They're not your friends.
I was a born-in, with a psychopath father who was even a pariah among the cult. He took advantage of the fact that JWs "don't interfere" with family business (read: brutal child abuse). We were forbidden from leaving the yard and even associating with other JWs. A young ministerial servant literally lived across the street from me and I wasn't allowed to talk to him. We weren't allowed to go to school; likely because our constant bruises and injuries would have had my parents in prison. My "worldly" grandparents occasionally called the authorities on our behalf, but living in the rural South did nothing. The police just assumed we were whining to Grandma about being appropriately punished. The truth was, my loser dad took out his frustrations on us for his complete failures at even mediocrity, all day, every day. We didn't have to do anything "wrong", even by strict JW standards. Which brings me to another point...
We weren't actually JWs, as my parents were both inactive. My dad, being a sociopath, believed he should be in charge, but he was a "Yankee" and didn't fit in with the redneck sociopaths who were all buddy-buddy with each other, and they didn't want to share their authority and power with him. They were all a bunch of crooked construction workers and other blue-collar laborers, while my dad fancied himself a "business man" and openly felt superior to them, despite being completely broke and failing (mostly due to crippling laziness) at everything he ever half-ass tried. Since he wasn't allowed to take over, my dad pouted at home. We rarely attended meetings and I can count on the fingers of one hand how many times we "went in service".
My dad was 6'2" and ex high-school wrestler, but I was a big kid and started working out as much as I could behind his back as a teenager. I was forbidden from working out or training any kind of martial art, no doubt because my dad was terrified I'd be able to ever defend myself. But train, I did. Always at home, since I was never allowed to leave. Eventually, I could defend myself and years of abuse gradually turned to brawls, over time I won more and more of, until he was afraid of me. My youngest brother followed in my footsteps and my parents lived in fear of him killing them until he moved out at 16.
Anyway, I moved out at 18, with nothing. I did have a full-time job, but my parents had stolen all of my money until I was 18 and they had no legal way to take it. I got in to some weird situations, buying a car from a crazy guy for monthly payments and got a job delivering pizza. Being raised with no moral compass, a guy I met after moving out and I got arrested. I was disfellowshipped over the situation at 19 and I didn't set foot in a Kingdom Hall again until I was 30. I was convinced I knew what the JWs believe, since I was "born in to it". But I really wasn't. I was raised in some hybrid of what JWs believe and whatever my dad decided. I had a very shallow understanding of how much the JWs are in your business and how many nit-picky, arbitrary rules they had. So, I got reinstated at 31 or 32.
I'd read the Bible thoroughly and studied the original Greek and Hebrew of contentious verses, for a fuller understanding. I decided the JWs were right(ish) on Hell, Trinity, Heaven, preaching, etc. I looked into other denominations and found nothing they believe is unique, but the odds of finding anything better close-by was slim. After I was reinstated, I started putting as much time in knocking on doors as I could. I had a successful business that allowed me a lot of free time, so I was well over 100 hours per month and ordering "What Does the Bible Really Teach" books by the case. I had 9 concurrent Bible studies after about a year.
My wife wasn't a JW, so I tried to limit my JW activities to when she was at college or work. I didn't attend many meetings and never went to conventions. Of course, I caught a lot of flak about it from the losers in cheap suits (elders). They'd passively-aggressively say snide comments like "We missed you at the meeting on Thursday." Being raised by a bully, I was having none of it. I'd reply with openly-hostile replies like "I missed you in service every day this week." They'd becry my lack of presence at the conventions, so I'd ask them "What did you learn there?" They'd tick off some talking points and I'd ask "You didn't already know that?" Of course, they insisted they did know that, so I'd ask "So, what did you LEARN?" Of course, it was nothing. I'd ridicule them for spending forever in class, but never graduating to doing the job they were supposedly training to do.
Since I was living in the Northeast, it was very cold and windy in the winter, and I was out knocking on doors all day. My face was taking a beating from the cold air, so I decided to grow a beard. I was completely unaware there was a rule against it. I was caught completely unaware when I was "invited" into the back room after wearing it for a few months. They dragged out some 1969 article forbidding beards. I laughed at them for using such ridiculous, ill-conceived drivel to push obvious dogma. I told them to come back when they had something from the Bible that paints men wearing beards in a negative light. I pointed out they rely on a verse in Leviticus to ban tattoos even though we're not under OT laws, because "Jehovah indicated his opinion on them, and he is unchanging". Well, the Bible is pretty clearly pro-beards on men. Later I looked into this weird rule and found an article from 1954 where they were defending their depictions of Jesus without a beard, and actually tried to make the case that Jesus absolutely wouldn't have had one. That was my introduction to just how nutty some of the old coots in charge are, and how arrogant they are to push their personal agenda as "Bible-based". My relationship with the JWs quickly spiraled from there, eventually leading to the upper management in Patterson doing something totally unprecedented: They banned me from meeting for service. That's not even an option, by their own rules. But they couldn't get me on anything, because I hadn't done anything wrong. I always destroyed them in any judicial meeting and I think they knew I was likely recording them (I was) and they couldn't just make things up.
TL;DR:
That's my story. All of that was to set the framing for this: I still have a successful business, but I don't have the free time I used to. I know the JWs completely cut you off from everyone outside the cult so you're totally isolated. They use that fear of being completely alone to keep you in line. My upbringing on the fringes of even the cult prepared me to be alone, because I didn't even have the cult to fall back on. I'd spent my whole life alone, so I was used to it. If you're feeling alone and uprooted from everything you've ever known, I'm here. I have an ear to listen, a shoulder to cry on, and even tangible real-world help. If you need a job. If you need a place to crash. I'm here, and I know what you're going through. Losing those people is no great loss; trust me. They were never your friends. They all just abuse each other, take advantage of each other, tattle on each other, and gossip about each other. You think you've lost everything, but you've only lost your chains; you're just used to the chains and you feel naked without them.
