Wasn't born into the truth, but my parents started studying when I was an infant so it's all I've ever known. I was blessed with educated, liberal-minded parents who wouldn't let me celebrate my birthday or perform in school Christmas concerts, but still allowed me to hang out with "worldly" kids - go over after school, sleep over, have worldly kids over, and so on. They also nurtured a strong sense of creativity and intellectualism in me and my siblings: we all learned musical instruments and were encouraged to develop our talents in whatever field we showed promise. My parents are very strong lovers of art and music, which, I was to learn as time went on, was quite rare in the JWs since they all believe that one day all of humanity's soul-stirring, earth-shaking achievements in art and music are going to be destroyed in favour of WT magazine photos and the fucking songbook. Somehow my parents seem to have managed to ignore that clause in their eternal salvation.
I don't ever remember being physically disciplined at a Kingdom Hall, when other children I knew were. I went to public schools and made lifelong friends much more interesting than JW kids, and my parents let me know early on that I was expected to go to university - and to pay my own way, which I have. They never told me to be a pioneer or take a shitty job, and they really only insisted on service once or twice a month (my father has never been big on service; in fact I've only seen him out a half-dozen times my entire life). There was never any pressure for me to become a publisher or get baptized - in fact I am the only one of my siblings who is baptized, to my everlasting regret. I credit my parents and their relative flexibility for my own relatively well-adjusted social life and personality, in spite of my upbringing in the JWs. I know lots of other young people who weren't so lucky. If I ever have kids, I hope I can employ the same parenting skills as my parents while combining them with a normal childhood experience for them. The day my first child celebrates his or her first birthday is going to be a triumph a lifetime in the making.
This is assuming I can overcome the one social maladjustment left to me by my religious upbringing: a total lack of social skill with the fairer sex. One thing my mother was always pretty strict about (I don't think my father would have minded, but my parents did have a kind of weird idea about spheres of spousal power) was that she didn't want me hanging around with worldly girls (she still doesn't, hahaha), and the ones at the Hall were sure nothing to write home about. Certainly none of them ever appealed to me as a potential wife, which is the only concept JWs have of intersexual relationships. So I've never had a girlfriend and I'm a total loser with women. Having to turn down girls in high school is one of my deepest regrets, especially now when I'm virtually the only single guy in my group of friends and all the girls in this town seem to know me as the guy from the weird religion.
Ah well. Can't win 'em all. On the whole I think I came out pretty lucky for a JW - many others seem to have had genuinely terrible experiences and you all have my sympathies and condolences for the times when it didn't go right, and for all the lost chances and opportunities. I would like to encourage everyone, no matter what your circumstances might be, that it's never too late or too impossible. The past is dead, the future is unknown - all that matters is who you are and what you are going to do right now. It sounds sappy but I think it really is true.