Thank you for your post. I thought about the word "happy" for a long time in relation to how I felt as a Witness.
I don't think happy ever had anything to do with it. I truly wanted to worship God in a way that pleased him. I felt that it was God's requirements that were important, and not anything that I wanted. So I wasn't looking for personal happiness. I wanted it, of course, but that just wasn't my primary reason for studying the Bible.
I took everything the Witnesses said as truth-hook, line and sinker. Did it make me happy or did I enjoy it immensely? No, really after many years I began to be on automatic pilot as I was so busy I never had time to think, much less consider whether my life was happy.
Even when I began to have nagging doubts, as in 1995, when I looked around the hall and no one else seemed to be concerned, I thought it was me. I felt more and more guilty because of having feelings of never measuring up, so I realize now that I was really beginning to become quite miserable. I know it is ridiculous, but when I was sick, I was happy because I truly had a reason not to go to meetings. Otherwise, I would never miss.
If my teenage daughter was not treated in such a humiliating, cruel way by "spiritual shepherds" would I ever have left? Or would I just eventually lose my mind from the stress? I don't know.
Really, did I want to live in a beautiful earth free from sickness, death and crime? Yep, did. But if I have to swallow changing doctrine at someone's whim, and worst of all, good old boys who treat young girls with no dignity and demean them without mercy, well, no thanks.
Am I happier now? Well, after all that has happened to my family, I am happy to be alive because for two years I didn't know if I could take the pain of the dissilutionment. But not happy. Someday I hope to be.
Thanks to people like you who are helping to expose the WTS, there is hope.