I believe that living this lie is causing me great internal conflict and on some level keeps me from achieving my dreams, or for that matter even creating success in my life.
That's where I was a couple of years ago before I started my fade. I wondered if it would blow up in ugly confrontations, and I wondered if I should write off most of my family and just walk away. I wasn't sure if that was the only way I'd be happy and be able to get on with my life.
However, I talked to some "worldly" people about my situation. And they revealed that despite having close families, some didn't talk about politics with their parents/kids/siblings. Others didn't talk about religion. To keep the peace, they talked about everything else, and got along pretty well, except for occasional jabs. With that I knew that I'd feel terribly guilty if I was the one to cause the confrontation and walk away from my family. Particularly after talking to non-JW friends, they recommended that I try to preserve the relationships as long as the other side was respectful of me. Plenty here on the board have had to deal with family and friends that were completely unyielding and have been treated horribly. But certainly in my old hall, enough had family that had faded that the elders already knew not to rock the boat and leave faders alone. And I'd already employed enough tactics that the BoE was glad to see me move away.
But the big thing for me was that I needed to figure out what I wanted, what would give me a feeling of success, what are my dreams? Some of it I'm still not sure. But I moved away to university and stopped attending meetings, leaving my cards back at my parents' congregation. I'm close enough to go back and visit once a month or so. I spend time with family and friends, but don't go to the meetings. None of them have been confrontational about it. I was most anxious when I went back for the funeral of a JW relative. I stuck close to my siblings during the visitation/funeral/meal, they are also faded/fading. Nobody gave us any grief as had happened to one of my sisters a few years ago. There are plenty of problems in the congregation that they didn't need to create problems for us. I've had enough conversations with cousins that they understand that I know exactly what I'm doing. More than anything, they just seem really glad to see me and not have to talk about any JW stuff. So our relationships have actually gotten much more interesting. Yes, it has been work on my part, and I do have the help of a psychologist, and reading all the experiences on the board has been encouraging and interesting.
JW issues still give me internal conflict and I often worry about confrontations that so for have never happened. So I suppose I should count my blessings, study, plan fun stuff on the weekend, and start thinking about an my senior design project.
