Aether: Baptized at 13, Banished for Being Me

I was shunned by my family when I came out as a lesbian. I was baptised at 13-14, having being influenced into that direction for many years. Older members of the congregation had began to talk to me about baptism. I didn’t know what it meant at the time fully, and what kind of impact it would have on my life. At the time due to the many influences and teachings coming from the congregation and my family I felt inclined to do this, therefore I got baptised and thought “I made it! I’m enough now!”.

That could not be further from the truth. In the JW, you are taught to always do better, that you are never enough and that even if you think you have given your all, you could always do more. The hierarchy is odd, and very hard to not notice. The people who are more involved within the church create their own lil groups, they are seen as role models and examples to follow, and the rest are seen as “works in progress”.

I have tried for many years to go ahead and fit in even as a young person, but having come with the terms that I liked women along side men at just 16 I found it hard to integrate. In the JW, you cannot tell anyone that you are queer. If you do that you basically sign yourself to a judicial meeting where your spiritual status (or how I’d better describe it as your friendship level with “God”) is being measured and judged by men with no experience in dealing with sexuality and especially growing young people, is inevitable. Such a meeting can bring shame upon you and your family. There were many young teens who’s own families would shun them lightly if the teens would be announced as having had such a judicial meeting and as a result of that reproved (which means that you are flagged as a bad influence and people should generally avoid you).

I had many meetings (although not judicial) with elders (JW’s version of pastors) when I dated men who weren’t JWs’, so I know the drill very well. The night my mum found out I was (at the time) bisexual, she hit the floor with her hands and cried, screamed and tried to rip her clothes up. She continued by saying that I had “ruined the family”. That I had “done something so disgusting and unimaginable”. She told me that I was “selfish to even think about liking and wanting something that Jehovah (or God for JW) has said specifically that is wrong”. She called an elder that same night and told me she dreamed of Jesus and how it must be from Jehovah the dream because he is trying to support her through this hard time.

She later confessed that she too had such feelings for girls when she was young but that’s because of hormones not because of bisexuality or anything else. She hugged me saying “we will fix this”, but I was crying because I knew she could never love me for me and couldn’t accept me for me since she couldn’t even accept herself.

I was brought into a meeting by the elders, humiliated (at 20 years old) and asked to describe what I had done. They asked me questions I was not even asked by my own therapist, made to describe things that should only be discussed between partners in private. I refused to go into details and that alone was seen as an act of rebellion. When I left that meeting I decided to run away, so writhing a few days I had packed up and left. When I was announced at the meeting my mum told me she couldn’t recognise me anymore and the person that I was, when I was actually showing her who I really was.

I later realised that I was a bisexual for my own survival, and in tears I told my girlfriend that I think I might be a lesbian. It took me a couple of months to even accept my own identity and to be completely comfortable with being a lesbian. My mum called me once, and asked to stop showing off on social media because it hurts the family. I agreed to do so, and told her I will do that by removing the family from my social media. She was angry and asked me why I’m now using such “disgusting” terms to label myself and if I “really have to use such terms” to describe myself. She asked me, “is it not enough that you broke the family? Must you show off what you did as well with that disgusting human?”. I had an argument with her and told her that if she wanted to talk badly about someone she can do so about me, but to leave my partner out of it or I’ll hung up. The last thing she told me was “I accept you, but I cannot accept what you do”, and so she ended all contact right there. I cried a lot.

My sister hadn’t messaged me once until almost 6 months after I left. She emails me every now and then with updates. It feels more like torture than anything when she emails and when my mum texts my heart feels empty. I live as if I have no family, and then sometimes I get reminded that my family is alive and well, and just chooses to not be in my life.

I regret ever getting baptised at an age where I didn’t understand major things like taxes, sexuality, mental health/state and gender. I think that children and teens shouldn’t be allowed to give their lives to a religion and deity, and that they should make such a decision when they are consensual adults. Who on earth would bind a child, a teen, to a contract that makes them give up their lives to an institution, before that individual has fully grasped the meaning of what they are doing, and how harmful it can be for their lives. When you go into the religion as a young person, and get baptised, you go into thinking that you will happily continue to serve the organisation for the rest of your life, until you are old enough to understand that being dipped in water at 13 was the single, most dangerous, idiotic thing you could have done.

Currently I’m trying to learn about life outside, what the real world is like, where I fit and how I can find people I can connect with. Finding friends has been hard, and fitting in has been difficult. I constantly feel like an outsider, but that’s normal because that’s what I have been trained to do by the religion. I struggle to open up and handle the new world I have been thrown in. I sometimes cry wanting to be held by my mum, who is very much alive, but dead in my life. I miss laughing with my sister and gossiping like we always did. I miss annoying her and I miss my best friend, who after 10 years of friendship, cut me off too. I miss having a best friend and a support system. I’m slowly getting to a place where I can understand myself, and be happy relatively, but I’m no where close to being happy. I feel like I have been cheated out of enjoying my life as most kids have done before. I feel like I have been robbed of a life I wished I had.