Still, I wasn't quite prepared for the monster lurking between the pages of Kyria Abraham's memoir, I'm Perfect, You're Doomed: Tales from a Jehovah's Witness Upbringing. There as little in life as confusing and mysterious to the everyday public school child than the classroom/school district's one or two families of Jehovah's Witnesses. Who are they? How are they always so neat? Why don't they say the pledge of allegiance, and what is so wrong with birthdays? I picked up the book hoping to learn a little more about the murky, enigmatic world of Jehovah's Witnesses. I got about ten times what I had bargained for. Along with a good amount of information about the religion came a life story just as entertaining as it is horrifying. No matter how many boyfriends you've had that can't sleep if their CD collection isn't in alphabetical order, you are not prepared for the insanity of Kyria Abraham's life.
Kyria Abrahams is a Jehovah's Witness. She is a Jehovah's Witness because she was born into a family of Jehovah's Witnesses, a community of Jehovah's Witnesses, a nation-wide connection of Jehovah's Witnesses. So, in short, she is a Jehovah's Witness because she was never given a choice; like the other kids in her community, she isn't even aware that any other type of life exists. However, this doesn't stop her from describing the early years of her life with ridiculous, laugh out loud, beautifully sharp humor. The first few chapters of I'm Perfect, You're Doomed had me reading out loud to whoever was in the room or on the other end of the phone, laughing too hard to finish some of my sentences. It was a riot to see a religion so notorious looked at through the eyes of a child. Kyria doesn't understand why her family finds birthdays evil, she just knows that if she happens to walk in on a birthday celebration, she will burst into flames. She lives in constant fear of the “worldy” people and things that lurk around the edges of her JW bubble – the kids at school, certain days of the year, even something as simple as a garage sale. “The best way to get possessed by Satan was to pull your car off to the side of the road, walk up a stranger's driveway, and buy something at his yard sale. The devil was lurking in eery creepy antique book and every doll with broken glass eyes. It seemed all evil spirits did in their spare time was hang out in people's cedar chests finding old photos and backward-masked tapes to jump into.” But instead of throwing a 27 chapter pity-party, Abrahams decides to grab her unconventional and unfortunate childhood by the throat and throttle it, much to my delight.
It seems a shame to write so little about the funny portion of I'm Perfect, You're Doomed, because it really was fantastic. But this knee-smacking, tear-wiping humor only lasts until Kyria's memoir hits her teen years, barely more than a few chapters. At this point, the tone of the book begins to change. She starts exploring what every kid does when they start losing control of their hormones – rebellion, experimentation, irresponsible living. However, Kyria, perhaps because of her extremely sheltered and uptight upbringing, takes these ideas to a whole new level. Because pre-marital sex (pre-marital anything, really) is enough to get a Jehovah's Witness disfellowshipped, members of the religion tend to rush into marriage very young. Kyria's parents are a perfect example of this, and they live a miserable, dysfunctional life. Between this and the very conditional love that Kyria receives from her family and congregation, she doesn't understand real love or friendship; she exhausts herself trying to find attention and affection from anyone and everyone in the most blatantly backwards of ways.
What happened to the girl in the white dress, twirling and giggling through a childhood laden with fear and ridiculous requests? Somehow, before our very eyes, Kyria grew into a teenager schizophrenic with irrational fears and a craving for love so strong she can't even begin to understand it. What began as a lighthearted, lilting look into the life of a child in an unusual circumstance suddenly became a mix of horror novel and self-help book. Suddenly Kyria is binge drinking, cutting herself, dropping out of school, playing with fire in terms of sexual experiences. She is fighting to marry a boy she barely knows at seventeen to escape her parents house without garnering a mighty smiting from Jehovah. Because the Jehovah's Witnesses believe that whatever you are meant to have, Jehovah will provide, they are vehemently against higher education and “real” jobs. So, with no chance of future in front of her, what's stopping Kyria from laying in bed all day with a bottle of Apricot Brandy? Why shouldn't she marry Alan, a part time math teacher and fellow Jehovah's Witness, so she can know what sex feels like? She is barreling towards the ground already with no safety net – there's no reason not to do a few twists and turns on the way down.
The reader is forced to watch, silently, as Kyria falls farther and farther from grace. Every adult she knows is miserable, uneducated, and longing for a new life (or at least a divorce) – how is she supposed to know that any other type of life exists? And so she signs herself up for the JW Special – a hearty helping of dysfunctional marriage, financial issues, and complete monotony. With a side helping of 3 meetings per week at the neighborhood Kingdom Hall.
“I discovered that cutting myself had an interesting side effect – it momentarily distracted me from soul-crushing depression. The razor blade was a sneeze that jerks you awake after driving all night on the highway. I had a pressure inside me that needed to be released, needed to trickle out. Otherwise, the pain would be trapped in my body like a wounded cartoon character pushing down a bump on his head, only discover it popping out from its foot.”
As things get worse and worse, it feels like you're in the audience of a terror flick, standing and screaming at the young girl on the screen. Don't open the door! Don't go in there! Or in this case, its more like, Don't walk down that aisle! Put down that razor blade! Through the intimate anecdotes shared in the first half of the book, its hard not to feel an attachment to Kyria, the sweet, potential-laden young girl. So watching her drink and cut herself into submission before she can even legally buy her own liquor is downright painful. But then the book, which seems to house multiple personalities (Kyria is, self proclaimed, “completely insane”), takes yet another turn.
“During the ceremony, I burst into sobs so huge I couldn't even open my mouth to say 'I do.' […] One photo of me in front of the Kingdom Hall looks like I put on a bridal veil just to discover that someone had stabbed my hamster in the heart.
'You okay, K?' Dad asked, putting his dressed-up-father-of-the-bride arm around me. I knew I had to go inside and walk down an aisle and get married, but tears were uncontrollably streaming down my face. 'Are you having second thoughts about this wedding or something?'
'No, Daddy, I don't know why I'm crying,' I said. This was true. I really didn't know. This whole thing was so overwhelming, it was like asking your cat why it flipped out when you put it into a plastic carrier.”
There was never a doubt that Kyria's marriage would be DOA. After the wedding, the two young adults are stuck in an apartment together, finally having to get to know each other past boutonniere colors and favorite cake flavors. Alan, who is greasy, horny, and intensively passive aggressive, won't let Kyria work part-time. Although at first all of this free time away from home seemed ideal, watching “worldly” television and daytime drinking eventually lost its appeal. And so what little glue there was holding Kyria's life together starts to unravel - desperate to escape the underage marriage she never should have requested, she begins on a series of conquests to try to convince her asshole of a husband to let her have a divorce. There's cheating, screaming, fighting, suicide attempts. Kyria fornicates her way through Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and New England with a series of cringe-worthy losers, right on par with the guy she married in the first place. But she's finally doing what she should have had the chance to do much earlier – experiencing growth and loss, experimenting with her ability to make mistakes and suffer the repercussions. And with these new feelings she is beginning to understand exactly why she was always forbidden to have them; they allow her to question and doubt the life she has always known.
“Jehovah was supposed to be loving and forgiving. The point of being a Christian was that no matter how you sinned against God, there was always a way back. Thievery? Murder? Stabbing a baby with a chopstick, then spinning it acrobatically between two plates? Just say you're sorry, really mean it, and God's gotta give ou a second chance. If Jehovah could forgive a thieving,m raping, baby spinner, why should it even be a sin for a teenager to want a divorce?”
Watching Kyria fall is like seeing a bird being hunted. When you're on the ground and the bird is in the sky, it looks like an angel – but once it falls and lands at your feet, you see that its just a tangled mess of feathers, just as mortal and delicate as the rest of us. By the end of the book, Kyria is little more than a rumpled mass of feathers at your feet.
Kyria Abrahams recorded the most humiliating, heinous moments of her life for a solid purpose. Once the final page was turned, it was impossible for me to not take a careful look at my religion, my faith, and my upbringing, and study the role that they play in my present life. Am I living a certain way because it was handed to me or shoved down my throat, or because its what I truly believe and want? Am I on the correct path, or am I simply continuing for fear of having to backtrack and wander? Kyria bears her soul to the reader, as confused and unclean as it may be, and causes the reader to take a look at their own in response. In some ways, these are the best types of books – the ones that make you stop and reconsider your very existence, to study the verbs that together narrate your life.
At its brightest, I'm Perfect, You're Doomed is an idiosyncratic memoir laced with humor, a tinge of sadness, and the terrifying truth of what can happen when religious beliefs overcome practicality and the natural instinct to survive. At its darkest, the book is an uncomfortable, heart wrenching string of moments linked by disorders and compulsions; a car accident you simply must study as you pass. Either way, its intelligently written and jumps directly off of the page, running around your mind spouting Bible verses and apocalyptic warnings.
“'Jehovah,' I said. 'I'm sorry. Look, its nothing against you or the Jehovah's Witnesses, all this disfellowshipping. I don't want to die at Armageddon and I don't want to sin against you. But I hope you'll understand […] there's no other way out.'
A pine tree might have moved. I stared into it like God had a tree house in there and was just biding his time, waiting for me to throw a handful of marbles.
'If you really exist, and if Jehovah's Witnesses are really the one, true religion, God, please give me a sign. If you'll give me a sign, I promise I'll repent, I'll stay married, I'll come back to the organization, I'll sit in the back of the Kingdom Hall, I'll be a Jehovah's Witness forever. I promise, God. I'm not trying to be a bad person. I just don't know what to do. Please, Jehovah, just tell me what to do.'
The pine tree did what pine trees do. It stood in one place.”
you are brilliant, sarah. this post is thought-provoking and makes me want to drop everything i am doing and immediately rush to the library to find this book. thank you again for starting this blog. i love it!
ReplyDelete