Are You Normal?
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A Personal Journey
My parents, for better or worse, became Jehovah's Witnesses in the late 70s, the first of a handful of people on an Indian Reservation in the state of Oregon. Both had a fall-out with the religion prior to and during the time I was a very young child.
When I was 13 years old I met this Witness boy at school who I shared most of my classes with in junior high. We became friends out of making fun of each other, constantly cracking jokes.
While 14 years old, he started studying the bible with me and by the end of my freshman year in high school, I quit the football team, ready to pursue the preaching work more fully, embracing my new found spirituality. Anyone who remembers me at that time knew me as "that guy who wears suits all of the time". I graduated high school while engaging in the full-time ministry work of going door-to-door and trying to study the bible with people.
After high school, in my early 20s, I had a fall-out with the religion and have since been a wandering soul, not fully embracing a life outside of the religion but not going back to it either, someone who neither belongs here nor there but somewhere in the middle.
I began drinking and meeting strange women, exploring my personal sexuality, something people normally do when they're teenagers, started watching Rated R movies and even fell back into swearing. While I make attempts to "blend in" with "normal" people, I still come off as incredibly naive and even quaint, kind of like everybody's grandparents. I am certainly no angel but am definitely not a "bad boy" and I find it difficult to explain myself to others.
I sometimes wonder if anyone else feels like they are drifting somewhere out there in the void between two different realities of existence, not able to find their way in either realms.
Lost & Confused,
hoserdomechild
When I was 13 years old I met this Witness boy at school who I shared most of my classes with in junior high. We became friends out of making fun of each other, constantly cracking jokes.
While 14 years old, he started studying the bible with me and by the end of my freshman year in high school, I quit the football team, ready to pursue the preaching work more fully, embracing my new found spirituality. Anyone who remembers me at that time knew me as "that guy who wears suits all of the time". I graduated high school while engaging in the full-time ministry work of going door-to-door and trying to study the bible with people.
After high school, in my early 20s, I had a fall-out with the religion and have since been a wandering soul, not fully embracing a life outside of the religion but not going back to it either, someone who neither belongs here nor there but somewhere in the middle.
I began drinking and meeting strange women, exploring my personal sexuality, something people normally do when they're teenagers, started watching Rated R movies and even fell back into swearing. While I make attempts to "blend in" with "normal" people, I still come off as incredibly naive and even quaint, kind of like everybody's grandparents. I am certainly no angel but am definitely not a "bad boy" and I find it difficult to explain myself to others.
I sometimes wonder if anyone else feels like they are drifting somewhere out there in the void between two different realities of existence, not able to find their way in either realms.
Lost & Confused,
hoserdomechild
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Truthfully, I find the JW stuff pretty extreme and rigid with a lot that is imposed from the outside that you are just supposed to take on faith. Its not the only religion that does that.
Frankly you may want to go back to a more mainstream church for your spiritual life & to get a better sense of proportion & scale. I think JWs recruit a lot from Catholics, but whatever, try something more mainstream that will enable you to integrate the spiritual & daily living sides of existence.
On the surface, what you are saying sounds really novel and level-headed but let's face it, mainstream religion is full of shit. There's nothing I can learn from mainstream churches that would enlighten me spiritually. We're talking about religions that think humans will suffer an eternity of torture in hellfire for the sins committed within a relative short life-span of a human being. It hardly seems justifiable to me. We're also talking about the same people who will send their kids to die in a war, sacrificing them for God & country only to kill members from their own religion on the other side of the world, religions where so much of their leadership have molested little children, punished Native Americans for speaking their own language, have started numerous inquisitions over the centuries, killing people for reading the bible, and a countless list of many other ungodly things!
No Spank You! I'd Rather Be An Atheist!
hoserdomechild