Growing up as a Jehovah's Witness was not easy. I could not celebrate my birthday or any holidays. I was told that most holidays, such as Christmas and Halloween all have pagan origin, therefore are pagan. I have always known Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny were not real. Standing out in school as the 'weird kid' who did not stand for or say the Pledge of Aliegence.  I could not help it, I thought God would be mad if I did. Jehovah's Witness believe that giving aliegence to anything but God himself was blasphemy.

The struggle of growing up in a household of these God-fearing people took its toll on me. I could not hang out with kids at school because they might corrupt me. I could not hang out with boys because they might touch me. By the time I finished Elementary School my parents decided to take me out of public school and homeschool me.
Jehovah's Witnesses do not baptize at infancy. They prefer the person to have their own knowledge of God and choose to be baptized when one is ready to commit themselves to God. I was baptized at the age of twelve. Hounded continuously by the men who were in charge of the congregation, the Elders. From infancy this religion creates a maleable mind. A mind for which is trained to soak up all the information they give you.
Going to church three times a week. Sunday morning was an hour public discourse with a predetermined topic every week, along with a 45 minute discussion from the 'Watchtower,' a magazine published by the organization of Jehovah's Witnesses.
The 'Faithful and Discreet Slave' is what they named the people who were, by definition, anointed by God, himself, to deliver his message in our modern day world. Through magazines, books, and discourse outlines, the Faithful and Discreet Slave has set out to teach, mold, and  convert the world with.

My parents got cable when I was about twelve. I started watching Ren & Stimpy and other shameful television shows.
At thirteen I was allowed to hang out with the boys at church, as long as it was an adult supervised group.
When I was fourteen my parents got the wonderful thing called Internet. Oh yes... This is where I started getting into real trouble.
I started talking to boys on the internet... making those social butterflies fly, and I started to learn more about the birds and the bees as they flew around the trees in my mind.

I met some of the most interesting people on the internet. For example, Danny, the most charasmatic deviant you would ever meet.  He was on house arrest because he stole his mother's car in the middle of the night to pick up his drunk friend and take him home. Though he had no license and he was speeding... at two in the morning, it was all for a good cause. Over time I fell in love with this sixteen year old*. We would talk on the phone for hours about nothing and everything. He was the first person who saw me for who I really was. I could say to him whatever was on my mind. He understood me, and I understood him. Eventually he made it off house arrest and progressed to probation. After that things got a bit out of control.
I was introduced to new things and new people. I was like a kid in a candy store.
Around this time I got my first real job at Food Lion. It was close to Danny, so I could sneak around and see him before and after work.

Everything worked out for a while, until my parents caught on and forbade* me from seeing him.
I believe I went through five or six of the prepaid phones, trying to stay in touch with him. I would buy one, I would get caught talking to him, my parents would take it away. Through all this I was grounded continuously. I was depressed, and angry, but not completely helpless. I was determined to have my way. Little did I know that my mother and father were right the whole time. They knew what was best for me, *trying to help in the long run. They knew he was not good for me, but I was too nieave* to see that.

Danny was arrested and thrown in juvi for violation of his probation, for the third time since I had known him. Each time seemed longer than the last. Between the five minute phone calls I would wait weeks for, there were love letters with the "I love yous," "I miss yous," and "When are you coming home."

The year 2004 would bring some drama. Danny was locked up again. I was hanging out with more people I should not have ever gotten involved with. My new friends and I liked to party a lot. I guess I partied too much, trusted the wrong people, and got myself into a situation any mother would cringe at the thought of their child in such a dilema.

In April 2003 I experienced death for the first time. My cousin, Thomas, was killed in a car accident at the age of twenty-one. Thomas was the only relative I was ever close to. He and my middle sister, Emily, also twenty-one at the time, had been best friends and inseperable ever since they were old enough to walk. So growing up, I thought of him as my big brother. The last few years of his short life were spent away from his family, hence, away from me. He was disowned by the church for getting involved with the wrong sort of people, and in turn, cheating on his wife of twelve months. Even though he had made some bad choices in the later part of his life, he was one of the kindest, most genuine people I have had the priveledge to meet. I took his passing undeniably hard. I miss him very much.

November 2004 I came very close to losing my own life. I was on my way to visiting my best friend of seventeen years, Kelly, we had plans to hang out at the mall. She lived out in the 'boonies' and I was on my to pick her up. It was late in the evening, indesputively dark, and the roads were wet and icey. I knew the roads well, but given the circumstances, there was really nothing I could do. There was a car coming toward me with their high beams on, I could not see the turn of the unmarked road, hit the breaks and ran off the road into a tree. My little, red 1990 Toyota Corrolla was totaled, as was I. If I had not been wearing my seat belt I would not be here today to tell this story. With a broken femur, fractured ribs and  a lacerated liver, I was sent to Washington County Hospital. They could not do the neccesary surgery with out a bloodtransfusion, therefore I was transfered to Baltimore, where they could do compulsory surgeries to save my life. I spent a week in the hospital. I was bed ridden for 3 months. Learning how to walk again was complete and utter torture. But here I am, a little over two years later with nothing to show for it but a few scars and a hint of arthritis.

I was kicked out of my parents house at the age of eighteen. I have been living with my older sister, Amanda, ever since. Amanda was kicked out of our parents' house at 17, so at least we have something in common between us. I was kicked out because of my disgusting habit of smoking, more under a misunderstanding with my habitual activities. My parents knew I smoked, but requested of me to quit, which I did for a while. My father was driving past the house one day and saw a candle holder in my bedroom window sill. Thinking it was an ash tray, and that I was smoking under his roof, that is why I was given a boost into the real world.

The real world; harsh reality of bills, work, overwhelming responsibility, and more bills. Once I thought I had the hang of things and moved out of my sister's house to an apartment near work. I was room mates with a girl named Danielle, that I worked with at the diner. I lived there for three weeks before I ran out of that green paper our society calls money. So reluctantly I moved back in with my sister and her family.