Firstly I enjoyed your OP. The earthquake analogy is a good one. The line about not being in love with your hatred for the WT was also something I can relate to.
There seems to be a grieving process to waking up to this stuff. I think that process is different for each person depending on a lot of factors. Some of those factors being - how deep of a believer the person was to begin with - how sensitive a personality the person has - and what consequences potentially await the person.
Now I will get to the questions...
A) Where are you in your recovery stage?
I'm not sure how to answer that exactly, but I will try. I think I am still in the final stages of letting go emotionally. Being a born-in and a true believer and defender of the religion for so long, it is a hard thing to admit emotionally, not to mention the emotions of seeing your imagined hopes dissolve. I know that the hopes were a fantasy, but we didn't know that at the time. The old you is still slightly alive inside and is hard to contend with at times. Part of me wants this "new truth" to be wrong. It would be so much easier. I still wake up each day and this ttatt thing is what comes to my mind. It's like I ask myself, "Are those thoughts still there? Do I still feel the same way? Did I snap out of it? Any easy solution come from my slumber?" Everyday it's the same, though. Nothing changes. Actually I progress slowly to increased conviction that the WT theology is a fiction and more than that, the bible is nothing more than an ancient book sprinkled with few flashes of wisdom.
Just to put it out there, there is a youtuber that really resonated with me and helped me put the final nail in the coffin intellectually. You can find the videos by searching for "Joy of Unwitnessing". It is a numbered series of videos on his channel. He "unwitnesses" to a friend and recounts the points he made to her. It was very eye-opening for me to hear it put the way he did.
I also benefited from reading some of Thomas Paine's (1737-1809) writings on the bible. One point that was incredible was the point that the spinning sword guarding the garden of eden had to be a mistake in the fictional story since swords had not been invented yet. It is a bronze age insertion into a story about the stone age. Incredible how people saw through this stuff well before Russell was even born.
B) How long did it take to get where you are?
Over 3 years.
C) And where do you hope to be a year from now?
I am a serving elder married to a quite devout JW wife. It is a slow painful process of backing away. The extent of my fading so far is getting off the service committee. I hope to back away from my elder stuff altogether soon. In a perfect world, my wife would endorse that move. I so wish that she could be on the same page as me with this. It's heartbreaking. We are really close. Like I can barely think of couples I know that are closer than us. I think part of my problem (and probably from my JW upbring and indoctrination) is that I am not really emotionally equipped to lose her and everybody else in my life. So..... I take it slow. Day by day.
I hope to be further along a year from now. I hope my wife wakes up more. I would say she is probably 10-20% awake compared to a few years ago, but not nearly enough. She is still in the stage where she says, "but it's still Jehovah's organization", "Jehovah will fix things in his due time", "Jehovah's organization has had corruption in the past", blah blah blah.
So anyway, sorry to get long-winded. Thanks for the thoughtful OP. Take care.
