Good question, good thread.
Agreed. This a a great topic.
It was a long time ago for me too, but I remember being a bit paranoid/neurotic about lots of little things. All those rules in Islam, many of them completely ridiculous and only there to keep your brain so occupied and in fear that you don't get a chance to actually THINK about why they are there and who benefits from Muslims living under this perpetual psychological bureaucracy.
Actually, the rules and the fiqh didn't bother me so much. It's just something I did reflexively, given that it was a part of my worldview. My fixation was on the very existence of God. If he didn't exist, then the rest of the worldview would come crashing down.
I was, for a bit of time, defensive about Islam too. Thought it was my duty to defend Islam (or at least, the version I was taught) from everyone else, including other Muslims, and of course, all those sinful non-Muslims, who just can't "get it" because allah led them astray (quite an arrogant self-satisfying circular reasoning: allah gave them free-will but then led them astray and they'll burn in hell and we should pity them but also they're bad people who deserve hell yadda yadda yadda).
LOL! I went through all that except the main target of my dawah was my uncle. I had this odd notion that if I managed to convince him that Allah existed, then my own doubts would get sorted. My family were happy that I was trying to bring my uncle back into the fold. Subconsciously, I was using my uncle as a proxy to shield my own internal struggle. I admitted this to him when I stopped "trying" to believe in God.
And I also spent time acting like my religion made me a better person than others. In other words, the kind of cultural and religious supremacism that is so crystal clear to me now was something I was taught to believe and quite entrenched in for a while.
I didn't feel that I was better than anyone because I followed Islam. I just felt that I was blessed that I had the gift of Iman which I wish others would also accept. Looking back, I also feel that Islam masked some of my characteristics. Some negative and some positive. After leaving Islam I became more bad-tempered, impatient and irritable. On the flip side though, I stopped looking down on people who were at odds with my former worldview. Lapsed Muslims who drank, gambled and visited prostitutes were simply people with tendencies for these things, rather than sinners who were mocking Islam. I dropped my guard against the LGBT community and saw them as diverse humans. There is plenty I could add to the list.
As far as the negatives were concerned, they were a reaction to my apostasy. I felt as though I'd failed my "inner jihad". After visiting the doctor, I discovered that I'd been suffering from depression for a long time. Thankfully, the medication has helped in a huge way.
I am so thankful I escaped all of this and the rest of Islam's baggage.
Initially no. I was angry and sick. I felt that I had lost out. I felt abandoned and had lost friends. Now however I'm at peace with it. I'm couldn't care less whether people believed or not. If friends broke off then fine. There are more sincere and welcoming people out there who didn't care whether or not I believed in a 1400 year old myth.
Topic: What were you like before you left Islam?