Was Your Leaving The Witnesses A Very Gradual Process Or A Quick One? (page 5)

finally awake

I had one moment of clarity during a convention where the thought "I don't want to be here" popped into my head. I promptly shoved that thought down and carried on. Years later, after my 3rd son was born, I stopped going in field service. It started out that it was just too difficult with a small baby, and I just never got back into it. I still attended meetings regularly, but was always grateful for a good excuse to stay home. Finally, after a disasterous attempt to attend the special assembly day where my youngest vomited all over the car on the way over, and an infuriating "shepherding" call that just pounded on my lack of service and how we missed the assembly, I finally admitted to Just Ron that I didn't want to be a witness anymore. And until that moment, I would have sworn that I believed it was the "Truth". I never attended another meeting, and it wasn't long until I found this site and discovered TTATT and the last of my illusions about the Borg were totally shattered.

GromitSK

I got DFd so my extramuralisation was velocitous.

Phizzy

It seemed kinda quick to me, but really it was a lifetime of reversing out slowly.

All my life I struggled with the Cognitive Dissonance pounding in my brain, that none of it fitted with reality. One day whilst reading the book of Daniel as though I had never seen it before it jumped out at me that the whole edifice of the 1914 doctrine was simply just not there, or anywhere in the bible.

I struggled on, going to Meetings, but never in F.S after that epiphany, I could not teach untruth. One day I walked out of the K.H, looked back on it in sadness, all my family were connected, all my social contacts, but I just knew I would never go back.

I walked away, and that was it. After nearly six decades of life as a JW, that was it, bang. It seemed quick at the time, but looking back I was just working up to that decision, for most of my life.

It is the second best decision I ever made in my life, the first being to marry Mrs Phizzy, no one else in the world would have put up with me for all these years !

Life gets better and better, one can only be truly happy when free of the cult.

minimus

I guess we should be understanding when it seems someone should know better but they are still active Witnesses.

scotoma

Leaving... Duh

Phizzy

"I guess we should be understanding when it seems someone should know better but they are still active Witnesses."

I think this was true, until the latest nonsense in the July 13 WT.

Anyone who stays in after that is either brain dead, or staying in for reasons that have nothing to do with believing the JW/WT silliness is the "truth".

Either way, I would not waste any time on hoping they will leave, they are there until the WT implodes, or they die.

Ucantnome

the inner me left quickly it just took time for the outer me to realise i'd left.

frankiespeakin

Ucant,

Same here, I felt an inner pressure to leave way before it became conscious, even little faint voices in my head telling me something was wrong, perhaps even 10 or more years before it became conscious.

Sofi

In my case, gradual. It took about 6 months from the last meeting I attended. I got the elder's visits, which at the beginning were just "we haven't seen you, are you ok? That progressed into: "We don't know what to do in your case, we had contacted the C.O to help us make a decision" So, I was dating a no jw at the time and like in an apartment building with my personal jw gossiper (the lady upstairs, which didn't like me since I rejected his son's efforts to be my bf... but that's another story) Anyway, she would be the eyes and ears of the elders... I got so disgusted, and being young, I didn't feel like dealing with the stress of them visiting me continuously. So, I told them to do what they wanted. And so, I got a letter sayng I was df'. I have to say not everyone stopped talking to me. Two elders never gave up on me. Some "sisters" would not give me dirty looks, but they would just smiled at me when they saw me. I loved and still love the people there... if they would reform some of their doctrines, I would even consider going back, but I don't think "the light" is going to progress that far... the "slave" use them to whip people and keep them controlled.

Dagney

I wanted to add, even though I didn't leave until 2001, the 1995 thing was HUGE to me. I started actually paying attention to crap. I started using a NJB instead of the NWT, brought it to all the meetings and started reading all the scriptures in context. I started questioning the elder friends about inconsistencies. I sat next to the BS conductor with my big NJB rolling my eyes during my last Daniel book study.

But I would have defended to death it was still the truth. Until I snapped one day and I was done.

Was Your Leaving The Witnesses A Very Gradual Process Or A Quick One?

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