I didn't fade. I flipped like a light switch.
I had been born into the Witnesses - my mum has years of pioneer service under her belt, though she can't pioneer anymore due to her working hours. My dad was bapized in '77 and is the current Congregation Coordinator (that's P.O. for you veterans). Last May I turned 19, and for years I had been thinking about leaving; not for any scriptural reason, I just wasn't having a particularly good time at the Hall. Sure, I did my number 4 talks, readings and answers and got all the accolades for it. I even got a place on the Magazine counter, despite the fact I was UNBAPTIZED - that's supposed to be a big deal in witness terms - but I had very few friends. There was a giant age gap in the congregation. 10 year olds on one side, 60 year olds on the other, and me in the middle. I had learnt how to become friendly with the older brothers and sisters, but I was lacking a friend of my own age, and there were no young people in sight. Besides, many of the other young people in the closer congregations were all in the 'baptized' club, which I was not a part of. I also have a self-destructive/fatalistic attitude, and even though I thought Jehovahs Witnesses had it right, I found no enjoyment in life, and I would rather have renounced my faith and died at Armageddon than continued living for an eternity. That probably doesn't make sense to a lot of you but that's how my mind works.
It was by chance that I decided to do some research on the age of the Earth. My dad had kept saying that each creative day was around 7,000 years long, and therefore the Earth itself was only 49,000 years old at the most. I think this is a vestige of a long abandoned idea from the WT, but being a 70's child it's probably been ingrained into his memory. Either way I wasn't buying it. I planned to do research and then report what I had learnt to my parents. I looked up radiocarbon dating and the K-T Extinction boundary, and stumbled upon the site which later revealed to me some of the bigger problems with WT teaching - talkorigins.org
The response from the research was interesting. While the problem of aging wasn't a big issue, my mum in particular got very emotional about the idea of Jehovah using a meteor to kill all the dinosaurs. She couldn't tie this idea of utter destruction with an all loving God. I found it hard to admit as well, but keep in mind I hadn't realized the real 'truth' at that point.
I had found my research into carbon dating interesting - and later my dad came to me with several pieces of paper. They were print-offs from several WTBTS publications, talking about how inconsistent C-14 dating was. I decided again to look up the details and found that what the publications were saing was untrue or misconstrued. This puzzled me, but I had found a thirst for knowledge and it wasn't yet quenched. I spent weeks going over details on the Genesis account, particularly the Flood, and realized that the whole thing was a lie.
My last meeting was the last tuesday in October. I did my talk, and left the hall that night, never to return.
The night I told my parents and subsequent week was not pleasant, and I don't want to relive that time in writing.
