by JH 32 Replies latest jw friends
After being DF'd, I missed my younger siblings-that I had raised-and some friends so bad I got reinstated. During this time I also had a baby. Going back the sencond time was totally different. It was like taking the blinders off and taking a step back---suddenly, it was totally different. In our home, we looked happy on the inside, but in reality was miserable! At the KH, you could feel the hypocrisy. You could see all the fakeness.
Did I ever like it? HELL NO!!!!
shelley
I too was raised in it so didn't really know anything different.
I think I was happy, but not as happy as I could have been. I had a lot of friends and I enjoyed the social aspect. But I never felt like I was doing enough. The underlying reason I finally left was the feeling of being oppressed. I like to learn, grow, experience, and the meetings and studies were so elementary. Plus - being a woman in the borg does not offer much opportunity for growth.
I've been out now for a long time - about 15 years. I am much happier now. I have another life to compare the former JW way to and I realize how much happier I could have been back then.
But it's not a complete loss. I learned from it - learned not to believe everything I'm told, how to think for myself, and I developed courage and strength by standing up for myself and not bowing down to my family's pressures to return. Most of all - I learned how wonderful it is to be free.
In the back of my mind, even as a kid i always had Pauls words "If the dead are not to be raised let us eat, drink, for tomorrow we are to die". I always knew that there were other things I would rather be doing if it was not for Armageddon, and just hoped living a life of sacrifice was not all in vain.
I remember thinking that, too! And that I would rather live forever with my friends at school than with any witness I knew! I think being different at school & preaching the troof made me arrogant as well and although I liked the community aspect, I didn't really like many people at the hall. It was only later that I realised how much I hated it! I went to a psychologist for chronic depression a few years before I left & he advised me to leave. My reaction: 'he doesn't understand, it's the truth!' All sacrifice & little joy.
