Just wanted to share my story...
I was raised a JW all my life, my mother and father married and divorced twice, my mother was disfellowshipped when I was 6 and never came back, choosing a career, and went through various men. I was raised by my very loving and wonderful father, easily father of the century in my opinion. All my life I was a great kid, example in the hall, great grades, got a full college scholarship, etc. My stepmom was really hard on me, verbally abusive, etc. My grandma, though loving, was only concerned with biblical things, and talked about only that, and blindly believed everything that the organization taught. She drummed it into me and my cousin's heads since we were little boys, never letting us think for ourselves. My cousin left when he was 18, and was never baptized. Me on the other hand I was baptized at 15, due to pressure from my grandma and my parents. Up until I was 16, I led a pretty straight and narrow life. Then I started researching the religion, dating girls, hanging out with school friends, drinking a little, stuff that "normal" teens do.
At 18, I decided I 'needed' to get married, because I'd been fooling around with another JW girl for a couple years, and her family basically insisted that we marry, even though I knew that it wouldn't work at all. After 5 of the worst years of my life (gaining 80lbs, suffering severe depression), I suspicioned that my 'loving wife' was cheating on me. Well after a little research, I discovered that she was, so I filed for divorce. I sat through all kinds of meetings with elders, even though I was the only "active" witness in our household. My wife was inactive for almost the last 2 years we were together. She refused to meet with them, and after some time, she lied to the elders about her relationship with this man, and they believed her. For the next year and a half, I had various meetings with elders, countless hours spent trying to become "scripturally free", and finally at the end of 2006, I was fed up with it all. I dated a few "worldly" girls during the end of 2006, but never did anything, and eventually started complaining to my mother, and some very close friends that I just didn't feel that I could "carry on" in my JW beliefs anymore, because no loving religion would make a 20+ year old male, expect to live by himself for the rest of his life. So in 2007, I met a wonderful "worldly" girl, and we began seeing each other, and eventually had great, fantastic, mind blowing sex. I went and repented, cut off association from that girl, and, then I spent a week's vacation, watching my mother's home. I had time to think, reflect, etc., and realized that I just couldn't continue living my life for my father, I had to be my own man, and make my own way. Much to my delight, that same girl contacted me again, to get back together, so we did. Much to my shock, my ex-wife, was reading my emails in my old email account, and printed off emails between me and my current girlfriend, and showed them to the elders. My dad (an elder in my hall) confronted me about them, and I said that yes I did, and that I would write a letter asking to be kicked out. So I wrote the letter, and was disfellowshipped in Mid March of 2007.
I've spent the last month and a half with my great girlfriend, who is truly a great girl, and focusing on playing music, which is one of the only things in the world that keeps me sane and happy. My family, on my dad's side, has totally cut me off, except an unbelieving cousin, who has been my lifelong best friend. I've been rebuilding my relationship with my mother, and her side of the family, which has been hard, but proving very rewarding after years of bad feelings between us, over issues ranging from religion to my ex (everyone hated her). I've ran into a few people that I used to hang out with as a kid, who are Df'd, and we've been catching up. A few of my old witness friends are starting to talk to me again too, because they said they miss me too much to cut me off forever. I encouraged many of them to do plenty of research on things, and not to live their lives for their parents either, because you slowly kill yourself, if you're not true to self.
Its very, very hard not talking to my dad, because I love him dearly, and I know he loves me too. But I've just come to except this is how it is, not easy, but at least I know I'm living life for me, and no one else. My friends said in spite of it all, they've never seen me happier.
So that's my life!!!