I've only very recently discovered this site and have been reading many compelling personal accounts and testimonials. I'd like to share my own as well.
I was born into 'the truth' in the early 1970s. Along with my several (fleshly) brothers and sisters, I went through the usual travails of a Witness boy - not celebrating birthdays, not pledging allegiance to the flag, not singing Christmas carols in the class chorus. I had acquaintances in school, but I kept my distance and they kept theirs. Free from worldly distractions, I flourished academically, making me seem even odder.
I began to have questions about 'the truth' when I was 11 or 12. By this time, older men from the Kingdom Hall were already being sent to our house to conduct Bible studies. My older brother took to the lessons like a duck to water. I wasn't nearly so sure. There wasn't one major issue that I had, but perhaps a thousand little ones. Issues like...if there were truly good people in the world like Mother Teresa, why would God not recognize the works of such a person regardless of their religion? Or, if I had a dying son or daughter who could be saved by a blood transfusion, how could I ever deny treatment?
By age 13, I was actively resisting going to meetings. I would fake all sorts of illnesses - I grew to be an expert at running up a thermometer by sleight of hand. My schoolwork suffered, because if I was too sick to go to meeting on Thursday night, I was too sick to go to school on Friday morning. By 14, I had run away from home completely and was taken in by a compassionate family nearby.
I went on to go to college - I think this was around the time I was formally disassociated, I didn't get a Hallmark card unfortunately. I got married to a nonbeliever and have two wonderful children of my own. They are about as old as I was when I made my decision to leave 'the truth', and it's forced a great deal of introspection.
There are so many emotions that I have. Fear is not one: I am confident that my children would laugh at any and every effort JWs would make to witness to them. But there is anger and sadness. To my knowledge, I am the only one in my family who broke from 'the truth', and the possibility of having normal relationships with them is nearly nil. Even if, by some miracle, the scales would fall from their eyes and they would see this cult for what it truly is - and why don't they, they're intelligent people?? - there would be literally decades of silence to overcome