Mysterious,
Wow. You really nailed it. I read the first couple of replies and thought, What? It didn't suck? I thought it did! Of course, we are all different, so the experience affects us differently. That having been said. There is a lot of feeling in your post. I relate strongly to those feelings. I never felt superior to the kids around me. I felt like an idiot.
The thing that might be unusual about my experience is that I have had some wild swings here. Growing up, I hated it. We had one kid my age in our congo, and he didn't really take it seriously either. I had an aunt (non dub) that was really close to my age. So I hung out with her and her friends. Whether my parents realized it or not, most of my close friends were worldly. I think they mostly just felt sorry for me. I don't think I pondered "The issue of Universal Sovereignty" as a kid, but I thought the whole religion was a bunch of garbage, and was embarrased to be stuck in it.
My parents were very restrictive, and I was stubborn and rebellious. I almost moved out at 17. My step dad of course thought that was a bad idea, and in retrospect I agree with him. But I felt I couldn't take it anymore. He made a deal that he would ease up on the restrictions if I agreed to stay until I was 18. I did, but at 18 I was out and never went back.
The weird thing about it is that it was a couple of years after I moved out that I got serious about the religion. The relationship between my step dad and I improved dramatically. For the first time, I felt accepted by him. I thought maybe that I had not given the religion a fair shot. I liked a lot of the things the religion supposedly stood for, like helping our neighbors. Anyway, I dove in head first and ended up thouroughly involved in the religion througout my twenties.
In the end, I decided I was right the first time. During my fade, I remember feeling really detached. They had me run the sound system. I remember sitting there, all the way in the back and all by myself, feeling like I was watching the meeting through a glass window. It took awhile to go from feeling that some in the the organization had problems to the whole organization had problems to the basis for the religion wasn't true at all. That was a shock. I had the same feelings about boundries mentioned by Mysterious and JWFacts. The way I explain it, the belief structure wass so rigid and inflexible that when it was really stressed, it couldn't bend or even crack. It just shattered. And there I was trying to figure out what the boundries should be, with no guidence at all. I rejected the guidence I had received to that point, because I couldn't trust the org anymore. And I didn't feel I could turn to another religion, as I had been taught for so long that all religions besides this one were useless. It was a real struggle not to just go to the opposite extreme, as I have seen some others do - what I call the pendulum effect. There can be so much anger when pushing away from this religion that you just want to break every rule they pushed at you. That is not a good idea.
I have the feeling of detachment that I mentioned earlier when I think about my past in the org. I was such a different person then that it doesn't feel like it was me. It feels like I am reading it out of a book.
