I posted this in my profile but since I've never formally introduced myself, I thought I would print it here as well as my official "hello" message.
I am currently an active JW. I don't want to be but the situation I am in doesn't allow me to do anything differently. I have been associated with the Organization since my parents started studying in the early 80s. I was baptized in the late 80s. My parents were both baptized but were never anyone important in the congregation. They were regular rank and file publishers. The most my father ever did was carry the microphone a couple of times.
At somewhere around the age of 20 I became a ministerial servant, much to the pride and joy of my mother (later I would realize that it was her, not the WTBS version of Yahweh, that I was trying to please). At about the age of 22 I decided that I would reveal my true feelings to my parents and tell them that I no longer wished to be a JW. She burst into tears and left me feeling horrible. She was miserable for a while but she never said anything to any of the elders. Maybe she didn't want them to boot me. Maybe she didn't fully trust them. I never asked.
After a few weeks, during most of which I felt emotionally horrible, I decided that I was somehow mistaken and that I really did want to be a JW after all. (side note: my father told me on the side that I should just do whatever made me happy.) I was still a MS because nobody knew anything except my parents. I convinced myself that it really was the Truth. I got my own book study, the first of two I would have during my MS days. Then I got married to a pioneer.
Then we had children. For some reason, having children made me begin to realize again that the WTBS wasn't correct at all. Due to moving residence, we switched to another congregation where I did not pursue MS duties. I no longer went out in field service every Saturday. I attend most of the meetings still. Now barely comment and I almost never go out in field service. Because I am not an outstanding and zealous brother, we don't get invited to anything in the congregation except for the annual picnic. Other than that, we are summarily ignored because we are "spiritually weak." Spiritually weak in WTBS-speak means that you are not reporting double-digit hours in the ministry and you don't comment in the Watchtower study enough.
My wife is a JW zealot. I love her but I no longer love her god (which, contrary to her belief, is not the Jehovah deity but the WTBS). I never did, really. I can't tell her my true feelings because she'd leave me and take the kids. I can't abandon my responsibility and love for my children so I do a very good job of pretending, perpetuating the lie. I don't have a double life. I live pretty much the life that the Witnesses are instructed to. But that's because I have to. I can't give myself away to the wife.
I feel imprisoned. I feel like the character Ben Hur (from the movie of the same name) where he wants to strike out against the Romans but can't because it will destroy his captured family ... so he is enslaved in the galley of a Roman ship. the Organization is that Roman ship to me. I'm just rowing away angrily. Tell what I believe to be the truth and lose my wife and children? Or live the lie, feel soulless for the most part, but still exist while able to enjoy my children and my wife?
My parents? Ironically, they don't go to meetings anymore. They are not disfellowshipped, nor have they disassociated themselves. They show up at memorials and at every other district convention, maybe. I have a sister (who is married to a JW). They barely go to meetings either. It's weird. I was the only one that had misgivings about being a witness and I am the only one still going.