anxiety – Bethany Leger

Disfellowshipped: The First Time I Talked to a Dead Guy

He wore a tan suit that looked like it came off the clearance rack at JCPenney. When he didn’t respond, I poked him again in the shoulder. “Hey, it’s me!” I waved my magic marker-stained hand in front of his face. But, his gaze fell downward, blank. I backed away slowly and shuffled over to my mother who was seated on the opposite side of the room. “Mama,” I whispered. “I said hi to Jamal but he didn’t talk to me.” My mother, draped in her auburn scarves and garnet earrings, craned her neck around. I watched as her eyes tried to locate him in the crowd. Then, leaning in towards me, she lowered her voice. “He’s disfellowshipped.”

Let me break this bullshit down for you: Jamal* was 17 years old. When he was a child, he lost his father in a tragic accident. Then, his mother suffered a traumatic brain injury. Jamal was my brother’s buddy, and was one in a handful of young Jehovah’s Witness men in town. No one cared about Jamal. His mom was kooky, and his younger sister was obese. His family didn’t bring any clout—or money—to the congregation. Then, Jamal got into some trouble and was excommunicated. At 17, a fatherless boy was ostracized by the only people he knew, and left for dead.

No, Jamal was not dead, but he might as well have been. I wish this were an exaggeration, but no one would know Jamal’s whereabouts unless they smelled the body weeks later. Through the naïve eyes of a child, I couldn’t comprehend why a bunch of grown-ups would do something so cruel. Whatever Jamal did, he didn’t deserve to be ignored in a room full of people, people who were supposed to love him and have his back.

Then, it happened to my brother. Like Jamal, my brother was “dead” for two years. “How’s your brother?” they’d ask me, knowing damn well they exiled a young man. Their smirk was a knife to my seven-year-old heart, and they took me for stupid. But, the funny thing about seven-year-olds is they don’t stay seven. They get older, they remember, and sometimes, they become writers.

My parents are devout Jehovah’s Witnesses, and I’ve brought them shame for speaking out against the Organization. But if I don’t say something, I teach them that shunning is okay. The Jehovah’s Witnesses traumatized Jamal, my brother, and continue to traumatize thousands more with their inhumane shunning policy. Jamal and my brother may be grown men now, but their wounds will never heal. They were forced to hang up their skateboards, dreams, and their dignity, their memory forever ossified as Prodigal Sons who crawled their way back into God’s good graces.

By the way, I’m dead now, too. I revoked my membership from the Jehovah’s Witnesses on New Year’s Eve, 2017, because I could no longer align myself with an Organization that has ruined countless lives. However, I’m only dead to my parents and former friends. In all other respects, I’m alive and well. The sun still shines on the wicked!

If you’re reading this, and you’re currently dead, I want you to know it gets better. Yes, it’s shitty for a while, but it does get better. And, if you decide to go back, I understand. Your family has put you in an extremely difficult position. But. I hope you’re honest with yourself as to why you’re going back, because anyone who would do that to you sure as hell doesn’t love you.

If you’re dead, welcome back to life.

*Not his real name.

Resources about disfellowshipping and shunning in the Jehovah’s Witnesses:

Jehovah’s Witnesses call disfellowshipping a “loving provision”:

https://www.jw.org/en/library/magazines/w20150415/disfellowshipping-a-loving-provision/

A shunned Jehovah’s Witness mother kills her family, then herself:

https://www.freep.com/story/news/2018/05/18/keego-harbor-murder-suicide-lauren-stuart/620709002

Jehovah’s Witnesses pressure families to not communicate with disfellowshipped family members or friends:

https://www.jw.org/en/library/magazines/w20130115/let-nothing-distance-you-from-jehovah/

Check out JWFacts for more information and updates about Jehovah’s Witnesses’ shunning practices.

I Don’t Drink, But I’m Trying to Start

I did a lot of solo travel in my twenties. Bored on the home turf, I networked with other Jehovah’s Witnesses to expand my social horizons. I want to check out Chicago, I’d say. Anyone have a cousin in San Francisco? Boston? I was beginning to close my eyes and fling darts at a map. At one point, I became obsessed with the Pacific Northwest. Dallas was a concrete jungle, hot and unrelenting, and Seattle was the home to Seasonal Affective Disorder. Sign my ass up.

The family I stayed with on that first trip was fun and generous. The wife was in real estate, and the husband was a photographer. As Witnesses go, they were very well off and had property on the Puget Sound. I had hoped to visit every summer as a respite from the Texas heat, so when they eventually asked me to housesit while they went to Central America, I hopped on a plane faster than you could fling a fish across Pike Place Market.

As planned, I looked for the local Witnesses. During the first week of what was supposed to be four, let’s just say, I would’ve received a warmer welcome sharing rusty needles near a dumpster fire under the I-5. I got stank-face immediately from married 19-year-olds; they were on their starter marriage, and feared I was moving in on their husbands whose facial hair was still coming in. Then, I met a modern-day Judas, a depressive frenemy who offered to show me Seattle landmarks only to talk trash behind my back to other girls in the congregation. One was especially sweet. “Why are you even here?”, she snipped. I dipped into my purse and offered her a Prozac, but the gesture was lost.

As my trip dragged on and the already frosty reception took a biting turn, I apologized to my lovely friends down in Costa Rica and booked the first flight out. The evening before I left, I stood on their front lawn to watch the sun set over the water. It was bittersweet, knowing I was leaving behind a beloved slice of the world just to get some relative peace back home. Suddenly, I heard a voice from across the street. “Hey there”, she called out, maneuvering the sprinkler in her yard from one side to the other. “Are you the house sitter?” I gave a polite nod to the friendly neighbor. “If you want to come over for a glass of wine, we’d love to have you.”

Like any cult, it’s us versus them. But, what happens when you realize your people are not your people? Is it important, or lazy, to create these moral shortcuts? Is it possible that you might need to reassess your relationships? Your religion, or politics? Your desperate need to be right? I felt disappointed and isolated by my religious community, but if anything was going to drive me to drink, it was a nice stranger confirming my suspicions. The nameless neighbor across the street showed me more kindness with her invitation, the only invitation to someone’s home in the two weeks I was alone—and she wasn’t one of “us”.

A source later told me that two people cried when they heard of my early departure. Of course, they weren’t crying for me. They cried because their life sucked, and they knew it was easier to shit on me than perform any self-reflection. Call it insecurity, or a genuine chemical imbalance from a lack of sunlight, I don’t know, or care. Wine Lady may not have had the answers to life’s greatest questions, and I didn’t need her to.

It’s Beautiful, Dammit: Why Blue Skies and Sunshine Made Me Want to Die

I’m driving home from the coffee shop when I look out the window. The neighborhood is bathed in a soft, early morning glow. Everyone is still asleep. Bursting cherry blossoms bristle in the crisp spring wind, the sidewalks peppered with the pop of purple coneflower. Suddenly, the sky yawns, big and blue and beautiful. As I soak in the view, I feel slightly unsettled. Fingers coiled around the steering wheel, I examine each passing house: the one with a brick porch that’s a different color from the other bricks. The one where the shutters have a half-moon carved above the slats. Espresso wafts through my Volkswagen as I coast down the lazy, bohemian boulevard. I notice if the front door has a screen, a brass knocker pinned at the top, or is propped open and ready to greet whomever may come moseying along. It’s going to be a perfect day for preaching, only I escaped the cult seven years ago, and I don’t have to knock on another fucking door for the rest of my life.

Every Saturday went like this: wake up at 7:30 am, take a nervous shit, gather my Bible, a stack of dog-eared magazines, and haul ass to the Kingdom Hall. With a mealy granola bar hanging out of my mouth, I relish my last moment of silence in the car. Next, sit through an obligatory pep talk about saving humanity, then brace for the blistering heat, or cold. On route to the “territory”, I jerk my car into a Quik Stop and dry heave. Twenty minutes later, I pull up to WASP country, irritated stares already peering through their fancy blinds. Jehovah’s Witnesses door-to-door preaching is a nuisance at best, certainly for the disoriented homeowner jostled awake by a religious zealot, but also for the one doing the knocking. I used to pray, not for salvation or world peace, but for rain. Please rain, I thought, and spare us all.

I grew up in Dallas, Texas. Like a vampire, I recoiled at the sun, pining instead for cool, overcast skies. I rejoiced in a thunderstorm and was known to frolic in a puddle. More importantly, rain meant those crazy people wouldn’t be out proselytizing. Rain was the sole qualifier, the one get-out-of-jail-free card we had. Phone witnessing would take its place, the Jehovah’s Witness equivalent of telemarketing. Hello, you live in a gated community, which is why I’m giving you my unsolicited religious advice through this method instead. Finally, there was letter writing: hand-scribbled junk mail punctuated with scriptures and stickers that came across overly wholesome and somehow age-inappropriate. I, however, risked the guilt trip that came with opting out of these alternatives, and went back to bed. Preacher on the streets, sinner in the sheets, indeed.

But, if it was beautiful, not a cloud in the sky, you were screwed. Destined to spend a rare, sparkling two hours now tarnished by the drudgery. No one wanted to talk to us, and if we were honest with each other, we didn’t want to talk to them. We descended on neighborhoods to shove our ideology down strangers’ throats on their own doorsteps. At least some of us knew this was wrong, but the door knocking was mandatory; anyone who didn’t report for duty would answer for it later. People cursed, slammed doors, or would notice us from their lawns and quietly head inside. I hated blue skies and sunshine because it meant I would be seen in the daylight doing something that, in fact, put me in a very dark place. I was isolated from the rest of the world, and each stunning, panoramic morning only served to spotlight how lonely I really was.

Sunny days are very different now. Lounging in my plastic Adirondack chair in a tattered bikini, I welcome the warmth on my cheeks. (My face, pervert.) I’m enjoying my little patch of land uninterrupted, happy to let my neighbor do the same. No more doors to knock down, souls to save, and when I take a shit, it’s for the pure joy of it.