I’m Perfect, You’re Doomed
Tales from a Jehovah’s Witness upbringing.
Written by Filed under Arts & Entertainment, Life
Kyria Abrahams, author of “I’m Perfect, You’re Doomed.”
Growing up in a Jehovah’s Witness household in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, during the 1980s, Kyria Abrahams found it a challenge to stay on the straight and narrow. According to her parents, evil lurked everywhere—especially in all things popular and enticing to a sheltered young girl, including jewelry (“witch trinkets”), the Smurfs (“little blue demons”), Dungeons & Dragons (especially Advanced Dungeons & Dragons), and “sinful and pornographic” pinup magazines like Tiger Beat and Teen Beat. If Kyria believed her mom & dad, keeping free from the lure of spiritism was a life and death matter, a choice between eternal salvation and a fiery death at Armageddon.
To make a long story short, Abrahams didn’t make the right choice. Upon turning 18, she found herself married to man she didn’t love, committed adultery, and was soon “disfellowshipped”—exiled from the only world she had ever known. In her recently-released book, “I’m Perfect, You’re Doomed: Tales from a Jehovah’s Witness Upbringing” (Touchstone), the now thirty-something Abrahams explores the “ironic absurdity” of her youth, and how she was saved, if you will, by the same kind of worldy people she used to pray would be smitten by God’s wrath.
Following is Abraham’s dialogue with Failure, in which she explains the implications of being disfellowshipped, offers her take on organized religion, and opines on how to react if Jehovah’s Witnesses show up on your doorstep.
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