Jehovah knew my suffering… maybe he would forgive me…

It was terrible and it comes back periodically when I’m feeling down. Martial Arts has helped me vent my frustrations and anger in a controlled way, but I still find myself staring at the wall for hours, not being able to sleep in a way that feels like I’m actually recovering from the day.

•••••

I saw in previous posts that those feelings seem normal in the exJW community. So I felt like I could open up about it as well…

I actually remember multiple people in different congregations who took their lives… I only know the reason for one brother… but it stuck with me regardless.

To clarify:

An Elder send me this chronology. So even if it isn’t believed anymore, it seems to be still distributed… even though I’m very confused by it.

•••••••

I am doing research to write a small essay with the information and contradictions I found to my parents (phrased as me having questions, because I didn’t understand some things in my personal study)… I also teased to them, that the explanation on the website wasn’t satisfactory to me, so now I wanna organize my questions properly and will give them everything with sources in writing. They seem fine with it and seem to accept the PDFs of the older literature as legit, so I’m glad about that at least.

But during my research into the Chronology I noticed that officially the Watchtower still says JWs believe every creation day was roughly 7.000 years long, which would make the earth only 48.000 years old (with the last creation day ending its 6.000 years in 1975).

I have never heard anyone say that before, but I also don’t remember it ever being framed as “old light“ or “previously believed, because…” either. Like they try to phrase it with the false doomsday predictions.

Did I just not pay attention to it? Or do you know more about that? I was genuinely baffled, because I didn’t even know that JWs believed the earth was so young and I grew up in this religion.

It’s exactly as the title question says. I have all of those quotes searched out and in the hand, went through all those old Scans of the Watchtower back to 1892. I want to show my family why I’m fading… in a subtle way of “personal bible study questions that came up in my research” (I got some more advice in another post). My family isn’t against research and I think we’ve fixed our relationship pretty well in the past years. I’m pursuing higher education, while living with them, even though I‘m planning to move out in the next years for my next bachelor.
We could openly talk before about how “cold” the congregation meetings feel to me, that I feel uncomfortable and what my criticisms exactly were, and that I have a preference for women (I was so nervous doing that, but my dad [an elder] took it calmly).

But now I’m unsure… if the PDFs of old Awake and Zion’s Watch Tower will be enough? Physical Copies of specific documents are almost impossible to come by. Or will they shut down?

… why does it have to be so hard…?

When I was younger, I grew up in a really beautiful kingdom hall. One brother carved wooden flowers as decorations for the walls and we had hung colorful curtains behind the speaker on the stage.

I actually learned two instruments to play in the orchestra one day for the songs. Ours was in front of a big picture made of glass, that had not just the next convention theme, but usually some graphics fitting the topic.

It was the most beautiful Kingdom Hall I can remember seeing.

But lately it feels like they’re completely bland, colorless with only shades of grey, maybe some wooden planks and a map for the territory, but that’s it.

Instead of colors on the walls or striking decorations, there’s now just a picture from the WT or for the speech (I’m sorry if the term is different in english, it’s my third language) on the TVs, that’s then very … plainly (?) analyzed?

Kinda missing the actually acted out Dramatization in the conventions as well. It made everything at least a little more interesting and exciting.

But now it just looks very… sterile? Polished? Idk how to explain it. But it looks like an office you’d go to work to.