# Praying For the World to Die: My Time In a Christian Cult. (Language Warning)



## Rellek (Sep 4, 2012)

Author’s Note: This is a revised edition. I toned down the crass remarks a bit, and accentuated the positives about my life in the last act. All in all it was a very cathartic, freeing exercise in releasing something intimate and autobiographical and full of raw feeling, but I don’t think I’ll be doing this again. There’s simply too much. Editing down your own lifetime to a few paragraphs leaves so much on the editing room floor, and yet no one want’s to read about every detail of a stranger. I’m much happier sticking to fiction, where you can shape new lives, new people.


  This, as the title cleverly alludes to, will be a diatribe, a commentary on high control religions, the similarities they share with cults and my time in such one. This will be a memoir and a monologue, peppered with healthy doses of sarcasm and black humor to make sure I stay comfortably out of the stinking morass of self-pity and “woe-is-me-ism” where other autobiographies go to die. I know them well: I’ve written a few of those types myself, in the past. They were almost physically painful to read the next day and were safely burned in a fire.  No one should be subjected to that level of angst, and I’m continuously grateful I didn’t post my whining, dour teenage commentary online, where it would haunt and embarrass me forever. Alright, for the whole dozens of you brave readers whom I haven’t scared off yet, thanks for sticking around. I’m writing this partly for your enjoyment, for you to learn something (maybe), and for purely selfish reasons. Also in hopes that maybe, just maybe when you write your life down and share it with others, you can see it clearly for yourself.


  Children are dumb. Anyone who knows children knows there’s a certain age range where if they _remotely_ trust you, if they have the _slightest_ hint you carry authority and wisdom brought on by age, you can tell them anything and they’ll believe it. Go ahead, try it, I’ll wait here. Get your four year old niece to wobble her way to you, sit her down on your knee, and make up a half-baked story about something they don’t know. Say it with a straight face while keeping eye contact. Chances are they’ll totally buy it. Hell if you’re good enough you could get them to believe if for YEARS. My cousin just recently found out good ole Grandma never did join the circus, despite visiting her house for years and not once seeing circus paraphernalia, pictures, or hear anyone else recite a “Grandma’s time in the circus” story. She told him this when he was young. The guy is now approaching thirty. Sure, laugh, it’s pretty funny. But I’ll be willing to bet someone out there can relate to that story and give him their awkward, shuffling sympathy. This is all well and good, and messing with kids will keep America’s Funniest Home Video’s on T.V. till the sun runs out of hydrogen. Unfortunately, there’s a dark side to this, one that’s pretty devoid of humor. Sometimes parents make the wrong choices. Sometimes they sincerely believe things that can damage them emotionally and physically, or get sucked into religions that they can’t break out of. This is where I come in. My mother was a Jehovah’s Witness. That means I was too.


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I was a Jehovah’s Witness, a Christian. I don’t say I was an American, even though my birth certificate says Massachusetts on it. I don’t say I’m Irish-American, even though I have cousins and family that live over in the Soggy Emerald Isle. I was not a male, not a middle child with an older and younger brother. I was not a white kid in a white part of town that stood head and shoulders above the other kids. All of these statements are true, but they paled into insignificance compared to being a Jehovah’s Witness. That was the shining star the rest of my life orbited around, my center of being. From day one Jehovah Witness children are fed a steady diet of religious books, videos, magazines and pictures all proclaiming You Are a Jehovah’s Witness, and That Is the Best Damn Thing Anyone Could Ever Be. Okay they didn’t exactly say that, but it was close.


  When you’re a child, being a Witness isn’t half bad. You go to a Kingdom Hall (It’s a church, I’m using Witness vernacular here) three times a week where you see the same people over and over again, so they eventually become like family. You sit in the chair with coloring books and toys while a man in a somber colored suit goes to the front podium and talks to the adults for forty-five minutes or so. Your friends with the other Witness kids, mostly because those are the only kids you’re going to be spending any social time with. You get home and look at pictures of people in clean, crisp, modest clothing working lush gardens and playing with deadly animals like they’re kittens and puppies. Paradise, they tell you. Where no one will ever get sick or grow hungry, where no one will ever die. Where every animal will be docile and complacent: lions and sheep will snuggle with each other in a scene straight out of the Thomas Kinkade School of Sappy Paintings. This is amazing you say. I want to ride an elephant bareback through a meadow just like that girl in the pictures you say. You can, your parents, your Elders (Priests) tell you. All you have to do is exactly what we tell you. All you have to do listen to what the man on the podium says, for his words are the words of a god that loves you.  And for a while, this is all you need. The seeds of trouble start when it’s time to pack lunches, buy backpacks and send your butt to school.


  Every Jehovah’s Witness child that enters the public school system quickly finds out there’s something a little different about them, a bit _off_. They wonder what birthdays are. They’ve never heard of celebrating Christmas, or dressing up for Halloween, or any other holiday you could think of. Name it, and I’ll tell you Good Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t celebrate it, and their young children probably couldn’t tell you what it is. Hell to this day I still sometimes have to pause to remember how old I am. But the little boys and girls at school have and celebrate all this with glee, and they and their teachers wonder why you do nothing for holidays, religious or otherwise. So do you at this point. You don’t have answers to those questions, you’re a kid. Your still working on the mystery of how to tie your own shoes at this point. So you go home, confused and slightly alarmed, and ask why. Why are we different? Why do the other ones look at me funny when I say I talk to Jehovah? Because we’re special is the answer. God chose us and everyone else at the Kingdom Hall to be his people; He saved us from a mean and nasty world to live forever in love and harmony. This eventually leads to more questions, and this, this is the start of your real training as a Jehovah Witness that will last years.


  Satan is real. He is real and he’s powerful and he’s very, very pissed off about getting evicted from his penthouse suite in heaven. As a matter of fact, he’s so powerful he can influence and shape the events and actions of the entire world, you’re told. He can influence all your friends at school. He’s part of your teachers, the police, that sweet old lunch lady at school, politicians and every song, television show, and movie you might like. If it does not carry the Jehovah’s Witness stamp of approval, its suspect at the very least, Satanic at the worst. And the scary part is: He want’s nothing more than to get you. Every lie you’ve told, every temper tantrum you threw, all the bad thoughts that come and go through your sinful little head all come from Satan, all are his plots to drive you away from the god that loves you. This, as you might imagine for a child, is fucking terrifying. Anyone that’s not a Witness could be the unwitting mouthpiece for Satan, offering temptation, offering sin. He literally has the entire world against you and the other brave Witnesses. So, now what do you do? Where do you turn to? Luckily, there’s an answer: Jehovah’s Mouthpiece, The Governing Body (It’s like how the Pope is the De Facto head of Catholics, except it’s a group of old men you never see instead of one guy in a funny hat). The Governing Body is the only source of God’s light. They alone hear the voice of Jehovah and bring it to the small class of faithful people, the Witnesses. They’re the only true religion, the only source of happiness and warmth in a world that’s dark and cold and rotted. So cling, cling you brave Christian soldier and do not question the authority, do not go looking for answers in any other spot besides what your told to read and hear. Everything else besides that is a lie. Cling to every word they say as if your life depends on it, because it very well does. At this point now your suitably “moldable”, scared to death of the outside world and anyone in it. But wait, there’s more. Soon, any day now, God is going to get rid of this wicked, unhappy, disgusting old world run by Satan and replace it with his good, clean one where faithful people can be free and worship in peace. That doesn’t sound bad, right? Wrong.

  Armageddon. Jehovah’s Witnesses are all waiting for Armageddon. The day Jehovah is going to murder the billions upon billions of men, women and children on this Earth, everyone who is not one of his Witnesses at Armageddon. Comets are going to scour cities off the map. Seas will run red with blood. The stain of Satan and the world he controls will be cleansed in an orgy of violence on a scale no one has ever seen before, nor will be seen again. So don’t you fuck up being a Witness at any point in time, because if Gods pissed at you when the due date of this little scene rolls around, your cooked. If you survive his terrible wrath, THEN you get the elephant ride.


    I’ll stop there for a second. At this point, you might be shaking your head, wondering what backwoods, inbred, bible thumping yokel would sign up for this campaign of fear. What self-respecting, halfway intelligent human being would ever believe a God that loves his creation would savage it with this level of violence. Or you might believe I’m exaggerating wildly, trying to stir up a fight against religion for my own fifteen minutes of internet fame. I can assure you the language use is mine, the sarcasm is mine, but this is exactly what Witnesses are trained to believe. I lived it for the first twenty two years of my life. And of course they don’t tell you everything up front. They knock on your door when your weak, unhappy, looking for answers. They show you pretty magazines and promise you god loves you, they love you. You learn it gradually, coded into nicer words, covered in a patina of salvation offered by smiling, well dressed strangers. You learn God will butcher everyone else not because he likes it, but because he loves his people so much he doesn’t want Satan to attack them anymore. And because you’ve come to believe this is the only source of true information, because you only hang out and talk to other Jehovah Witnesses, why not? The ideology and wording is hammered home with repeated use week after week. Coddled from conflicting viewpoints, safe from differences of opinion, it all makes sense, all seems reasonable. It’s the only thing you know anymore. And that’s where many people stay. But not me, dear readers. I finally found my way out of the cult, although it from a strange source: Crippling, untreated depression.


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Depression, as many of you know, is a bit of a bitch. I’ve known her since I was young. I’ve had ample opportunity to get acquainted with said bitch when I was about eight and watched my father withered and die from cancer. We, as a family, got through this by coming closer together emotionally, by going to counseling and learning healthy ways to deal with grief. No I’m kidding, sorry. It’s not a good joke, but hey, I think it’s a little funny. My mother spent several years looking for escape in a bottle while my brothers and I beat the shit out of each other in a whirlwind of frustration and misplaced anger, born from losing one parent and having another who was there but not there at the same time. Now we had it better than some others, always had food on the table and clothes on our back, but that was about it. Anything else, it was figure it out on your own, jack. And so the four of us left drifted apart as a family unit, each looking for an escape through our own outlets. My mother had alcohol, as I’ve mentioned. My older brother had music. My younger brother had his friends. And me? I had solitude. I learned being alone meant no one else could hurt you. So I retreated more and more into solitary activities, reading books, playing single player videogames, playing in secret spots in made up forts and caves. This was the first crack against living a lifetime under Witness propaganda and theology. These were the first seeds of doubt against a heavenly father who takes care of his own. Time came and went while we went about the business of growing up. We as a family were still distant, but I still had my faith that everything was going to be perfect any time now. I had on again, off again problems with depression, but they weren’t crippling and the cycles were short. Besides, I still felt better going to Meetings, still held strong. That started to change when I hit seventeen.


  There’s a passage in the bible that says when you have faith the size of a mustard grain, you can move mountains. This is a great allegory of faith in the face of adversity. It’s a nice sentiment, and for most issues it works. When your cat dies, sure, God will pull you through that crisis given enough time. But what happens when you come up against a problem that requires more than faith can allow for? What happens when a problem with depression that’s been largely untreated starts to blossom into a major problem with major depression? Well, if you’re a rational person you’ll come to find it’s largely a matter of a chemical imbalance in the brain and seek help with a regimen of pills and a psychiatrist. But we weren’t balanced, dammit, we were proud Jehovah’s Witnesses who believed their god would guild his people in all things, and their answer it to pray. And pray. Then wait for god’s answer and humbly seek his sign. And then pray more, sunshine. So that’s what I did. I coped. I prayed and hobbled along with life the best I could, all the while getting more and more desperate for relief against this mental torture, begging god to get it over with and end this world so either way I could get this weight off of the back of my shoulders, this invisible monstrous _thing_ that keeps  dragging me down.


  I still remember the night it changed. I was now nineteen. Meetings became my last refuge, the one place I could still feel good, still breathe easy and feel better in. Till that one night… they weren’t anymore. My faith met a mountain it could no longer move, and I felt worse coming out of that particular Meeting than when I went in. I still remember standing out in the parking lot, watching my breath fog in the cold, paralyzed and a little thrilled at this new sensation, this realization I was now an imposter at the church, someone who no longer had god’s blessing. It felt unreal. I half expected credits and a soundtrack to roll, the feeling of disconnectedness was that strong. This wasn’t part of the plan, part of the packaged deal a Witness sings up for to get on the Paradise Express. I still wanted my fucking elephant ride through that pristine meadow. I lived for it. I don’t know if I can convey how startling it is when you spend your whole life believing that god is the only source of happiness, only to find there’s now NO source of happiness left. I couldn’t function very well anymore. My Meeting attendance and preaching activity hovered around zero. I ended up quitting my job under the premise of going to college, but in hindsight I believe I was fooling myself. I quit my job because I could barely do it at this point. That proved to be a mistake. That job was the last thing keeping me away from spiraling, holy-shit-this-is-now-scary depression. I stayed in my room for days on end, coming out every so often for food and bathroom use, and not much else. My new goal in life was to stop feeling, throw on so much emotional armor anything would bounce off my elephant-like skin. I stayed up at nights feeding my own negativity, learning how to hate myself again with renewed intensity till the only relief I felt from mental pain was physical pain, beating on my chest and head with impotent rage. This gave way to cutting. Cutting gave way to suicide attempts and why not I thought? I was already dead. The world was still going to end any day now with me clearly on the losing side. God doesn’t care what your track record is in the past, he cares what your score is right now. Life became a haze of half-registered weeks. Weeks became months and I spent the next two years in a slow motion race, seeing what was going to kill me first, my own hand or the hand of god. The cracks in my faith grew ever wider.


  Everything moves in cycles. Animals and plants, life and death, stars and universes. Even people move in cycles, even though we might like to pretend otherwise. As it was, when I was twenty-two, my own cycle with suicidal depression was easing off. Don’t get me wrong, something like that doesn’t go meekly away on its own, but every once in a while I could now see sunshine where there was only clouds before. More and more days I could breathe easier, I started to feel more alive than dead again. At this point I decided to go to college, only for realzies this time. I picked a school ten hours away from everything I knew at home, packed my bags and took a train to a state I knew nothing about for a school I never saw outside of a brochure. This was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made, right up there with not getting anyone pregnant. Yet.


  I learned a lot in college. No, I’m not talking about my major and my classes, anyone outside my field of study would find that dryer than toast to read about. I learnedmy room-mates that I’ve known for months could be better friends with me than the Witnesses I’ve known for years. I learned there was plenty of wonderfully strange and beautiful women out there who never heard of a Witness, that were still happy, that could take my breath away. I learned how to sing drunken karaoke songs at the local dive bar. I learned how to have fun, how to live outside of a rigid system of fear and expecting attacks from an all-seeing all-pervasive demon. I learned occasionally smoking weed will relax you and does not lead to crippling drug addictions. It gets you giggly for a half hour and leaves you with a renewed appreciation for tacos. I learned the ‘World’ was not a bleak wasteland of sin and depravity, only certain sick people are. I learned theirs funny, caring, sensitive, amazing people out there who want to help others and they all have different goals, different faiths. I learned about the tranquility of Buddhism, the agelessness of the Jewish faith, the pursuit of understanding in Taoism. I wanted to learn it all. I could almost feel myself expanding, and for the first time in my life, I felt _free.
_ 

  I’m twenty-six now.  My spotty work history has come back to bite me in the ass more times than I can count, but I found a new passion, one I hope will pay off in the near future: writing. I’m calmer now too. Learned to let go of the anger I used to build all that emotional armor, the layers of indifference I thought would save me. My family is still distant, but nowadays were all at least friends, can sit down have a drink with each other and laugh. It’s no where near what a family should be, but being friends is a hell of a lot better than where we’ve been. Baby steps, eh?  I’ve found the love of my life, lost it, picked myself up and found it all over again. Quantum mechanics and astronomy show me more “miracles” from the natural and scientific world than I’ve ever found in the bible, and renew my faith that despite all the bullshit and stupidity, the human race will one day scratch and claw and _reach_ for a future out in other planets, circling other stars. Sure, I still spend way too much alone, and still get angry sometimes over the childhood that was taken from me. But I like to think what I’ve been through steeled something inside myself, something that has survived and thrived where there was once only fear and subservience. I got a long way to go in life and all the things I want to do with it. But I’ve got time. After all, it isn’t like the world is ending.


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## Divus (Sep 4, 2012)

Rellek, if you would only take your vitriol out of this article, if you would hide your sarcasm, then this would be a well written informative piece , especially for we agnostics who wonder why people choose to be JWs.

You write well - that is those bits which do not include swear words and violent aggression.

You are seemingly over burdened by carrying a cross on your back, so drop it , stand upright and start again.

Religion can be  a burden for some but it has a role in life especially for those who cannot face the idea of one day the light going out.
However before you can drop your childhood indoctrination, you  will have to ask yourself if you can cope on your own.
My Father once said: "_*Son, you came into this world on your own and one day you'll leave it on your own".
*_He did, in a hospital bed in London from a heart attack induced by two diseased lungs provoked by a lifelong smoking habit.
I was told that he just fell asleep from which he did not wake up.   That was a nice story told to me by a nurse, which I hope was true.

Rellek.   Keep writing but change the subject.
Dv


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## The Backward OX (Sep 4, 2012)

Wow.


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## Rellek (Sep 4, 2012)

Oh man I would a very sorry individual if this was the only thing I wrote about, you are correct. Fortunately for my own health and the sanity of readers here, that is very much not the case. I write fiction... or... try to write fiction. It's a work in progress. As for editing out the violent imagery and wording, I'm sorry but no. Violent imagery was a very real part of my experience with the JW's. and I wanted to carry this across. There's some pictures in books they use for children that would put metal band cover art to shame. The swearing I stand by as well, sorry. This was my memoir, and it might be juvenile, it might be crass, but it was written in my own voice, and I stayed true to it. If the overwhelming consensus is it detracts from the writing, then I'll take it off. As for the vitriol, okay you might have a point there. It might be a long and hard road before I can talk about this dispassionately, but I believe writing about it and throwing it to the internet wolves was a form of release, me letting it go. And thank you though. I will keep writing. Just, ya know, mostly in the fiction section from now on.


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## Baron (Sep 4, 2012)

JWs are not a Christian cult - they're a non-prophet organisation.


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## Rellek (Sep 4, 2012)

Okay, that was pretty clever : ). And as this is a writing site, I'm curious for any feedback on this. Yes, the pacing and language was purposely set to be aggressive, a little jarring. I wanted to shake the reader a little. Does that add to or detract from the work? Anything out of place, hard to read or understand? Does the humor I went for come through or does it all seem bitter and caustic?


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## Divus (Sep 4, 2012)

Rellek - already in your responses you have dropped some of the anger and what you have written reads better to me.
Yes, we are a writing forum but one which also gives you a podium from which to address  an audience.   
Don't insult the viewers, with what in speach would be taken as bad language, nor test their patience if you plan to post long articles.

If you are to succeed in your crusade against religious extremism then first you must draw to your side like minded thinkers.
If you attract only the angry because of your choice of words then you will lose support rather than gain it. 
Sooner or later the bigots are going to come back at you and then you must be in a position to defend your corner hopefully along with the help of some allies. 

As a tool maybe you can make people swear but only silently in their heads.   The "f" word will always be out of context.

You are clever enough to appeal to emotion in a reader's mind  - so practice the craft.      

You've chosen religion as your topic - brave man.


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## Nemesis (Sep 4, 2012)

You did a very good job, it was a compelling read. I never had to force myself through it, I wanted to keep going and the emotions you described during your depression conveyed very well. I didn't mind the profanity either. 

My husband was raised JW, and his mother still has his oldest son. It's sickening, the fear tactics they use on children, and how hard they work to alienate you from the rest of the world. 

While my husband was growing up he wasn't allowed to play sports, read comic books, he was highly discouraged from going to collage or having friends outside of the witnesses. I hate that theyve taken fun, family orientated holidays and portrayed them as evil and dirty. Even if they aren't the same as they once were (and yes I know they were placed over pagan holidays) its still a good excuse to spend time wiht family and spread good cheer right?

Anyways, good job. I'm curious now to see what else you've been working on in the fiction setting.


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## Rellek (Sep 4, 2012)

Thanks Nox. I have an audience now! Yayyyyy! I'm playing with the idea for a hard boiled detective yarn with a female lead in a sci-fi universe. Sin City meets Tank Girl meets Bladerunner type vibe. I might post it later on today, my writing muse is up rather early. And Divus, you seem to have trouble divorcing me as a person versus me portrayed through the lens of this particular piece. Did the major events that I described happen in my life? Yes. Did I paint the underlying doctrines of the JW faith in an unfavorable light, while remaining factually accurate to the best of my ability? Yes. However, like all autobiographical works, I reserved the right to work this piece through whatever mood and tone I desired to place it in, with this one being an aggressive one. Yes, I do struggle with depression but no, my life has not been a series of increasingly depressing situation, there is peaks to those valleys, and myriad other things I've done and experienced that I didn't chose to get into. Divorce me the person from me the person in this one writing exercise. I'm not on any crusades. I just like to write.


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## Kevin (Sep 4, 2012)

@rellek-  Interesting read.  JMO, but I think I would include some sharper details. "...the night it changed.." I still don't know what happened. Seems like it was a big deal but you've left out the moment. 

 @ others-  I was wondering about the second to last paragraph. There is a sort of list of facts to back up a statement. It's written as a series of sentences. It starts at "...what I found was damning..." I don't know if it's right or wrong, but I wondered at the form, the puntuation, etc. I often want to write things like this without it coming out like some high-school assignment. This one doesn't.  I could understand it easily, but I wondered if it was correct...


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## Rellek (Sep 4, 2012)

So your saying don't write "there's facts that back this up" without actually putting down the facts that actually back it up. Good point, and it sounds rather silly to say in hindsight. Ill remember that for next time.


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## patskywriter (Sep 4, 2012)

I guess your essay was pretty okay. Even though I read the whole thing, I still don't get a sense of who you are as a person. I've known people who have been through different traumas (and thoughts of suicide), but they're also complex and interesting individuals with definite likes and dislikes. You told us of some of your dislikes but nothing of your likes. Meeting girls and getting high are only activities and show nothing of who you are inside. Somehow you come across  as a shell of a person who reacts to things, and that's not enough to relate to.

Your essay ends with your having made it to age 26. As a reader, I can't tell if there's anyone positive about you that will sustain you as an adult. To quote one of the things you said about college, "No, I’m not talking about my Major or my classes, no one cares about that," leads me to assume that you have (had) no plan and no goals. I do admit, though, that I've known a couple of people who came from terrible backgrounds and were delirious with their newfound freedom. I can totally understand that. But all I see is a person who's still reeling from and blaming his childhood religious experiences for his present state. If you could somehow give us a sense of your having moved forward, made progress, or at least aimed for something, then your advice might be taken to heart. As the essay reads right now, your advice comes off as bitter and cynical, and not useful at all. It's hard to take advice from someone who hasn't triumphed or at least emerged stronger and/or wiser.

I think that your viewpoint is valuable. If you feel like putting more work into your essay, I believe it'll come out quite good.


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## words (Sep 4, 2012)

Divus said:


> Rellek, if you would only take your vitriol out of this article, if you would hide your sarcasm, then this would be a well written informative piece , especially for we agnostics who wonder why people choose to be JWs.
> 
> You write well - that is those bits which do not include swear words and violent aggression.
> 
> Dv



I disagree. Emotion is what drives compelling writing. Matter of fact sends people to sleep.
It is anger that binds the story, which is well written. 

For me it needs a more dramatic conclusion, than the realization of what it was from the outside, and the after effects of "living with withdrawal from JW thinking". The firework lacked a "bang" and fizzled out.


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## Rellek (Sep 4, 2012)

Mmmmmmmm feedback. Delicious, scrumptious feedback. I love it. All right seriously though, I appreciate all of it. And I hear ya Patski, next time I attempt anything autobiographical I'll be sure to put more "rising from the ashes" type commentary in it. More yang to my gallows humor, negative ying, so to speak. Everybody does love an underdog....


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## patskywriter (Sep 4, 2012)

Rellek said:


> Mmmmmmmm feedback. Delicious, scrumptious feedback. I love it. All right seriously though, I appreciate all of it. And I hear ya Patski, next time I attempt anything autobiographical I'll be sure to put more "rising from the ashes" type commentary in it. More yang to my gallows humor, negative ying, so to speak. Everybody does love an underdog....



Please feel free to take this with a minute grain of salt: I've noticed that some writers in this forum ask for critiques and then acknowledge the input while leaving the essay or story unchanged. Speaking as a former proofreader/editor with a couple of major publishers, I suggest playing around with some of the suggestions and see what you come up with. Don't be like the many writers who hate making alterations to what they've written—believe me, I've seen it before. Why not have another go? It's good practice, and when you're ready to work with agents and editors, maybe you'll be less likely to miss the mark. It certainly can't hurt.


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## Rellek (Sep 4, 2012)

Well, there in lies different points of view. I know for myself, I was taking criticisms and hints to heart and applying them to future pieces, things i can alter much more fluidly. Maybe your words and critiques do fall on open ears, you just don't see it in a thread already delivered. However, since there does seem to be interest in this, maybe i will revisit, expand and end the piece on a more positive note.... just not right now : p. I'm plugging away on another project that's been bouncing around my subconscious for a while.


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## Divus (Sep 4, 2012)

Something you might want to consider.
I contribute to this forum regularly but I do know I have an age barrier to jump,
As an older person I can't think the same as someone decades younger and from the West bank of the Great Pond.
So, it sometimes becomes difficult for me to judge the taste of the audience which I am addressing and 
that puts me as a writer at a disadvantage.  It is always important to know the nature of the readership.

To me one swear word, especially the 'f' word, changes the level of the dialogue and for many viewers it will provoke
a switching off.     It might also give the opposition - the JWs in this instance - a stick to beat me with and to denigrate my point of view.

Yet I accept that the use of swear words will in conversation - as against prose  - set the tone of the discussion.


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## Kevin (Sep 4, 2012)

Rellek said:


> So your saying don't write "there's facts that back this up" without actually putting down the facts that actually back it up. Good point, and it sounds rather silly to say in hindsight. Ill remember that for next time.


 I was into it and wanted a little more of your 'a-hah' moment.  Who knows if my opinions/questions are worth anything? As far the other, I just was sort of applying it to my own 'works' and wondering about the mechanics.


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## ClosetWriter (Sep 5, 2012)

This was an angry rant, and foul language can be part of dialogue when we are angry – I have no problem with that. It sometimes seems to jump around a bit, but again – that is how we can be at times. I know that in the emotion of the moment, when we talk of things that have us worked-up, we often do that. For these reasons, for me anyway, I found it to be very effective.

I have decided that it is much wiser to not dwell on that which is in our past, and religious indoctrination included. It is better that I know what I believe now, and it is not something that anyone taught me. I think we would all be better off if we were more spiritual, and less religious. Life doesn’t need a rearview mirror – only a clear window of what is ahead.

I like how you mix in a little sarcastic humor. To me it shows the author is not completely off his or her rocker.


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## Rellek (Sep 5, 2012)

Here's a revision, free of charge. I knocked off the doom and gloom at the end of my story and left the readers with something more.. hopeful. Also I'd like to say thanks to Patskywriter for poking me to re-write this with a few reasoned, persuasive sentences. I told you I'd remember. Lastly, I'm going to shamelessly plug my new project in the fiction section. If you like my style, please check it out.


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## cwmartz (Sep 23, 2012)

Rellek, I think the piece is incredibly well written and I think the vitriol is so much a part of the flavor that it would not be nearly as good without it. Certainly if you were writing say an essay instead of a memior, I would  critique this differently. But it is a memoir, it needs emotion, you need say it in the fashion that releases and shares those emotions in the most effective way, IMHO the job of the memoir is to enable others to experience what you are relating.

BTW I was raised as a Catholic and now consider myself a Taoist. I tend to go after the Catholics a lot in my writing.


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## Rellek (Sep 25, 2012)

Thanks for the kind words mate. I'll take a leap of faith and assume the high view count on this piece means the majority of readers agree with you. It's either that or I'm good at suckering in readers with a catchy title. Hey, whatever works!


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## shedpog329 (Sep 26, 2012)

I liked the voice in this, i felt it ended short but im guessing thats because the story is unfinished as far as the present can take you
I would like to see more of this great recognition you had mid way through the story, again i feel it ends short, and maybe more about the Witnesses as well, storys, character portrayals, events that manifested to this rendering of spirit you partook.

anyway the voice was unique and i liked that, i dont see anything wrong with the use of language that you chose, just was on edge for more i guess you could say

good work


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