I'm in a great place mentally and spiritually in my life right now. I just wanted to share. Why? Because I know many of you are new and have just left the bOrg and well there are some tough times ahead but I want to assure you you can get through this and come out the other side much happier and more at peace.
I'm 44. Got baptized at 18. Was a convert not a born in. Struggled with guilt and depression and pent up sexual urges the entire time I was in. Left at 21 for 7 years (got married to a "worldly" girl) then right after my divorce I got back in. The guilt and depression were soon to catch back up with me....so I was floating in and out of meetings for the next 10 years or so... Got reproved once and then finally April of 2015 I got disfellowshipped because I was still in love with a girl (worldly) and unrepentant.
After my df'ing I started to really dig into this religion. For some reason I no longer felt afraid of "Apostate" websites and such since I was df'd anyway. Found jwfacts.com and wow, what an eye opener. I had read CoC by Franz a couple of years before my df'ing and while enlightening it didn't really open my eyes to TTATT at that time. I would say I've been fully awake for about a year now.
The hardest part for me wasn't losing those that I called my friends, and I had no family in the Troof so that wasn't really an issue for me, the hard part was losing all the answers. I always felt like I had it all figured out. Knew all the big answers to life's questions. Nothing phased me as a J-dub. Now that was all gone! No more answers. I missed that feeling of knowing it all and having a hope for something better....that killed me inside and I proceeded to have an existential crisis. You can read more about that in the other threads I started if you like....
My crisis got so bad for a while that I seriously considered suicide. It just sucked to feel like there was no point to living. You see, after my awakening I started to seriously doubt the existence of God, and thus for ME with no God this equaled no purpose, no hope, no point to any of this. I got to a very very dark place. I was drinking a lot and things were just not good at all.
Then I had a realization. I could live this life feeling hopeless and like there was no point to it or I could find some way to deal with it. Either way the end result is the same. I'm going to die. That's just a part of life. We were conditioned as JW's to see death as something UN-natural and something to be hated, something that wasn't supposed to happen. But finally I saw the truth of the situation. Death IS a natural part of life. Death is normal. Everything dies. Plants, animals and yes humans. It's part of the cycle of life.
So what made me finally okay with all of this terrible reality? This one idea: Perhaps there is a god and perhaps we're just not meant to know all the answers right now. This one thought brought me so much peace. The depression and hopelessness of my situation instantly disappeared upon this realization. We don't have to know all the answers. We (all of us; ie. every human who's ever lived) don't know what's next. We don't know why we are here and what the purpose of this life is. But that does not mean there isn't one! Yes, this idea really helped me. I came to realize that perhaps there is something much more going on here that we can even comprehend at this point. Again, either way the end result is the same. We die. Some day I, you, and all that have ever and will ever live will stop breathing and will cease to exist as humans. But that does not necessarily mean that is the end. I'm not saying it is or it isn't, what I'm saying is the way we choose to PERCEIVE this idea is what can make all the difference.
If I think, okay I'm just going to die and be forgotten and that's it, then I'm miserable (I was anyway....I'm sure some can be perfectly fine with this idea but I could not) or I could think, okay I'm going to die, everyone is but that doesn't mean it's the end. There could be a million different things that happen after, and a million different reasons why we are here and why we are humans with this short life. This idea really brought me peace and put things in perspective for me.
I don't have the answers, and now I'm okay with that. I'm not mad at god anymore. I'm just a human with this life to live. I can chose to waste my time trying to figure out the unknowable (all the big answers) and be miserable (after all no one has ever figured it out; if they did we'd all know about it!), or I can appreciate each day and enjoy it and have a hope that something else does happen and that at some future time all the answers will be revealed to us all.
Either way the end result is the same. We die. One of two possibilities exist after death: 1. it's the end and that's that, eternal non-existence or 2. something else happens. In the first case I will not know anything anyway so why stress about it now? In the second case: GREAT! Something else!
The difference for me is NOW. How I chose to believe or open my mind to the possibilities of something else. This has brought me peace and I'm am very very thankful.
I prayed the other night for the first time in a very long time. It wasn't to Jehovah, it was just to god. I told him I was done being mad at him and that I needed the idea of him in my life. I expressed my thoughts to him and perhaps I was merely talking to myself in my head, it really doesn't matter in the end, because for me it helped. It helped me NOW. It's helping me to live each day and enjoy each day to the full just having the idea that possibly there is a god and something else after this life.
I know this won't work for everyone. But it's working for me, and I just wanted to share in case anyone else is going through something similar. My only thought for you is keep your mind open to the possibilities. We don't know anything. It's isn't for us apparently to know, because, if it were I think God would have made things crystal clear and he hasn't therefore perhaps were just here for a short time to enjoy this life and what it has to offer. We just don't know, but that doesn't mean nothing happens.
Hope this made some semblance of sense to someone.