Le mie tre vite. Scoprirsi gay tra i testimoni di Geova

Testimonianza invitaci da Ste

Cari amici, Grazie per la buona volontà e l’impegno che mettete nella realizzazione del Progetto Gionata. Unire gli individui che possono condividere un’esperienza comune è qualcosa che mi affascina molto perché con l’ascolto e la comprensione reciproci è possibile avanzare nel cammino con maggior forza e determinazione. Desidero condividere la mia testimonianza ed esperienza.
Nasco 36 anni fa in una famiglia di testimoni di Geova. La mia infanzia è tranquilla e nella nostra casa l’ambiente è sereno e accogliente.

A contribuire a questa situazione è l’applicazione dei valori cristiani di base come lo spirito di sacrificio, il valore della famiglia, la volontà di rimanere uniti nonostante le difficoltà, valori in parte assimilati dalle famiglie dei miei nonni (non dai testimoni di Geova) e rafforzati poi con la fede dei miei genitori.
A scuola la convivenza con gli altri è pacifica, ma l’esperienza di essere “diverso” in termini religiosi mi dà l’opportunità di dover cercare dentro di me e presso la mia famiglia il sostegno necessario per vivere come parte di una minoranza. La vita nella comunità religiosa è appagante per il bambino che ero, i talenti sono valorizzati e ci sono molti amici con gli stessi valori con cui posso giocare.

Fin da che ho memoria, ricordo comunque che nel mio mondo immaginario, vedevo me stesso in una vita affettiva futura con una persona del mio stesso sesso, ma questo non costituiva un problema per me, mi sembrava assolutamente naturale e non potevo concepire che fosse altrimenti, considerata l’innocenza dell’età.
Durante la pre-adolescenza un’amicizia con un mio compagno di fede conosce l’esperienza dell’intimità fisica per molti mesi. Ricordo molto bene che i miei sentimenti erano misti e vivevo in uno stato costante di turbamento, come in un eterno contrasto con due parti di me.
Credo che i miei intuissero qualche cosa, così come pure i genitori del mio amico. Ma sarebbe stato troppo imbarazzante forse affrontare l’argomento. Non lo affrontai mai con nessuno. Cercai di lasciarmi alle spalle quel periodo, facendo finta di nulla.

But my teenage thoughts were clearly addressed to me, nevertheless I dissociated myself from that part of me who never emerged in public but remained hidden them inside my mind. I thought that my parents and friends would not have liked all this and I didn't want to be placed on the margins or excluded from the social life of my circle. The acceptance was therefore a priority on the expression of my orientation.
I continued on my own to read other publications not of the company (of Jehovah's Witnesses), looking for deeper answers that I did not find in the publications of my community. I had to get out of the shell, explore the world. What had always been defined as "the wishes of the world" attracted me enormously.

I met many other friends within the organization, boys of my age, with whom sexuality was a taboo theme, but with which you could easily find the opportunity to go out around for discos and parties, trying to forget the inner conflicts with fun and alcohol.
They were evidently on the edge of the organization, and were considered as bad companies.
This type of life satisfied my ego, I could remain within the community and have a double life by experiencing the high. For a few years my life passed like this. Week of work and eyes on Friday in view of a buzzing weekend. I was dependent on this.
Although not officially left the organization, I was inactive, it was evident that I had no more interest in the faith and activities of the Congregation.
I had become arrogant, presumptuous and a little selfish, something I liked had been forbidden and I saw the observant brothers like poor people who did not know what they were losing.

All in all, in all the "day after" of the weekend I felt empty and useless. The friendships were now only friendships for a drink and I missed the relationship with someone to really love. I tried with a girl witness to Jehovah who really loved me, he knew about my non -orthodox life, but was willing to accept me as I was.
I tried for a year, but I didn't feel anything, I thought I was unable to love. During the meetings with her I always were looking for an excuse to escape and go around the clubs, I repeatedly told him to feel "different" and I still don't know if she really understood the meaning of those words of mine.

During a 2005 Christmas, while I was still with her, I had several days of crying. I decided at that moment that I wanted and I had to have a story with a boy to be able to understand this experience.
I started attending chats and I met different people, some also personally. During March 2006, a short time later I met a very particular boy in chat, he was different from all the others, in some way very "spiritual" and full of attention, genuine, true, despite the many apparent contradictions.
We started to attend and so at a certain point I realized that I made a triple life: one in the family and with my "girl", one in the clubs and with "high" friends, one with my new friend and boy. It was really too much.

I broke with my girlfriend, who later crossed a dark period because of our breakdown. I threw myself in this new adventure for the first time with a boy who came from a completely different reality from mine. With no awareness of how to love a person of my own sex. It wasn't easy, but I loved him, or I thought I loved him deeply. However, the "social" life with all its addictions and slavery still disheartened me, I couldn't really understand the person who was next to me with all his complexities.

Between ups and downs, 2012 came: my selfishness had certainly grown and I had certainly thought of understanding what he wanted to say. But not to the end. I was alone in my story with him. No one else to truly trust and with which to speak with. Because of his difficult childhood and some problems of psychic and emotional stability, we passed a few really bad and dark months, which I will not tell here in detail.
Life seemed to me so dark and traits without meaning. For several months every day I sketched the tears for the sadness and anguish of seeing my only true companion in that depressing and dark state and I passed the moments before sleeping in the prey to the tears of despair.
I felt that I was wrong something or maybe everything, I felt that perhaps for many years I had made a mistake. I had not really accepted and understood who I was and so I couldn't even understand and accept those in front of me.

Fortunately, in all those years I had never stopped looking for a "different spirituality" and this maintained, albeit in a raffazzonata and approximate way, this side of the human being.
In 2011 I met the master Omraam Mikhail Aivanhov, I met him only on paper and in benical thought, he had died on the ground in 1986.
I always remembered that sentence of him: "If in your life something is wrong as you would like, ask yourself if you are working in the right way" and still "the only weapon in front of darkness, is purity".

On a night in August, in the grip of total despair, I tried to do what I had never really never done in my whole life: I prayed, I prayed to God, the one I had known as Jehovah.
I asked him to purify me and help me and my walking companion walking in the light. I abandoned all the practices that slavit me.
"You will know the truth and the truth will make you free". I had to try, I had to try to change me before I could eventually help someone else on his way.

Within a month I freed myself from those I considered normal practices: smoking, alcohol, pornography, obsessive and disturbing sexual thoughts. I felt better and I am convinced that only a higher force can have helped me in this path. With my partner we began to seriously deal with our journey as men, trying to understand what he meant to be men.
We decided to undertake this common path with prayer and reflection on spiritual thoughts. We tried to conquer what perhaps we had not, nor I nor he, truly never received: faith.
Faith in a superior nature of man, faith in love, that faith of which Jesus spoke when he said "if you have faith as a mustard grain you can move the mountains". We also decided to have the humility to ask the support of a psychologist to be able to compare ourselves together and really share all the thoughts together in a common path.

I understood that the past of Jehovah's Witness could not be simply erased. I understood that the place I had left was what he had sowed the seed of faith in me, who until then had never sprouted. But it is there that I had known the message of Jesus and that so much force gives me today.
I returned to the room of the kingdom and I understood that even there there can be the Spirit of God, so that it spreads through men. Men who are imperfect and sometimes full of fears, such as that for homosexuality.
In the same place where I found damnation I also found a way of salvation. The denial of my sexual orientation has probably brought me to a path of pain and suffering, which perhaps would have been abbreviated if the space had been found in the family and in the community to face and constructively, without fear, this theme.

I know well that probably my future will not be within the Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses, but I also know that I had to integrate this aspect of my life in me. I had to find my childhood and my childhood was there. It is only from there that I can start again.
To date, I am not an active part of any religious community but I recognize my Christian origins very well and I believe I have to somehow contribute to making it the lack of acceptance of homosexuality 'is not a deception to make it lose faith and hope . As Pope Francis says: don't let anyone steal hope. It is the most important thing for a man.