um how are you most people answer that question with fine or good but obviously it's not always fine
and it's usually not even that good this is a podcast that asks people to be honest about their pain
to just be honest about how they really feel about the hard parts of life
and guess what it's complicated
hi there it's summer break but not for us we are off making more episodes of terrible
thanks for asking we'll have new stories here in the feed for you in a few weeks but in the meantime
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the first week of august when we will be back see you soon
i'm Nora Macknerney this is terrible thanks for asking i am a person who loves jokes and rules
i love rules i love knowing what i'm supposed to do or not do so that then i can do the right
thing and get in a plus or gold star or whatever the equivalent is when you're an adult i think it's
just like son twitter rules give me comfort in a world of chaos and they do that for a lot of people
some people get their rules from religion they're raised in a faith and their faith is what tells
them what's right and wrong and what to do i don't faith this often for a lot of people it gives
them a sense of belonging it tells people who's in and depending on the faith or the microcosm of
the faith that people are raised in it tells them who's out and faithful is how patricia grew up
she was in i was one of johova's witnesses and it's funny that i don't say i was a johova's
witness because we were supposed to be part of a whole group we weren't supposed to be
really set up hard as individuals so we would always say i'm one of johova's witnesses my
familiarity with johova's witnesses is limited i know they're most famous member prints not
personally but you know the way all minnesotans do where he's like a friend's second cousin literally
ever in a minnesota believes that they know somebody who is related to prints side note anyway so i
know of johova's witnesses primarily through prints and also through their magazine the watch tower
which i always accept when it's handed to me because i have a hard time saying no to people
and i know them also because they sometimes come to our door and it is also hard for me not to let
them into my house because every bit it's just very hard so i obviously didn't know much
and patricia was kind enough to give me a quick education on what being one of johova's witnesses
meant to her as a child johova is god jesus is god's son they're not part of a trinity
we're the only religion that has the truth so we're the only religion that has god's blessing
and our job is to preach to everyone else on the earth in order to
both save ourselves by preaching to them and also to hopefully get some of them to not be destroyed
at armageddon so if you happen to die before armageddon then your collective deeds are written in a book
so to speak in god's memory and if if you did more good things or more things that made you
worth being resurrected basically if you didn't do anything unforgivable like speak out against the
religion if you did what you're supposed to then you got resurrected the promise of armageddon not
the benaflac blockbuster although that was excellent but the fiery end of the world as we know it
the armageddon that sets up the Eden that's coming next where true believers live that was ever
present for Patricia she didn't know when armageddon was coming just that it was coming armageddon
is going to come any day now and what it did the good witnesses would be saved and everyone else
dies and i i should say this that the experience of growing up with impending like destruction of
your all your neighbors and everybody on the planet except for your religious group
it was really jarring because you had to be nice to people on the street and and you had to hold
these two truths that like be polite to people on the street but also they're gonna die and when
you're little you do things like telling other kids at school you're gonna die at armageddon
you know because that's what you think you know i just thought you should know you're gonna be
destroyed with your parents because you're not a witness quick disclaimer here patricia doesn't
speak for all witnesses she just speaks from her own experiences in her own church and patricia liked
her church she liked her life even if it was kind of scary you know with the promise of demons and
armageddon and hellfire she was a witness she was special and she had special standards that she
had to uphold things she had to keep from doing even when she was a child disobeying my parents
eating birthday cake oh yeah because witnesses don't celebrate birthdays or celebrate christmas
so when i was eleven it was very much like do good things don't do bad things don't say bad words
don't lie like i had a teacher who one time passed out crackerjacks to everybody this was in second
grade i think and so we were all eating our crackerjacks and they were really i mean you know
who doesn't love the box of crackerjacks and then like halfway through the box she was like so
the reason why we're eating these is because it's my birthday yay and that instantly i had to stop
eating the crackerjacks and put them down and then feel like you were holding like just contraband
that that you were eating poison like instantly it was not okay to be eating those crackerjacks
even if i didn't know like now that i knew i had to spit them out put them away
and yet things like that kind of made her weirdo in school but again it also kind of made her
special i got to be a little bit of a snot about it but you know we were kind of taught that we
were better than everybody else for doing that so you know the only way to feel better when you
really want the thing is to make the person who gave you the thing feel bad they forgot and gave
you the thing so you know you had you developed like hoping skills for making it through the world
being intensely different and you know dressing up and going to people's doors that you might
be going to school with and you might like knock on their door on a Saturday with your parents
with a bible in your hand
so the thing about rules is that there has to be a consequence when you break them
otherwise what was the point right and the consequences for breaking the rules in the world
that Patricia grew up in they were intense the stakes were high
Amanda was my best friend and she lived a very short walk away from me in the small town where we grew up
and so i spent tons of time with her i stayed over at her house she would stay over at my house
and we we were about as close as kids could be
Patricia and Amanda were best friends but they were also three years apart in age so when Amanda
is 15 Patricia is 12 i'm a very awkward middle schooler and she's less awkward as a high schooler
there's a thing in their faith called disfellowshipping and Patricia is fearful of this even as a child
because it's not a joke which means once you're disfellowshipped that you are shunned
this big scary thing this disfellowshipping this happens to Amanda
Patricia's best friend and nobody tells Patricia what happened exactly it's just that
Amanda who's 15 at the time has done something probably with a boy Patricia has her suspicions
and now Amanda's dead metaphorically you have to stop treating them like they are a human being
minimize eye contact i mean if you have to like if you're in a business and they walk in
and need to buy something and you're forced to be the one who's helping them
then you know help them because it's your job but don't go out of your way to treat them like a human
so Amanda didn't die but she's dead to Patricia and to all witnesses and to God were you afraid for her
resigned for her more like um because we were taught that whatever the person has done they
deserve what they get and the if Armageddon comes and they didn't repent you know they're kind of
deserve to die um deep down i was afraid for her and i wanted her to to just take the steps toward
coming back there were steps that you could take um to come back to to get back in good standing as
they called it as far as Patricia knows Amanda did not take those steps she never repented
she and her family disappeared from the faith Patricia has no idea what happened to her after
the disfellowshiping or where Amanda ended up i was so heartbroken because i felt abandoned by her
i felt angry at her for having done whatever she did and i felt heartbroken that i lost her
but i had to quickly control those feelings and i got very good at controlling my
my feelings and kind of like holding them in so i didn't react when i saw her i didn't start crying
when i saw her on the street and couldn't say anything to her you know i both had to watch out for
if i ran into her make sure that i ignored her and didn't slip up and say hi and also just
remembered how how important it was not to do whatever it was that she did
so in Patricia's world if you're in you get everlasting life and if you're out you burn
and before you burn you lose your family and all your friends and all your support system it's gone
many religions leave space for doubts or encourage them they believe that doubts are good
they make a stronger base for your faith Patricia wasn't given the luxury of doubts
to her doubts are bad and they're dangerous but they crept in anyway
because outside of her church Patricia was a part of the world she went to public school
and she was a high achiever she took advanced placement courses she was in the future
business leaders of america she went to nationals for that actually but after that it was like
oh no this is going too far you need to kind of not be around so many non-witnesses
so i had to cut back on that so you know there's like being a good student and having to kind of
tamp that down because that is at odds with being a good witness and i knew that i couldn't go to
college so you know anything that i'm doing you know am i doing enough to get by in good grades
or am i am i trying to achieve so much that i'll be pressured into going to a college that
i know i can't go to the focus on prayer preaching and faith at the sacrifice of education and
career is a major part of some jahavas witness congregations in patrisha's congregation the
main focus of a person's life was their piousness not what they did for a living there were a lot
of janitorial business owners waitresses waiters i guess servers would be the term
i worked in retail and i was a server and that was basically it
anything that was low skill that you didn't have to go to school for
and that you could kind of devote most of your mental energy towards the preaching work
was was kind of the the goal for jahavas witnesses so patrisha starts to focus more on her faith
she makes new friends who are more devout who do a lot more of that door to door preaching
and that becomes patrisha's after school activity her new friends keep her focused on her faith
and not on her doubts so when those doubts do creep in patrisha shoves them down explains
them away praise them away because if she didn't that would be a sin and unforgivable sin
and she stays true to her faith for a long time
but in her mid-twenties patrisha started to feel burned out she was still an ardent believer
but the rigor of it was getting to her i just was having a hard time doing the day-to-day
stuff and i was dealing with some pretty severe untreated anxiety and depression
patrisha had started to skip meetings she wasn't going to service twice a week anymore
and then she stopped going all together at this point she'd gotten a new job she worked at a
government office and one day she gets sent on a trip a couple hours away it's just a day trip
it's a drive that she's taking with a coworker the coworker knows that patrisha is a witness
and the coworker is kind of fascinated by it and wants to talk about it
sort of i was driving my coworker had their phone out and they were pulling up
youtube videos about atheism and that really may be uncomfortable but i didn't want to be rude
and so i was letting them kind of play some things and nothing was sounding like it made any
sense but then they asked me what i believe about the blood policy and that is a policy that
witnesses have that you should not accept blood transfusions no matter what they believe that
that is tantamount to ingesting it which the bible forbids so i told this much to my coworker
and they said i could never let my baby die because i didn't give them a blood transfusion
that would be child abuse and i just kind of stopped because you can't really say anything after that
because that's you know what am i gonna say no you should let your baby die you know
so that was the first time that i didn't have any
defense for that or i didn't i did i mean it was a crappy one that i gave as a witness but
for the first time i had to just kind of stop and say what am i saying am i telling i'm
really telling someone that they should let their baby die if they need a blood transfusion
and so it stopped me from having that script that always ran in my head
and that was when the doubts kind of all started piling up because when you're going and going
and everything's following you you don't notice how much is following you until you stop and it
all hits you from behind and i started to think back on all these things that i had just
accepted without ever thinking what does this really mean how does this make sense you know
in the back of my mind i was just thinking whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa what just happened
like whoa i don't believe it anymore what what but i do believe it but i don't and um
and i was terrifying but it was exhilarating at the same time because for the first time i was going
there it's like 27 28 years of just repressed doubts and things i was ignoring just all hit me at once
we will be right back after the break ever in quote with that
break starts in three two one go
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gonna do today i'm gonna go to therapy
patricia has just had a wrench thrown in the gears of her faith by a co-worker and some youtube
videos which probably wasn't her co-workers intention a co-worker probably wasn't trying to
instigate an existential crisis but that's where patricia is while driving down the road
on a work trip give me a second i need to process 28 years of being a witness and all of a sudden
having that fall apart let me process this give me a second so yeah i think i don't think they
realized what they did and i don't mean like how dare they i mean i really don't think they
realized what they led me to and i don't think i realized how close i was to that point i think
i was always kind of teetering and trying to be so busy that i didn't think about it when patricia
got in the car that morning she had been one of Jehovah's witnesses on her way to just a work trip
with a co-worker if you are as later is they arrive at their destination who the heck is she now i don't
know i'm not i'm not what i was but i don't know what i i don't know what i am and that was really
scary and my whole identity and my whole social structure and my whole family were wrapped around
this thing that all of a sudden i had opened the Pandora's box of what else is out there and
i had to come to terms with the fact that this wasn't true and what should i do now
for a lot of people myself included the next logical step for what should i do now is to call
your friends and your family and be like the craziest thing to happen my mind is blown
i need to process this with you and by that i mean i'm gonna be talking for 40 minutes and i
just want you to nod and say mm-hmm and basically agree with me but that's not an option for patricia
bringing up what has just happened on that car ride would be speaking out against her family which
is the same as speaking out against her faith and the risk of that is too high even bringing up her
doubts could result in her disvello shipping her losing her family and friends completely
so she keeps it to herself she does whatever you do on a work trip she goes back home
and she goes back to church for a couple more meetings but it isn't the same it was almost like
i was looking at everybody doing everything that i had been doing for my whole life you know singing
these songs that were beautiful and emotional and listening to these talks at meeting that you know
used to do it for me they used to like give me chills because they were so powerful and motivating
and now it was just like what language are you guys speaking and i felt like i was an anthropologist
watching a culture that i've never seen before it's a weird place to be on the outside and on
the inside at the same time it's everything you know and are familiar with but none of it feels right
a few months after that conversation in the car patricia's grandfather dies and patricia goes
to his funeral i missed having a firm feeling of what was going to happen i missed that i missed having
a strong family that we all were united in what we believed and nobody knew i think they were
starting to have suspicions that something was wrong but they didn't know by design they didn't
know i didn't want them to know so i was pretty much completely alone in kind of feeling
feeling this conflict and this pain and this grief at on top of it all before you had these doubts
what did you think happened like if you hadn't had doubts you would go to your grandfather's funeral
and what would you believe was happening to him it would still be sad but i would believe that he will
be resurrected after armageddon and and i'll be able to see him again so without that your
grandpa's funeral is what it's just when you say goodbye forever
patricia decides that the safest thing to do is to just ghost just fade away
she doesn't need to announce her rejection of the faith to her family she'll just move she'll
just go somewhere else somewhere where she won't run into other witnesses who know her family where
she won't run into other congregants who could see her out on a date or sending in other ways
and then report back to her family and force them to disown her patricia moves five hours away
but she knows it isn't easy back home her mother knows that patricia isn't going to meetings
i told her it was because of anxiety because that wasn't a lie it just wasn't the full truth and i
felt like that would be a little easier than having the full conversation with her this is not
typical of witness parents but she was actually very supportive of whatever i needed to do for my
mental health and also very protective of me so if anyone else asked what was going on she kind of
said like patricia's an adult and she can do what she wants and i don't really have those kinds
of conversations with her so if you want to ask her yourself you're welcome to if anyone asked
my mom at the same time patricia is leaving behind the familiarity of her faith and her family
she's also starting over she's 26 and she gets to reinvent herself and have a sort of delayed
adolescence i realized how much of my personality was actually the religion and so i felt a little bit
like i was um i was just kind of an amoeba like floating around without a
structure or a shell but i just didn't know what i wanted to do and so i kind of did different
things and hung out with different people and it's hard to be to be discovering yourself
at a time when most people already have a pretty clear idea of their self
and to be realizing what you both do and don't want to be
five hours away from the watchful gaze of her congregation
patricia starts to play catch up she starts dating she has her first kiss
she gets her first boyfriend she has her first breakup
she starts making friends not friends that are based on just that forced proximity of
who goes to your church but friendships built on shared interests which means she's got to get some
interest one of her first new friends is named Jennifer she was very good at cultivating friendships
so she would have me over frequently and like we started watching Game of Thrones together and
it was like you know horrifying for me at the time but i cannot think of um like she couldn't have
started you out with like some light you know Dawson's Creek or something
she's you went from Jehovah to Game of Thrones right like who much yeah that's some well she was
I think she was trying to like like really shake your therapy or something while success
but it was weird because i would i would find myself just forgetting to keep in touch with her
and she would contact me and ask me if i was mad i was like no i'm fine what's wrong you know
and and she'd be like well i just haven't heard from you for two weeks so what's going on you know
and uh i was like oh yeah i don't i don't see your face but i still need to like be a human with you
just as Patricia is starting all this learning and as she's just getting settled into her new life
she went home to visit her parents for a few days and my dad was dealing with uh persistent cough
and fever and just kind of feeling crummy and he looked really pale and um he he went to the doctor
and was diagnosed with bronchitis and then he came home and took um antibiotic pack and did not get
better Patricia's mom finally convinces Patricia's dad to just go to the ER and they left
in after a while Patricia got a phone call from her mother they forgot her dad's wallet and
they need Patricia to grab it and meet them in the ER and my mom was standing there with tears in her
eyes and she said he has AML and her eyes were filling up with tears and and i i looked at her
um and i just knew it was bad and then she said it's acute myeloid leukemia
acute myeloid leukemia is blood and bone marrow cancer
and it's hard to describe you know it's it's scary enough when you hear AML or any kind of leukemia
but for Jehovah's Witnesses it's it's pretty much like saying he's gonna die because
you can't get blood you can't have a blood transfusion and if it's far enough along
and if it's an acute if it's an aggressive cancer if it's something like that
that's pretty much all you can do is get blood transfusions and and have that be a big part of the
treatment Patricia's dad is proud of his decision even if it scares him because he does know what his
decision means he was crying in the hospital in his gown on the bed um and he he just looked very
little under the gown you know under the under the blanket in the gown and I think he knew
I think he knew that this was it and I think he even told my mom that and like when she said
goodbye to him because she was gonna drive a blader um and they said to each other this is it
you know and I think that's what it meant was this is this is when he dies
the hospital he's at can't really do anything for him so Patricia's dad had to be transferred
to a larger hospital that's actually in Patricia's new city Patricia's mother wanted her to ride
along in the ambulance with her dad and just before they set out Patricia overheard a phone
conversation as between two witness elders who were coordinating this transfer the two men were
talking and then I heard him respond oh yeah his daughter is going with him and the next thing he
said was oh yeah I think she's still in good standing I think she's still yeah yeah she's in good
standing and I realized that what that person was asking this elder was if I was still a good witness
as though that would somehow if he said no if that would mean that I wouldn't be able to ride
with my dad in the ambulance and so that that was the first clue to me that this was this was going to
be like that there was going to be someone checking on who was around my dad at all times to make
sure that my dad was never with someone who could potentially jeopardize his spirituality by making
him have a blood transfusion or by causing him to have a blood transfusion.
Patricia eventually leaves in the ambulance with an EMT and with her dad. He was out of it
I think he talked about being hungry I don't think he realized how quickly things would happen
and I think it was going to be like kind of a prolonged thing in his mind I didn't realize how
quickly things would happen either but no matter how quickly things were happening her father was
vocal about not getting any blood transfusions he told everyone repeatedly even the woman who came
into MDS trash basket and his oncologist respected his decision but she outlined to him and to his family
what it meant without a blood transfusion we're looking at probably a week maybe more
and you know she did say there's a chance that you could have chemo but your blood count is so low
that we need to get it up to a certain point before you can even have chemo and then that could lead to
a very a very traumatic last few days or if you don't have chemo you could have a much more
comfortable last few days. Patricia's dad did try chemotherapy for two days but it made him feel
even more sick so they stopped and that was really it that was when we really knew this was going to be
watching him die how does it feel to know that there's something that could be done and that he's
just not going to do it horrible it's like it's like watching someone drown in having the
life preserver and knowing that they will they will think that you're attacking them if you throw it to
them so I made the decision not to say anything to him or not to try to persuade him because I felt like
if if he hears that from me right now what he's going to think is that I am being used by Satan
to tempt him or to sway him when he's at his weakest and I didn't want him to have that as the
last few days of memory of me so. Patricia's dad had his survival with in reach but he wouldn't take
it because it would cost him eternal life nine days pass. I remember he was pale he looked almost
see through and um all of the aunts and uncles all of my dads siblings came and the uncle who I
was closest to um he and I I remember at one point stood in the room with my dad and sang to him
because my dad was really loved music and my dad corrected our our our tuning because we were
slightly flat and I think he corrected the lyrics too so it was just it was really funny um
like don't ruin my deathbed yeah I get to the right key wherever it makes sense I mean you're
you don't want the last singing you hear to be off key that would be horrible yeah
it's making good points here so there were these moments of just humor and then there was these moments
of heartbreak in in between it and what was really hard um it was hard on everybody I mean I don't
think anybody was having an easy time of it but I think everybody else and my family could frame it
in a way that that made them feel a little better about what was happening because they saw it as
my dad keeping his integrity and that was a big phrase that they like to use in that religion
he was keeping his integrity he was staying faithful until the end and to them they could look at
the fact that my dad was dying of leukemia over a period of nine days as a faith strengthening
example I was having a completely different loss right next to them and they had no idea
and I couldn't even tell them because if they knew then that would be its own set of problems
so I felt completely alone around a bunch of people who were all experiencing the same thing
um so while they were they were looking at my dad and talking with him and saying you know
soon we'll be able to build a tree house and pet the pandas and you know you'll get to learn the
piano you'll get to learn all the languages you never got to learn we'll be able to travel
you know all these things that witnesses look at for the future for the after resurrection after
the paradise is started they they were looking forward and I was just looking at that that's it
he's gonna be dead forever
Patricia's dad dies her mom and her siblings are looking forward to petting some pandas with him
someday but Patricia can't look forward to that she's in mourning for the dad who just died
for the comfort of a religion that she used to have she has to mourn that a faith she rejected
is sitting between her and the people she loves the most preventing her from really connecting
with them from sharing her pain with them Patricia's there in a room with her family but she's alone
in her grief and in her loneliness and Hans and I had a long conversation about whether you can
be alone in your loneliness and I said yes look Patricia's alone in her loneliness and eventually
she's going to be alone in her joys too because the revelation that Patricia had
that revelation that brought her into a life that feels full and happy and true to her
it also brought her to a place where her family can't really know her to a place where the closest
she can be to her family still casts this vast invisible separation between them
so as if they're speaking to one another from behind thick pains of glass
so what's worse to have her family at this distance
or to not have them at all
I think a lot of people just have very separate lives from their families and
and then the people who rip off the bandaid and are very open about everything with their family
often it leads to a lot more direct confrontation and shunning but they also find out if anyone in
their family would you know go against to the religion's rules and keep in touch with them so
I almost think sometimes that by kind of fading out the way I did by accident almost just trying to
minimize the harm that you know leaving with a grand gesture would cause I think that I've sacrificed
being able to be super open with my family
Patricia by the way is not her real name and she's telling us this all of this knowing that
of course there's a chance that her family or someone who knows her family might hear it
why would she do that? I mean why wouldn't she? We all hold a part of ourselves that's
unknowable to even the people who are closest to us but we all want all of us
for the people we love to see us as best they can and to love us regardless
and if they don't or won't or can't we want for someone even strangers to take their place
maybe not to approve of everything we do but at the very least to witness it
you
I'm Nora McEnerney and this has been Terrible, thanks for asking.
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