So I'm resurrecting this old blog. Why did I stop posting here as soon as I started? Because I'm a big chicken, that's why. I have been concerned that old friends and family members might search my name and find me here. Well, that was silly. All those "old friends" and family members have disowned me anyway, so I guess it shouldn't concern me. Here I am. I keep talking my partner's ear off about things and he says, "BLOG IT!" and then I don't blog it. Maybe I will now. To start off, here is a letter I sent in to Freeminds.org a couple of years ago. I went to look it up recently and it's all in Spanish for some reason and I couldn't find the original version on the site anymore. Maybe I just missed it. Jeremy said I should post it here and put a link to it on freeminds.org in case anyone stumbles onto it. Note that this is a very, very brief version of my "story." Here goes:

I was born into the fourth generation of a family of Witnesses. When I was eighteen I began to lose my faith. I tried so hard to guard my faith from my doubts. I had about a thousand reasons to stay in the organization and no reasons to leave. I thought my life was over. I had no support system outside the cult. I wanted to die. Indeed, I thought dying would be better than leaving, or staying within the organization, a hypocrite, a wolf in sheep's clothing. That's what I felt like.

I thought I could never leave. My upbringing was severe and extreme even for a Witness. It made me...weird. Other people didn't know how to approach me and I didn't know how to approach them. I was socially inept. I despaired of ever having a normal life. Then one day, I stumbled over Freeminds.org. I systematically devoured everything on the site - several times. Randy, the things I found gave me courage and understanding. I was so relieved to find that I wasn't crazy, I wept. Often. In the most difficult of times, I would return to the website to read everything over again.

Six years later, things are still difficult. I have finally left the organization. I have been disowned by some. I have lost my job twice because I left (I worked for a Witness). I have had rumors started about me. Recently I was diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder stemming from my childhood experiences as a Jehovah's Witness. I am going through a lot right now, and I know it may take years more for me to heal and have a normal life. But I do not regret my decision to leave.

I know that without the many personal accounts on freeminds.org attesting to the fact that there is life after the organization, I may never have been strong enough to leave. I think that I probably would have killed myself eventually. I knew that my parents would rather have lost me to suicide than to "Satan." They would have been able to tell themselves that I was ill, and Jehovah would have mercy on me. Suicide seemed like the most loving (!!) course of action at one time. I do feel that finding your site saved my life. It certainly saved my sanity. I can talk about it to "outsiders" until I'm blue in the face but the only people capable of truly understanding the impact being a Witness has made on my life, are other ex-Witnesses. It's taken me six years to finally reach out to other ex-Witnesses on the internet. I hope that it helps. And as I continue to grow and heal, I hope my own words can help others, the way the accounts on your site helped me. I feel like it's more or less my responsibility to help others like me.

Thank you for all you have done to help me and other people searching for truth and comfort and understanding. And courage. I don't have much money but I will do all I can to support Freeminds.org to the day I die. I really do believe you are saving people's lives, even if they never write in to tell you that. After all, it took me six years just to be able to write you this e-mail.

I have to add that it is very hard to convey the proper emotion through typed words! Please know that this is heartfelt.

Leila Benoit

Exorcismus

On Netflix, how I love and hate you! ... I like movies. A lot. So sometimes I take a chance on a movie I've never heard of, simply because I can watch it instantly. And sometimes those movies are great. Sometimes they aren't.

I like horror movies, which have an even lower rate of awesomeness than other genres. (Really? Blogger tells me that "Netflix" isn't a word, but "awesomeness" is?!) So I'm well prepared for most of the horror flicks I watch on Netflix (it is too a word, dammit!) to be a miss, but even so. I wasn't prepared for "Exorcismus" which by the way I'm not even sure how to pronounce. The first two pages of reviews on Netflix (YES IT IS!) were all positive so I stopped reading them, and pressed play.

Gag me with a spoon.

I wrote my first ever review on Netflix to try to counteract the awful good reviews there... then I found out reviews there have to be under 2000 characters. So I chopped up my review to make it fit. Now I get to post it here, where likely no one will ever read it but I will have had the satisfaction of posting the entire thing. Here goes:

I have never written a movie review before but for this, I had to, because the reviews on this movie are overwhelmingly positive. And they shouldn't be. Many of the reviewers say that if you don't like it, it's because you were expecting The Exorcist, or at least comparing this movie to that. I wasn't. This movie sucked all on it's own, without needing to be compared to any other movie.

The acting from the main actress is boring - everything is monotone; she has very little inflection in her voice. The other actors are generally alright, but no one stands out or is especially believable.

The characters themselves are unbelievable. Yeah, your teenage daughter attempts to drown your little boy and you don't at the very least remove one of them from the home? That's just one example of the many "Yeah right!" moments in this movie.

The plot is... tired, at best. I'm amazed to see so many reviews talking about how "original" and "new" the plot is. Um, it's not. Unless you yourself are the same age as the lead character. The plot is a reused version of just about every other exorcism-style movie out there, up until the "twist" which itself is laughable and not worth two wasted hours. Want to know what happens without wasting your time? Here goes!

Emma was mad at Mummy for slapping her when she came home drunk one late night; so she purposely invoked the devil, telling him she wanted to be free of her family. One by one, she eventually causes the deaths of everyone she "loves" - except Mummy, who gets the privilege of only being driven insane by the knowledge that her daughter did this all on purpose. The other "twist" is supposed to be that the priest - her uncle - purposely gave her the information needed to invoke the devil, in the hopes that she would, so he could film it and prove the existence of said devil. Honestly, this "twist" feels more like an offering to the viewer to hate the priest instead of the spoiled, selfish little girl who invoked the devil on purpose to help her be freed from her family (because she wanted to go to a regular school, and they said Not until next year). But, um... how does she get to be pardoned of blame just because Uncle Priest told her how to draw a pentagram (yeah, I'm serious - they make use of not only a pentagram but also a Ouija board, hence the tired plot); in my view she's still the guilty party.

I love horror films not only for the fright factor but also because many times they are disturbing and offer at least some food for thought. This movie was not frightening, suspenseful or disturbing in the slightest. It also was not thoughtful - not that I require a horror movie to be thoughtful. Through the whole movie I was vaguely irritated by how spoiled, uninteresting and unsympathetic the lead character was. Turns out, that was apparently the whole point - except they even disregard that possibility by attempting to make her seem heroic at the end - she is not. This movie was not worth watching. 

There. I feel a little better.