Hi to all,
I am not posting this to justify my actions, I am doing so for the benifit of any witnesses who are unsure about there feelings toward the "Truth". YOU ARE NOT ALONE
I was a reguler pioneer for about 8 yrs, back when it was 100 hours a month, befor thet I did a couple of yrs as a vacation pioneer, they later changed the name to auxilery pioneer, and during the following 20 yrs I had a few intermitant spells as an auxilery when I had time to. During my pioneer years I have given talks at Circuit assemblies and had assignments at District assemblies
As to why I left, no one reason, I suppose a build up of things that just didn't seem right, some of which I will bring up in time and some that are too personal to air in public.
Almost anything in life you do is good at first but the longer you do something the greater the chance that you will come across an aspect of that thing that you don't like, and thats the same with the organisation. As the years passed my knowledge grew, not only of the scriptures but of how the congregations are run, and even more so the people that are running them.
In every congregation thers always elders that become more dominant than others and strive for leadership, the problems start when you get these dominant elders palling up together, you know the routeen, always round each others houses for meals, wives always pairing up with each other on the ministry. before you know it the elders with the weaker personality are working behind the book counter instead of taking the watchtower study and the dominant elders are slowly getting a tighter grip on the congregation. And of course they have a large influence on who gets appointed and thus ther grip gets even stronger because they can appoint others like minded to themselves, ( ever wonder why certain ones in the cong always seemed to get overlooked ).
Power corrupts, total power corrupts totally.
This sort of thing doesn't happen over night it's a slow process, so if your in the org for anything less than 10 yrs you probably don't notice it so easily.
I was raised as a witness, am now in my early 50's and only realised less than 12 months ago I have to get out.
I feel my life has been wasted, taken from me, yes I am bitter, I still lose sleep over it often, but I am slowly starting to feel a heavy weight has been lifted from my back.
I aim to do something usefull with the rest of my days. I am lucky that I have an amazing wife to help me.
PS: I have now moved to another part of London where no one knows me