Occasionally the enormity of it all just comes flooding back in on me. At times it just seems so overwhelming. At times it seems so incredibly fantastic so as to be unbelievable. They say truth is stranger than fiction. I think that is true in my case. At times it seems so strange that comprehending the enormity of it and the impact in my life is elusive at best; humbling and self-defeating at worst.

I knew something was wrong when I left, but I wasn't sure what. I just knew that for me to pursue my life and my feelings felt more right to me than continuing to be a JW. But now that I'm out I have learned more and more of what I once would have considered unimaginable.

Growing up I felt blessed to be a JW. Our family was special. JWs were special. We were God's chosen people. We did strange things compared to others, but that was because it was pleasing to Jehovah, and he would save us and only us in the great tribulation coming soon.

When you were raised wearing rose colored glasses, you think the whole world is that hue. There is no way to prepare for the devastation ahead when you find out that it was all a lie. Everything. None of it was real. None of it had any substance whatsoever. Like being raised on a movie set, you walk through a door one day to find it is all just a facade. The enormity of the lie, the world they created for you to live in, the mindset you once excepted as normal, is sometimes too huge to comprehend yourself, much less explain to others who grew up "normal."

Tammy

I was secretly relieved to find out the truth. I felt a great burden that I always secretly resented in the deepest parts of me was finally removed once and for all.

Yep.

Right on, Swan. And the best thing is that you don't have to listen to their threats of Armageddon anymore! Their promises have never panned out, and neither have their threats! And they know Armageddon isn't coming anytime soon, because why would they spend all their time checking heads and reading minds if God was going to come along and peel us apart in a few years anyway???

Freedom is dizzying, but once the initial panic is over, you will grow and adapt to fit the world around you.

CZAR

Swan,

You have expressed my own sentiments in your post.

The enormity of what the org had done to us is sometimes overwhelming.

There have been days where I have been consumed by my jw experience and wondered how I could have been so blind and gullible to have believed such stupidity.

I hope that one day we can really put it all behind us.

wannaexit

The Matrix perhaps?

Personally, I was gutted when I realised that the 'truth' was all based on fantasy. Just like Neo (in the Matrix) I found it all overwhelming.

I still have moments when all I want to do is catch a plane to Brooklyn and set about Bethel with a sledge-hammer. But mostly I am over that initial anger. If we allow ourselves to experience uncontrolled emotion regarding the WBTS then we are still being controlled by them.

Hang in there, it does get better.

My children (still teenagers, living with their mother and their elder stepfather) have chosen to have nothing to do with me, and no longer communicate with me; but I remember trying to tell them, not that their "Truth" was a big lie, but that as one who had deliberately turned my back on the religion and walked away, I was learning that the impression that the Society gives JWs about many supposedy "bad" things are biased and skewed. That didn't go over very well, of course.

Many here would doubtless say that I have taken this to extremes, athough I do not engage in anti-social behavior, or promote anything that I consider likely to harm anyone. In fact, I consider that everything that was good about me that harmonized with Dubism has been strengthened and refined since I left the org; and gratitude is due for release from senseless struggles with one's own humanity, that one cannot truly win. (Try to kill nature, and your own death is the most likely result. This is true on so many levels.)

I don't mean to write in riddles, but I agree "it's enormous," and therefore I don't plan to go into detail here and now.

Cruithne/Enhtiurc