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I was a miserable, emotional mess by 1987. I really didn't care if I lived or died. A part of me wished I would so I wouldn't have to deal with things anymore. My parents insisted I take my meds which just kept me absorbed into my depression. I could not function. Everytime I stopped the meds, I was starting to feel human again, but still had flashbacks. I would soon end up back in the hospital for doing something stupid. There was a time when I was supposed to be going to work. I was waiting for the bus and was running late. I stopped taking my meds the week before, but that day my mom insisted I take the pills. My vision was blurred and I could not think straight. I did not want to be late for work, so when some guy drove up slowly by the road and asked me for a ride, I thought about it but turned him down. He asked me to come close for directions to the interstate. I came close, he opened the door and grabbed me in. He then said he would drop me off at work. Instead, he drove through a quiet street and unzipped his pants and exposed himself while driving. He asked me to suck him. I bailed out of the car while it was still in motion and ran. He sped off. I was bruised and scraped up from my leap out of the car and limping. I staggered to work late. My boss saw me and asked what happened. I told her and she insisted I called the cops. I was reluctant. I knew that I should have never gone that close to a stranger's car. I felt stupid and relieved nothing really happened. Then I was picked up by the cops who wanted me to fill out a police report.

The cops made things hard for me. The incident happened during rush hour. They questioned whether I made the whole thing up. They saw that I had my bottle of meds on me and wrote it off as a figment of my imagination. I could not describe the car or the man too well. They figured I must be making things up then. I knew it was a man of Arab descent. He was kind of stout and looked to be about my height. I knew it was a metallic blue car and it had two doors. That was all I could really pick up on as far as details. The quiet street I was dumped on had nobody nearby to witness what happened. With no backup, a bunch of psychiatric meds, and sketchy details, they told me to go home. They took me to my parents and explained to them that I was having hallucinations. The cops also told the same thing to my boss. Needless to say I was fired. I didn't care about that more than I did about how my parents reacted. It was the JW blame game all over again. Why did I make up such a horrible story and embarass them in front of all the neighbors. They really got on my case. I stood by my story of what happened and they did not want to hear it. I went to my room and slammed the door and attempted suicide again. I really could not deal with people thinking I would make up such a story. That guy was off somewhere scot free and I was left to take the rap. My dad came into my room and saw what I did. The cops were already on their way and had the wagon ready to take me to the hospital. I was in intensive care for a week then the state mental hospital. I was so pissed off at everything. I even attempted suicide at the facility. I eventually calmed down. The sister who studied with my mom came by to visit me. She was not only the sister who got my mom into the "truth", but she was the one who helped my mom out. She invited me to come visit her when I got out. She said I could spend a week over at her place. I agreed. I needed to be away from my family at that time. I thought some distance would make things easier on all of us.

This sister was disassociated. I knew I was not supposed to even talk to her, but at that point I didn't care. Not one person from my congregation came by to visit. No one would give me any words of encouragement. I was put on the back burner. When I did speak with them, they would say things like, "You should be stronger in the truth. Come to more meetings and the service and all your problems will stop." In their eyes, if I wanted to get better, it had to be on their terms only. It was even rougher on me knowing that the man who molested me was about to get baptized. I believed that was the "truth". It was a scary "truth" now. I wasn't even sure that I wanted to be in a paradise on earth if I had to spend eternity with people who treated me like that. I pretty much gave up on the religion at that point. I believed it was the "truth", but couldn't live like that anymore.

I expressed how I felt to my mom's friend, Bertha, when I stayed at her house. Bertha had a son, James, and a daughter, Tia who lived with her. Tia was near the age of my youngest sister. James was my age. We were alway "cousins" growing up. I still felt the same about him. These people were like family to me. I could not turn my back on them, even if they were "apostate". I loved them. At this point in my life, I figured what did I have to lose by staying with them for a week. I was marked for death in the end anyway.

As I expressed the way I felt to Bertha, she encouraged me to watch a video tape from the John Ankerberg show with her. I did. This time I listened. I did not want to believe what I was hearing. It seemed like lies. I was angry at her for showing me the tape, but she said she did it because she loved me like a daughter and hated seeing me throw my life away on a lie. She encouraged me to read the book "Crisis of Conscience" and even gave me her copy.

While I was there, I read it in one day. I couldn't believe all the things that went on behind closed doors in the Governing Body. They had a lot to cover up. Ray Franz exposed all the lies and deceit in New York. He backed up everything with proof. I was disillusioned at that point and didn't want to think about it. I knew if I did I would face a dilemma I did not want to come to terms with. If this was not the "truth", there was no truth in the world. I was in denial. I was angry. I wanted answers, but could not handle the answers given.

My friend James would try to comfort me. He was doing drugs and invited me to give it a try. We hung out and smoked pot and drank. I also had sexual relations with him. It was a mutal thing. We had always been sexually curious about each other growing up. He really did care about me. Yes, it was only a one time thing done out of curiosity, but he made me feel human. It was good. I did it out of rebellion and curiosity. I knew for sure I was marked for death. I was free to do whatever I wanted now since the time was short and the end would come soon. The only problem was I had no direction in my life. I wrote a letter of disassociation a week before Easter in 1987 based on what was said in the book and because of my act of fornication. I did not look back.

My friends were all drug addicts and mental patients. I also began to abuse drugs and alcohol. I could not hold down a job if my life depended on it. I was on disability. I was on food stamps. Even in my attempts at finding work, my working friends were a wild bunch. One of my friends at work was an alcoholic who was in a 12 step program. We had a job filling out surveys in a mall. We both got tired of it and would spend most of our time hiding in a restaurant drinking coffee. I got the idea in my head that maybe we should quit. We both, at that moment, marched out of the restaurant and quit. We bummed around for a long time after that. She was a night owl and would come by my house to get me. We would hang out all night at Denny's and drink coffee. I think this drove my parents crazy. I was never home at a regular time. I worried them to no end. However, the communication breakdown was on their side as well. The counselor wanted all of us together for a family counseling session. My mom flat out refused and said I should just get over it. I think she didn't want to hear how she had a role in my downfall. I pretty much gave up in communicating with them after the police incident. I was looking for a way out. I took an overnight job doing work for a party line as a moderator. The money was great. However, I could not keep up with this job after my mom complained about me not taking the meds. The meds took away my energy and I could no longer function on the overnight job. I was happy when not on the meds. I had no direction and was acting out, true, but I was not a depressed zombie.

My friend, Brian, invited me to come live with him and his wife and child in Idaho. I agreed. I knew if I got away from my parents I would not have to take the meds that made me so miserable. When I left the Jehovah's Witnesses, the first religion I joined was the Baptists. It was okay, but it had so many things in it I did not understand and there was no one there who would explain it to me. I was baptized just the same. So, when I went to Idaho, I was an easy target for the Mormons. I studied and got baptized as a Mormon while in Idaho. It still didn't have all the answers I needed, but I stuck with it for awhile. When the living arrangement wasn't going so well and I wanted to go back to Chicago but had no money, the elders in that church gave me the money to go home. I had always admired the way they looked out for their own. I didn't see the flip side until I came back home.

There was an elder whose daughter was "acting wild". I was friends with her and found her to be quite pleasant to hang around. She eventually was kicked out of the church and shunned by everyone and kicked out of her house. Her sin was of watching and believing an anti-Mormon video. Red flags went up. I saw the whole JW thing all over again. I distanced myself from those people. I never actually quit. I just stopped going.

The final straw which gave me a clue that I needed to straighten up was when I spent the night with a friend I met in the mental hospital. We were in together twice. She was also a drug addict, although she would never admit to having a problem. She was old enough to be my mother. She was one of my closest friends at the time. She and I would walk around the streets at night in a neighborhood that was considered dangerous. At times, we would even pass by occasional JWs who knew I was no longer in the fold. I could see by the expression in their eyes that I was "typical" of a "worldly" person. I gladly accepted their looks of contempt. I was proud of it.

One day, I spent with my friend, we were running all over town. She said she needed to make some money fast. She asked me for a loan. There were no banks open and I didn't have any ID to cash my check. She smooth talked her way at a currency exchange to cash my out of town check from my phone sex job. She only wanted half the money. I was cool with that. She didn't let me in on why she needed the money. We got to her boyfriend's condo on Lake Shore Drive. They had a lot of liquor and people milling about. I helped her in the kitchen with some appetizers. She told me her life story. How she was abused and raped as a child. How when she was 16 she always found a rich, white sugar daddy to support her. She told me she met her current boyfriend in the airport lobby at a bar when she was coming home from a first class trip from Hawaii which was paid for by another man. Her current boyfriend was an air traffic controller and retired from the Air Force. She encouraged me to do the same with my life. The thought then crossed my mind, if they were so well off, why was she scrambling to make such big money. Then I perished the thought as I mingled with the crowd. There was heroine, coke, pot, booze, acid... you name it, it was there. I tried a little of everything. I even freebased coke for the first time. I was so numb. I did not like the feeling. My friend quickly ushered me out of the condo as some really big, thuggish looking guys came in. We were walking outside about 3 in the morning. She was practically carrying me. When we finally came back, I went to sleep on the sofa. I had about $200 in my pocket. When I woke up, the $200 was not the only thing missing. They sold all of their furniture and electronic equipment to buy more drugs. They even maxed out their gold cards for drugs. When I saw the condo was empty, and I was lying on the floor since they lifted me off the sofa before I woke up, I tried to find them. They were in their room in a huge physical fight over the last bit of coke. I knew I did not want any part of it.