devoid of harmonics

the machine proved to be worthless

[interdimensionalrealitymachine]

one of the most disorienting things about seeing people from my old congregation (who i had previously not seen since i moved away 10 years ago) is the number of people younger than me who got out of the religion and were able to just... live normal lives. get jobs, get married, have kids. i know i'm only getting the smallest glimpse of their lives, i have no idea what they personally went thru wrt how/why they left, but sometimes it really feels like there's something wrong with Me for still feeling so affected by being raised this way

there's also a feeling i've had for a long time about a lot of people in my extended family especially who've faded/gone inactive, where it's hard to tell without outright asking if they ever had a "waking up" moment or if they just stopped going / started living a more worldly life and feel guilty about it

in one of the only cases i know for sure, my dad lives with his worldly gf, hasn't gone to meetings in years, but still believes it's the truth, feels guilty about the life he's living / being "spiritually weak", but doesn't want to hear anything about what made me decide to leave

it seems like it's easier to live a regular life while burdened by unnecessary guilt about the life you feel you "should" be living, vs having to fully reckon with the fact that you wasted years of your life in service of an abusive cult and your mental health has been affected by that in ways that you're still unpacking

[agoodpretender]

Any ex-JWs on here who have talked to current JWs about the recent change in blood transfusion rules? Have they begun pretending like it was always permitted to store and use your own blood?

[interdimensionalrealitymachine]

my mom brought it up to me the other day, and thankfully i had already heard about it on here so i'd been thinking about what i'd say to her. i tried to give her a hypothetical: if for one of her previous surgeries, her doctor had said "it would be risky to do this bloodless, but we can bank some of your own blood and use it," and she had not been allowed to do that under the blood doctrine at the time, and ended up dying bc of it, i would be (rightfully) pissed off about the governing body making this change, seemingly on a whim, without even acknowledging the ones who could still be alive today had they been allowed to make use of it. but she didn't really seem that affected by it, or at least didn't seem to show it outwardly

sometimes it feels like the jw mentality is like an impenetrable force field, like they just have so much practice with shutting out any thought that could cause even a hint of doubt

[interdimensionalrealitymachine]

man i hate that every year i have to willfully trigger myself by going to the memorial

i had been trying to reframe it in my mind like "it's worth it to give up a few hours of one day if it means keeping the peace with mom," but in reality it's not just the one day, it's the anxiety in the days or even weeks leading up to it, and the residual stress where i feel like crawling out of my skin for days afterwards

[interdimensionalrealitymachine]

good news: i survived with minimal socializing and stress, my cousin who i'm ghosting wasn't there, and i was even able to book a last minute haircut beforehand so i showed up looking funky fresh

[dipsticky]

its march 24th 2026 and something most people haven't heard about, because why would you, is the massive change to jehovah's witness blood policy in the past couple weeks. for 75+ years they've told adherents to refuse all blood transfusions. under no circumstances should they drink animal blood, accept blood from others, or store their blood. the little wallet card that we could whip out in case of emergency was even shame-y toward hepatitis and HIV. looking at it now, i realize that this was rhetoric to support how good the policy was, which is incredibly odd considering how it caused people to literally die of preventable blood loss.

the policy has caused an international conversation around religious freedoms, and some 'bloodless surgery' science that is fascinating. a smaller 2012 JAMA study even stated that Witnesses had fewer acute complications and better long-term survival rates than those who received transfusions. but this approach still creates a lot of limitations, especially in emergency blood loss and when going into surgeries where a medical emergency is possible. hundreds, likely thousands, of people have died as a result of this policy (with no single entity tracking them, there's no way to know the exact numbers). the watchtower, which creates all their publications, even celebrated the children who died for the policy with the below magazine cover in 1994

i would have been six or seven when this came out and remember very clearly that i would have LOVED to die for my beliefs. it felt incredibly cool and praise-worthy to be martyred and recognized internationally for it.

so it's a huge, massive, big fucking deal that they're telling people they can now bank their own blood to be used if needed during medical procedures. children died for this and its being introduced as if it's a 'clarification' and not something they expressly forbid and ex-communicated members for doing. many adherents are falling into line and repeating that it was simply a 'matter of personal conscience' all along.

on the one hand, it's awful and gross when adherents refuse to question the watchtower's policy shift. r/exjw has been lit up with the news for a couple weeks (there was an early leak) and there's dozens of posts about JW family members' who have complete non-reactions.

on the other hand, every inch gained is meaningful. lives will be saved because of this. i have to see this as a win, and can only hope that it will continue getting better for those who stay in the religion.

[interdimensionalrealitymachine]

man i hate that every year i have to willfully trigger myself by going to the memorial

i had been trying to reframe it in my mind like "it's worth it to give up a few hours of one day if it means keeping the peace with mom," but in reality it's not just the one day, it's the anxiety in the days or even weeks leading up to it, and the residual stress where i feel like crawling out of my skin for days afterwards

[interdimensionalrealitymachine]

dreamed that dad dragged me to an assembly, woke up to my jw cousin/former best friend randomly texting to say that she misses me

[interdimensionalrealitymachine]

folks, it happened again

[interdimensionalrealitymachine]

just remembered you can mute text message notifs from a specific person 🎉

[pretend i put that reaction image of dolphins jumping happily in front of a rainbow here]

[interdimensionalrealitymachine]

in her most recent text she mentioned supporting trans people, which has me like okay cool good for you But Are You Still In The Cult Tho

[interdimensionalrealitymachine]

dreamed that dad dragged me to an assembly, woke up to my jw cousin/former best friend randomly texting to say that she misses me

[interdimensionalrealitymachine]

folks, it happened again

[interdimensionalrealitymachine]

just remembered you can mute text message notifs from a specific person 🎉

[pretend i put that reaction image of dolphins jumping happily in front of a rainbow here]

[interdimensionalrealitymachine]

dreamed that dad dragged me to an assembly, woke up to my jw cousin/former best friend randomly texting to say that she misses me

[interdimensionalrealitymachine]

folks, it happened again

[interdimensionalrealitymachine]

dreamed that dad dragged me to an assembly, woke up to my jw cousin/former best friend randomly texting to say that she misses me

[interdimensionalrealitymachine]

there's jws on wplace and they drew white jesus and multiple jworg logos lmfaooo

[interdimensionalrealitymachine]

jws can toast / clink glasses together now apparently

previously not allowed bc it was originally a practice meant to dispel evil spirits or whatever, but now it "doesn't hold that meaning in today's culture" so it's fine to do (unless it personally upsets your conscience)

like. lol. lmao even.

utterly fascinated at all the things being changed lately but the reasoning on this one is really standing out to me. so like as long as enough time has passed that the origins of any particular practice have been forgotten by mainstream society, it's totally cool to partake in it right? how long until jws are allowed to say "bless you" when someone sneezes? if we all collectively choose to forget that john the baptist was beheaded can we get birthdays back on the table??

[interdimensionalrealitymachine]

Currently tormenting (lh) my parents with the fact i just found out that gary gygax was a fuckin jw when he invented d&d

isn't it such a fun fact!! it's one of those things i wish i could tell everyone lmao, right up there with one of the guys who made the video game Doom being a mormon (sandy petersen)

[interdimensionalrealitymachine]

The illustration i got at ours was “imagine you’re drowning after a shipwreck and you come up to a boat but it’s full of people and all the seats are full. And then one guy is like ‘wait, you can take my spot’ and jumps into the water and drowns instead. That was jesus sacrifice” as if that isn’t the most batshit thing that anyone has ever said

LMAO??? new titanic ending just dropped

[interdimensionalrealitymachine]

idk if there's like a basic script that the memorial talk has to follow each year so that everyone gets the same talk everywhere, but at the one i had to go to there was a bit near the end about how our relationships with god are like, a father giving a house to his son and saying "i built this house, i know it's pretty old and it'll need some work but if you ever need help making repairs just call me and i'll be happy to fix it"

and the son tries making repairs on his own but with everything he starts working on, something else breaks, so when he realizes he can't do it alone he calls his father who's like "why didn't you call me sooner? i would've helped you!"

but really the whole time i was listening i felt a more apt end to this illustration would be: the son calls a repairman or a home inspector, who tells him that the house is full of lead paint, asbestos, and black mold, and it needs to be completed gutted. it would cost more money than the house is worth to remove it all, if you could even find anyone who's both qualified to do it safely and *willing* to do a job with such a risk to their health. in fact, staying there is only going to keep making you sicker, and the best thing to do would be to move somewhere else before it causes permanent damage to your body

so the son tells his father this and the father's like "i can't believe you're refusing this gift i gave you, i built it with my own two hands and lived in it for years and it never hurt me at all" and the son feels guilty but at the end of the day he and his family are better off living somewhere that isn't literally made of poison, bc the moral of the story is you don't have to accept things that are dangerous to you or cause you harm, even if someone put a lot of work into it and gave it to you as a gift

[interdimensionalrealitymachine]

me: damn why have i been feeling so anxious and stressed out this whole week

the wretched memorial:

[interdimensionalrealitymachine]

extremely funny to me that both my parents are dating worldly people now but sometimes they'll spout jw teachings to me like they still fully believe it all. like. how's that cognitive dissonance treating ya

[1five1two]

'The Shadow Hand'. Charles Lacoste. 1896.