My 7-year-old Sunny made these cards for me so I would know what to say to the Jehovah Witnesses that keep coming to my door.
I have panic attacks every time they come. Most of the times I do not answer the door. Other times the door is open for the breeze to come through and they just come up and start talking to me through the screen. And still other times I become enraged and think that I'm not going to hide inside my house like a mouse and I open the door and talk to them.
Talking to them has proven to be detrimental to my mental health 100% of the times I've tried it.
Last time I opened the door and talked to them. While the conversation was happening I thought that I was doing really well and staying on point. I told them that I had also been raised in a religious cult where several pastors were engaging in pedophilia or other sexual perversions and that the members of the church turned a blind eye when I asked for help as a child. I was sexually abused multiple times in my childhood and asked for help and did not get it and the abuse continued for years.
When I ask my family or other authority figures in the church to acknowledge these abuses I have been told to be quiet because I have mental illness and to pray for God to take away my sinful nature.
I was also told repeatedly that I was a liar. Every chance to shame me for lying was seized upon and magnified with venom. One time my mother said she was "so sorry that I was a chronic liar" because I would never be without sin. My church's doctrine espouses that after being saved the true Christian will go through a purification process wherein God removes any and all desire to sin. And that true Christian will change radically in behavior and become so chaste and pure that they will shine as an example of Christ unto the world.
Until only a few months ago I accepted this doctrine in relation to myself. Meaning that I believed that I had failed in this process of purification and was stunted in some hinterland of knowing about God but not being good enough for Him to Love me and therefore doomed to an eternity of being burned in a fire. And I believed that even though my uncle and grandfather molested children while preaching purification to their congregations they would go to Heaven for eternity.
The Jehovah Witnesses I talked to last time cried when I told them this story. After they were crying, I told them I have been diagnosed with PTSD and severe depression and am being treated for panic and anxiety. I am on disability for these problems. I lost the business I owned and operated because of my panic disorder. We had to declare bankruptcy and move in with my parents and my husband worked two full-time jobs and barely slept for two years.
Living with my parents meant being 24-7 immersed in my family of origin neurotic behavioral dynamics for the first time since I was 21. Under the pressure to revert to earlier self-destructive defense mechanisms my psyche shattered and I became suicidal and non-functional for several months.
I explained that when they come to my door I am triggered into thinking about those pedophile pastors and by a web of PTSD symptoms all the trauma I've endured over the years. I said that I do not have bad feelings for them as people but that their actions are triggering defensive emotions that are bad for my well-being.
But Jehovah Badgers don't give a shit. They are taught to hone in on any vulnerability they can sense.
So, this time I'll just blog about them until they leave.
