Welcome. I left on my 25th birthday, and have been out for about 11 years.

I have several things I think about. Firstly, I've been really lucky since I left. I married a wonderful man, and have had a happy life. The first thing that helped me was to realize the fact that if I didn't live my life exactly as I had, I would have never met him, and gotten to where I'm at today. I wouldn't trade places with anyone. That got me far. The second thing is I started listening to other people's life stories. It has to be a pretty small group of people (ex-JW or not, by far and away mostly not) for me to have the biggest "sob story" (what I call my life story) of the group. I think I tended to feel that most people grew up with a life of sunshine, rainbows, ponies and mothers giving them hot chocolate all the time, and that just wasn't so. There are so many people out there who can claim to be messed up from what they had to go through growing up. And then thirdly I finally came to a stage where I realized that JW's still had a hold on me and were affecting my quality of life, because I was angry so much of the time. I thought I'd left them, but even though I had physically, they still had mental power over me. No matter how angry I got, it didn't change the past, all the anger I was directing was just a lot of wasted energy I was expending on the Jehovies (DH's word for them) I didn't want that. It took me several years to get to a place where I could realize the first point, and who knows how long to get to the 2nd and 3rd ones.

That doesn't mean I don't get angry. I WAS duped for the first 25 years of my life, and I missed out on so much. I joined Facebook in February, and had a very powerful wave of emotions rush over me, and had to not look at my account for a few days. I'd come in contact with a bunch of people from school, and they had posted tons of pictures, and I realized even the uber-geeks of the uber-geeks did so much more than I did. I don't think I've been that angry for several years.

I'm kind of new here, too. I'm sure someone has posted somewhere on the web things that help people with their feelings, and someone more experienced with ex-JW things can lead you in a more helpful direction.

I think when I left, I was a bit naive, and figured that I'd been through enough that I couldn't be hurt any more than I had been, and figured that I'd put my trust in a few seemingly nice "worldly" people who wanted to help. I figured they couldn't do more harm to me than any JW. I also had low expectations, and fully expected to have my trust broken right away, but was pleasantly surprised that most people want to help.

I still haven't gotten over the organized religion thing. But I'm in a place where that fact doesn't bother me.

Last Edited By: Ilovebirthdays Apr 21 09 6:04 PM. Edited 1 times.