My exit, quite complex, and almost utterly amazing

My name is Timothy, and this is my story. I grew up as a Jehovah's Witness after being adopted. It seems that my family is riddled with dysfunction, and when it came time to collect on intelligence, many just missed the train altogether. My biological mother was also a JW, she was mentally unstable though, slept around, had three of us boys and gave each and everyone of us up for adoption. My great Aunt-(Winnie) adopted myself, and my half brother, Randy. Ricky is lost, he's out there somewhere, will I ever locate him? I don't currently think so. So I was raised by Winnie and her husband Carl. Carl still lives, but Winnie died when I was 18.

We had a small country farm, Winnie was a house wife. Carl, Randy and I worked the farm, and we regularly attended the meetings, went to the assemblies, went out in the ministry, and all of the rest. Jehovah never became real to me, because honestly, I look back on it now, and realize that Jehovah was never real to Carl. (Carl completed the eighth grade, then left school to be a farm boy)

Carl had two sides to himself: Good Christian/Abuser. Home life was more real to me than anything else. Jehovah wasn't a part of home life, or any other God for that matter. Carl was like a God to me, an evil one. As youngsters were all taught to fear Jehovah, I feared Carl. I never had time to even try to fear God. At home the was constant betrayal on Carl's part. Hitting, swearing, violent burst of rage, at any given moment, his tongue was like a two edged sword. Carl had committed some pretty insidious things.

I grew up not knowing for myself just who I was supposed to be, because Carl had determined all of that for me. I remember many many nights over the course of years when I went to bed at night, heart beating out of my chest from the stress of the day, heart completely broken and destroyed. The many nights I cried myself to sleep. Where was Jehovah in all of this? I preyed...oh yes, I preyed,...but Carl never changed. The stress finally caused me to have a collapse, and I was hauled away in an ambulance. To this day I dont know what happened to my body, the emergency personnel never did explain to me what happened. I just remember being hooked up to an IV with fluids. I have always wondered if I may have suffered a mild stroke.

I left the Organization in 1992, (disassociated) but I kept looking back,.....I was re-instated in 1998, then after one year and a wake up call, I left again in 1999-(Disfellowshipped) I had learned that the Organization wasn't real.

For whatever reason,..maybe to try to have a family of some sort after being adopted, I kept going back to Carl, trying to forgive the past, thinking he could change. Three years ago now, I walked on the entire family (immediate and extended) In 2009 I was diagnosed with PTSD.

Carl has serious control issues. He manipulated people in the kingdom hall, used some, very very insidious! I was able to do certain things in the congregation, like, handle the mic'es, give 5 minute talks, be part of the theocratic ministry school, but the BIG goals, like go to Bethel, go on the tour trip to NYC, those were forbidden. Anything that may cause me to leave home was out of the question. Carl's endearing centiment that no matter my age, or attempt at human progression, he said I was to always stay home,...(" I was his right hand man.") A couple of times attempts to go off and get an apartment were thwarted. A sister stuck her neck out for me, and gave her brother a good reference for me, and he accepted my application for an apartment he owned. NOPE, I had to call him back saying that I had decided to stay home.

Winnie died and I was 18, Randy 19....oh well, we were "babysat" anyhow. Carl hired a woman who was not a JW to come to our home at night while Carl was at work, make meals, clean house, etc..lord knows Randy and I were not capable. To this day Carl refuses to see just how messed up his actions were. You never saw other parents in the congregation doing such things with their kids at those ages. But,...Carl doesn't get it!

I know that those people witnessed this stuff go on, why they never spoke up, I'll never know. Was everybody afraid of Carl, or they just didn't give a fuck about Randy or I? Which? I tend to think that nobody gave a fuck! I tried in vein to report Carl actually again, not that long ago. I wanted him to be responsable, even if it menat perhaps being removed from the congregation, himself. But, that will never happen. Not when he, and two other witnesses sit there and lie out right to the elders during the committee meeting.

After these events how can anyone even think that I could ever allow myself to go back? But, surprisingly, they do! How can Carl allow himself to keep going after he has done all of these things to us two boys? How can he go, and sit among the others -(who are at least trying a little to be JW's) ? I is beyond my thinking, what he thinks he is doing? Narcissistic, is what he is. He doesn't have empathy at all.  It's like he was born without it, empathy that is, and the capacity to love.

He used to say things to me in front of other people, like. "You belong in a home, don't you boy?"  What the flying fuck was wrong with him?????