I'll join the ranks of the higher power levels and say that I'm still in (not really by choice, obviously) but not mentally. This thread is pretty spot on, and this is a criticism I've had about the "other side of the coin", so to speak: they never really seem to let the past go, despite making what is really an incredibly difficult choice to make. Because the thing about the JWs is that if you're born into it it really is all you know. Sure, you may go to a public school or have one or two worldly friends and when you go to work you may make a nice acquaintance with everyone there, but you merely exist on the fringes of greater society, you don't exist WITHIN it. Because the congregation and the greater JW society at large is your "tribe" and is all you've ever known.
It's actually kind of difficult to really describe or put into words, although this thread gets close, because it's so insular and the terminology so specific that if you were to try to explain to any normal person on the street they'd look at you fucking crazy. And choosing to leave officially and not fading basically puts you out into the world on your own, which can be pretty devastating if you aren't already set up right.
Which brings me to the point I was going with because I can't understand all that sacrifice and you just...do shit like this. A move like that to any average person would probably mentally crush them or at least set them back heavily for years if not decades, so to do it, and then never let it go, and simmer in your own resentment...it's beyond me. Frankly I think it's shameful. Because frankly this is something I wouldn't wish on a worse enemy, the mental instability, the unclear familial boundaries of showing love one second and then coldness the next (and a fun fact is that JWs have way more mental illness in their ranks than most organized religions, but that seems obvious from this thread, yeah)?, the stifling and repressed atmosphere at any given turn. I know this may not really be the point to this thread, but it's why I don't really stay around these spaces in any real capacity. I learned that years ago.
