Hello all!
I joined the site a few months ago, made a big splash then kind of dissapeared for a while. I would like to thank those who I came into contact with and let me into their lives and hearts. If anyone worried about me during my absence at all then I apologize; I have not regressed or been kidnapped/re-brainwashed by the borg. Finding this site was a cathartic experience to say the least, in the first few days I spent very little time doing anything other than reading hundreds of posts written by the wonderful people who gather in this cozy corner of the net for those who have seen the light (or the darkness depending on how you look at it). I had never before had the opportunity to speak with a single other person who had left this disgusting cult and it was quite overwhelming to see the dozens, the hundreds of people on this site who shared similar experiences as I growing up. Going from one post to another for days on end was an emotional roller-coaster that had me full-out crying at times, both from sadness of the evil injustices of the organization and from joy at seeing so many who have broken free from it's chains of control. Posting the first part of my story and experience growing up Jdub was a whole other level or catharsis that led me to run the whole gamut of emotions over again. I became fairly active in the forums in the following weeks, spending hours a day writing, chatting, and reading old posts. Eventually I came to realize I was becoming somewhat obsessed and decided I needed to take a break and concentrate on my life in-the-moment as opposed to re-hashing old feelings of depression/angst/sadness/anger...lots of anger. I thought that the evil JW org had stolen enough of my life, and by obsessing over the past and my stolen childhood was just giving them more power over my life, and I vowed long ago that nothing a JW could say or do would have any affect over me ever again. So I took a break, didnt mean to be gone for so long, but alas - real life has an annoying habit of gettin in the way.
I would like to say, however, that my time spent here has been wholly beneficial to me. A lot of those negative feelings had been simmering in me for years, decades really, without a forum (web or otherwise) to express them and get them off my chest. In the past I've had a lot of inner-struggle between blaming my parents for the way they raised me (failed to raise me) and blaming myself for my anti-social tendencies, runs of depression, and poor decision making. Of course a fair bit of that boiled down to just being a normal human being, but after reading so many people's stories that ran parallel to mine I finally made peace with that fact that, yes, my f*ked up childhood and the cult I was forced to participate in had a hugely negative affect on my life. And as strange as that is, that realization has brought me a good deal of peace of mind and gone a ways to repair the damage this cult's indoctrination has left in my subconscious
So again I apologize for my prolonged absence, it is wonderful to be back amongst my loving peers. In the immortal words of E.L.O.: "Thank you [all] for thinking about me, I'm alive and doing fine."