Wow, 3 years since I first found this place and joined the fray. I think I've spent more time here over the past three years than I did during the last three years I attended the KH.
I've been up and down quite a bit since leaving the cult, cults attract people who are emotional cripples and I am no exception, and the cult only makes you worse. If you all only knew though how much I've changed and expanded since leaving the borg, and I have this board to thank for that more than anything else.
I can't express enough how happy I am that I was able to find a way out of the JW's. I came to hate that overbearing, power-mad religion so much, but I lacked the critical thinking to really understand why, I always felt that I was the problem, and my last year in I was so discouraged that I often thought of suicide. Mustering the courage to type "Jehovah's Witnesses" into a search engine literally saved my life.
Nowadays I work and read and hang out with my family and take care of my house and date worldly women and laze around on the weekends and I do it without GUILT. No guilt over unread magazines, no guilt over skipping Saturday service, no guilt for not preparing for meetings, no guilt for not "reaching out" to qualify for "additional privileges" in the congregation, no guilt for not "making room" for pioneering...the list could go on and on, but suffice it to say that I was as guilt-ridden as JW's come, now I am free from that and it is fucking awesome.