My Dollhouse

     I wouldn't be surprised if most of us could relate to the premise in this song, cult-born or not.

     I was raised in a generational home, in a family riddled with various forms of depression to put it lightly. The lack of stability may have been why I wasn't as trapped by the beliefs or it could be cause my Grandparents raised me better than they intended? Or maybe Papa knew? Or... ok these could be their own blog post. Here's my Dollhouse.

•      My Dad's Mom. My Grandmother. I call her Mom cause everyone else did (big family) and because she raised me. She's amazing really. Brainwashed. Raised a JW. Will probably die one. She is the only JW left in this house, yet she doesn't kick us out. (She either doesn't realize I of all people could be an apostate either? Like you gotta be a particularly miserable person or something??)
•      My Papa was dying of cancer for a little over half of my life. He was amazing while I was in the picture. He had chilled out by then. He had been dangerous some time before I was around though, i'm just glad it worked out. I was still mentally in when my Papa died of an aneurysm. Cancer lost.
•      My birth father wasn't a Dad very long before he became a violent alcoholic in one era and a doped up fire hazard the next, sure he's mellowed out since then, but that door in my heart has opened one too many times. He was raised in the JWs, he tried to be one a couple times to appease his(our?) Mom.
•      My birth mother pretty much vanished overnight until my teen years, we're barely in contact now but we don't, again, not cult related to my knowledge but it probably didn't help.
•      Ex-Step-bitch was at least partially responsible for my Dad going down a path I couldn't healthily handle. But one learns to stop trusting pathological liars so who knows what really happened... No really, I don't remember, and the ones who do could very well have been misled.
•      Uncle 1: He's lived here off and on till withdrawal pancreatitis attacks lost him his job and he lost his apartment and did drugs for a while. Also mellowed out to an extent recently. Raised a JW, no clue what he believes.
•      Uncle 2: Scatterbrained, racist in denial, "they listen through the tv's i wanna live off the grid," conspiracy theory nut, ate enough shit food to give himself diabetes and would probably die off the grid. Raised a JW. Still a JW. Wife left him. Thinks he'll be able to see Armageddon coming ahead of time if he obsesses over monitoring stocks. Haven't heard from him in a while.
•      Uncle 3: Asshole. Violent alcoholic thief. Raised a JW. Disfellowshipped. On his 6th marriage. I can't help but wonder if he'd be a halfway decent human if the cult was never a part of his life.

     The cult related parts get much more fucked up from my point of view considering they had me wishing people would literally just go die... They'd be resurrected perfect from what I was taught. I thoroughly considered it myself. The only reason I lived to wake up is the unsureness of whether i could remarry my husband in paradise.

...Gosh that ended up long... thatswhatshesaid

Let's Talk About Mental Health, Brainwashing And Betrayal

Picture yourself raised in a home where not only did everyone believe in demons but they were probably targeting us specifically because "we were god's people, so they wanted us to suffer." Now be aware that most of the family has mental health problems so we'd be more sensitive to delusions of this sort of thing.

"Where are you going with this?"

Well imagine confiding in the 2 people who you thought were your best (local) friends, and one cut you off completely. I was ghosted, no word of why till nearly a decade later when i finally caved and asked her over Facebook...

I haven't heard from the other in months... A year? She was the first I asked to look into the checklist of what makes a cult. What's worse is I don't know if its just cause she's a little scattered, moves a lot and had cut off most of her social media and cellphone usage "for her spirituality," by then. The amount of stress I remember that girl feeling due to JW shit specifically makes my heart hurt. I'm terrified to email her for a definite answer if she's cut me off or not.

Skip this paragraph if you're sensitive to talk of suicide. Now picture a boy raised into the JWs, he was an elder's son poster boy but just to look at him you could almost feel the clouds of depression around him. Picture this boy getting disfellowshipped for a worldly girlfriend whom he took to the JW celebration of the Memorial, where the talks are all about the resurrection thanks to Jesus' death... Now picture this girl killing herself not long after. Now he's disfellowshipped, alone, and brainwashed enough to block me when I mentioned the characteristics of a cult.

Now imagine you study a whole book with an elder, and with your husband. We wanted to study as a couple since we'd studied solo for at least 2 books each. We thought we were friends with this elder. Guess who didn't come to our wedding because it wasn't in a Kingdom Hall (because we weren't allowed to have it in the Kingdom Hall because neither of us were baptised... because the elders in general wouldn't let us do that either... JOKES ON THEM, we can't be disfellowshipped!) This elder is also suddenly asking us to study again. So that's a thing.

"Why do you keep bringing up cults, it's clearly chasing people away."

What if you knew the stress of living in these conditions? What if you knew how much of a relief it was to cut yourself off from the expectations of everyone? To be yourself? To cut off superstitions you didn't know you had (they're told superstition is bad but "leave your bible open to god's name to scare away demons" tends to also be suggested so i got some bad news).

You'd want to give them the same relief would you not? I can't not be scared but I can't not try either.

Getting a little Meta

Ok, I'll start off by explaining what I mean by "meta," as im using the term in a way I'm not familiar with outside a roleplay community elsewhere. Think of this word as meaning a nudge at the fourth wall of my life.

I stumbled over this about the time the audio was released, I'm sharing the video because those are some crazy visuals, try not to get lost in them. I'd never heard of this band before but this song felt like a cynical view of what I was learning of at that very moment in my life, cults.

Of course, It would have been a pivotal song to my life already but then it used the word "Epiphany," and I had a moment of "woah." You see, I had called my initial project to turn my life around, "Project Epiphany." This document was a huge list of small goals i wanted to work toward. This list was inspired by a video that crossed my facebook dash and damn was it some good advice; crossing these goals off feels good and still feels good to look back at what you've crossed off if you get discouraged.

How Tumblr's NSFW ban will affect people like me.

There are really many layers to the disappointment I feel for this change, especially now.

Most frustrating is the timing. I had just returned with a plan to deprogram my mind from the cult mindset i'd been raised in. It revolved around everything I remembered and loved about Tumblr right down to the "from kitties to titties" dashboard scroll. I hoped to use Tumblr as a window to find what parts of myself I had lost, and comfort in sexuality was a huge part of that.

Mostly, I thought of myself as an artist, but I have never been able to finish drawing anything especially NSFW without falling into a panic attack and trashing the image or squirreling it away in piles of unfinished or unscanned drawings to never think of it again until I'm cleaning my room and come across it years later.

That sounds specific because it is; I can think of one specifically I come across every time I go through old piles of drawings. I tried to draw because the characters held a connection in a roleplay that i wanted to capture because seriously, how poetic is it for a character to find a lost lover's alternate world incarnation? That's like the moment Earth-616 Spider-Man meets Spider-Gwen and that moment is gold in the sense of emotional story and art. I know this yet still I cannot push through it (yet) just because the characters were quite a bit more ...touchy.

I can't get over an aversion to making and viewing such things to expand my abilities and understandings without a proper source for it. Not to mention that the sort of NSFW posted to Tumblr that I was thinking of personally were usually so much more sophisticated and artsy than any other site where it just feels dirty. Either way, I can't explore whether that is true or if it's a subconscious reference to Tumblr being more artsy and safe in general due to how I was raised.

And frankly, this collective view that nudity has to mean sex is primitive. Evolve.

Not to mention the disgust we are taught to view our bodies with when parents repeat that touching yourself is "dirty" because of some ancient book has created a huge psychological shit-show that a lot of us are in various stages of coming out of. Again, exposure helps. Communication helps. Information helps.

Censoring does not help.

More on my musical journey out…

[Posted 3 days ago]

This one was actually introduced to me by my best friend if i remember right.

It’s lyrics spoke to me in a way that I felt like I could turn around and say them straight to god myself and mean it. None of my questions were adding up and here Hopsin was saying everything perfectly. The mention of Jehovah’s Witnesses themselves sort of solidified this song on my list of songs that helped me through this crazy transition of beliefs. I was expanding my information sources and only gaining proof against the bible.

If the last song was coming out of denial, this song was the second stage of grief; anger.

Hopsin - Ill Mind Of Hopsin 7

Recipe for Identity Crisis.

[Posted 4 days ago]

I was in my Google Docs folder reminding myself what was in there and I found this. This is quite possibly the first real step in changing my life that helped me sort my thoughts and hunt down the sources of my problems. It was created on Mar 19, 2017, ~1 year before i “woke up”.

When just about everything you’ve ever really found yourself interested in,
Is considered, “weird,” “creepy,” Or just plain “wrong.”

When you’ve never felt right in your body,
And it only grows worse with time. 

When you grew up in a world demanding girls like pink,
Fueling an early hatred for it that you feel obligated to keep as an adult. 

When you’ve always pushed away “cute” and “girly,”
Then find yourself actually wishing you could pull it off. 

When even your eyes can’t decide their color,
So when asked, you default to “hazel.” 

When you want to try a billion different things with your hair,
But always chicken out because it might fry or turn out horrible. 

When you want to get more tattoos,
But can’t decide what, or make the commitment. 

When you want to be a piece of art that defines you,
But have no idea who you even are. 

When you cling to the voice you share your headspace with
Because you couldn’t imagine being without her there to bear a burden you can’t 

When you’ve never had actual parents,
Just very well meaning grandparents that tried their damnedest to fill the roles. 

When you’re stuck staying because one passed away and the other needs the help,
But you’d give your right leg for an ounce of privacy outside the 4 walls of your bedroom. 

When you wish you could sit alone in your own apartment without pants,
But are stuck in a house with 3 useless family members and fill-in mother, just to give her a break. 

When you don’t remember a good 95% of your childhood and have multiple symptoms of abuse. 

But don’t have the heart to ask the one person who might know.
When you’ve never been able to settle on any goals, 

Because your attention span demands something different every couple weeks.
When you can’t even do art you’re good at, 

Because you lose interest in every medium before you even finish.
When you’re partially decent with multiple mediums, 

But will never be an expert because doing it long enough makes you want to pull out your hair. 

When you can’t even settle on a favorite kind of music,
Because your taste changes multiple times a day. 

When you’re beyond awkward around other people,
Because you can’t get past the feeling that they’re waiting for you to screw up. 

When you’ve always put up a strong front,
Even when you’re dying inside. 

When the only thing that’s never changed is a love for animals,
Cats forever in the top spot to the point you make jokes that you’re one of them 

When you’ve spent your life just trying to survive,
While your first real enemy is your own mind and body. 

When you gave up on relationships,
Then find the sort of soulmate people dream about. 

When you didn’t plan to live past 21,
Then end up passing 25 with someone to live for. 

When keeping all of it up is just so tiring that you consider giving up the charade
…and looking for your identity reveals you’ve become hopelessly lost in your pile of masks.

It didn’t cover everything cause I wasn’t writing to document anything, I was writing to sort out some thoughts. I was writing stylized cause its more fun. The last line was pretty much where my mind was at the time.

The last line was actually where i realized i was wearing masks; this is where the title came from.

Anthem of my Awakening

[Posted a week ago]

I wanna share a song that became a sort of anthem to my awakening. It helped me find and accept the words for how I was feeling about the beliefs I was born into. (JWfacts.com for info on that)

I realized I didn’t care. I couldn’t care. I was too tired to care, and finally I allowed myself to accept that. Their demands were all too much for my mental situation and I had to have faith that *Jehovah* would understand. I still had nightmares he didn’t tbh. But I let myself stop carrying around their superstitious burdens and i swear, it was like a ten ton weight was lifted from my shoulders. I was *shocked*.

…

I learned about cults some time after… Fun times…

I was going to resume a move of accounts but…

[I really shoulda braced y'all for this irony: Posted a week ago]


Instead I’m writing this! That little overactive filter of doubt is currently turned way down (thanks weed!), so I’m going to do a little introduction on what’s going on and where im gonna go with this.

While initially it was due to feeling it would be a mountain of a task to go through everything instead of just … getting on with it. I also realized that while I’ve been inactive for quite some time now, i’d let my cult mask down on this site back then. I think it’d be interesting to keep the contents as a way to help me find everything I’d put out of my mind about myself.


“Are you ok?”


Short answer: Yes.
Long answer: I could write blogs upon blogs talking about everything that’s happened within the past year. My whole life’s perspective was turned on its head. I learned I was born into a cult and that everything I thought I knew about the world was wrong.

The weight off my shoulders is staggering just from the first realization and acceptance that God clearly hadn’t chosen me as one of his people since everything I was naturally drawn to was wrong. I couldn’t handle “going in service” because I developed crippling agoraphobia, social anxiety, depression… There’s more but listing all of them would be depressing. Their answer to not liking “service,” was “more service”. I was already exhausted from panic attacks at every new door my whole goddamn life.

If you haven’t caught on to the lingo, I was a Jehovah’s Witness. The name makes me cringe so don’t be surprised if I avoid it.

It’s really hilarious. Some of what I shared here woulda earned so many council meetings. Then again, i got in shit by them from people narking to the elders instead of talking to me like civilized humans. Nope. Gotta take your “privileges” away. I was straight up pre shunned by someone i thought was one of my best friends, i only have one of those now and guess what, she never was a JW.

“They still love you.” Please. They essentially threw us to the dogs without so much as a “you should do something about this.”

Sounds like conditional love to me.

Jokes on them though. The more times i lost my “privileges” for stupid shit someone went behind my back about, the more i didn’t want them because all the breach of trust from people i was raised to see as the most trustworthy in the world sent my anxiety into ludicrous speed.

I was initially gonna vlog but I realized I suck at talking and don’t have anywhere to record anyway… Generational homes fucking suck.

TL:DR Now this is a story all about how
My life got flipped turned upside down
And I’d like to take a minute, just let you know
I’ll tell you how I was affected by the JW shitshow.

OK SO.

Yea... Videos aren't going to work right away for several reasons so i'll be writing my way through deprogramming instead. I'll be using Blogger for the time being since I will be using nudity in my art as a part of my deprogramming process and tumblr did a stupid. Join me? (find my socials here as well!)

I'll be moving the relevant posts over now.