Two years ago I finally "got" it that the "truth" wasn't the truth. I developed an exit strategy that was, I think, very well thought out, using to my advantage all I'd learned in the organization over the years. During that time, I saw a number of people come and go. Some went in a blaze of glory, or so they thought, only to be publicly disparaged by their former brothers and sisters. Others just drifted away and disappeared, leaving their former friends to assume they had gotten weak spiritually or "caught up in Satan's snare."
I realized that if you leave they're going to talk about you no matter what, but ironically they think less of you if you show some guts and flip 'em the finger just before you slam the door behind you.
Since I had family still in, that was not an option for me. So I chose the fade, drafted a plan, worked the plan, and slowly drifted away. Well, not so slowly. Once we stopped going, it was hard to make an occasional appearance so pretty soon we just stopped showing up at all. We staged a fake "move" to another congo and while in the end it didn't fool anybody, it bought us some time. Through it all, almost no one has bothered to call to see how we were or if we died (). And that's been just fine with us, although it speaks volumes about what we used to call "the truth" that you can give so much of your time and energy for so many years and then walk away and not attract any attention from the very people who had insisted they'd die for you.
Now it's been a year and a half since we were inside a KH or at any meeting whatsoever, and my entire family is out. They all took a page from our book and bailed; they were, it seems, just looking for a signal that it was okay to split. What a relief that was, let me tell you.
We have spent this time wisely, doing the recovery work, making new friends, finding new interests and productive ways to occupy our time. We are now at the point that if we got a call asking us to meet with the elders, we'd just ignore them. If we are DF'd tomorrow, we could care less. The only small concern we have now is that, while we've successfully cut almost all our ties to the dubs, there are still a few JW's we deal with often in a small but lucrative family business. We're not sure what will happen when this handful of dubs, who are in a different congo than we were, finds out that we've bolted from the flock. But as time goes by, we've come to realize that it would just be awkward. It would not be a life-changing event. It's that realization, that they have no hold over you, that you seek to find. Once you get to that point, the fade is complete.
