Personal Narrative: The Jehovah Witnesses

During the early years of my life, my parents went through many arguments and had many disagreements. My mother became a Jehovah Witness and we were very active at church; the Jehovah Witnesses were my second family and brought endless peace into my life. Not only was my father against our religion but was also an alcoholic. The Jehovah Witnesses had such an uplifting influence in my struggling life but the more I chose to follow my mother and her new religion, the more distant I became from my father; in despair I saw my family break and my father drink in solitude.

Now, at the age of seventeen, it's hard to talk about the past and the way I felt at the age of seven. Nevertheless, I must begin to say that as a child, all I wanted was for my parents to compromise and provide a happy life for me to live along with my older sister, but their different religious views resulted in the lack of communication in our family and financial instability.
Every Saturday my mother and I, along with other Jehovah Witnesses would make our way to specific apartment complexes as early as sunrise.
We would split up and begin to knock on doors. I watched my mother as she introduced herself, hand out one of the various religious magazines for them to read, and consider them to come and join us for the next assembly at our church. Being a Jehovah Witness shaped me into a disciplined and responsible individual. Likewise, I learned to be giving, respectful, patient, humble, and above all, hard working. My morals were always high and I made my mother proud. On the other hand, my father would bash my mother and our new
religion.

I felt like I filled him with shame.

I was too young to understand how my father felt throughout my early years, but now, with clarity, and with great intuition, the least I can say is that he felt alone and unimportant, blaming the Jehovah Witnesses for breaking his relationship with my mother. Occasionally, he would aggressively hold us in our home, refusing to let us go to our church meetings; I was scared of my own father. Things progressively worsened and my mother would start conflicts. While my mother and I worried about our house and many other financial obligations, I also worried about my father’s health. The sad truth is that he would drink more and more each day, spending most of his pay checks consequently. As a result, our family suffered through a very long time. Being financially unstable is difficult and I never want to have a family before providing financial stability. I greatly value my education and aspire to learn more; it's the only way to achieve success and comfort. I wish my sister would have had my mother’s guidance, because she was lost during that time; I witnessed the many wrong choices she made and the consequences that came after, but that's a whole different story.

I advised my mom to get a divorce.