A Bit of Perspective

With all the dizzying aspects of leaving a cult, I couldn't imagine a life of happiness and fulfillment, let alone a life where kind souls would enter my life and change it for the better. I was concentrating solely on the confusion, grief and surviving of all the years where I was owned by a manipulative and controlling force that was my past church and the movement it belonged to for some time. I was unprepared, so unprepared, and my personal circumstances only complicated my exit and the eventual few years afterwards. I'm thankful I left, but for me, leaving was just another traumatic experience to process. I'd go on to shut down, crippled by that grief, reeling from years and years of living in a constant state of survival mode. To say it was a dark time in my life would be an understatement. I once told someone dear to me that I was like the dead just walking around. I just existed. It felt like a lonely existence, too. 

Coming back from trauma isn't an easy task. I'm still coming back from it. Healing takes time. Years of hurtful and damaging experiences translated to emotional and physical scars that my body and mind haven't quite forgotten. In fact, it often thinks I'm still there either locked in a room being sexually abused or unable to move, sitting in my Sunday pew as depictions of Armageddon play out so vividly in my mind's eye that the terror I felt in those moments suddenly can be felt in my body even now. It appears in the misinterpretation of discussions, feeling they're arguments and not civil conversations that they really are. Things like communication can be triggering, but without it, the fear of not doing just that is terrifying, worried you'll be misunderstood if you don't try. 

No one can really see the turmoil in my head. The agonizing effort to try and interact "normally" in everyday interactions. To be friendly, be socialable, and be a part of conversations, to make friends. You see, I was never taught these things. Growing up, friendships were few and far between. I had a total of three kind of real friendships. Being isolated, homeschooled, and well, a cult kid continues to impact me to this day, even as an adult. The pressure to not appear "weird" only makes it that much more difficult. So often, I will concentrate on not knowing how to make friends that I miss wonderful opportunities to connect with fellow human beings. 

Relationships and friendships most often feel as roller coasters as I am truly trying to balance my newfound happiness while my past history taunts these new experiences. Trust is being built up while past walls are gradually falling down and that triggers the old "need" to run. Run, get away from the good because you're on your toes waiting for the bad to show up. Instead of embracing and living in the present, fully enjoying the positive, you're constantly alert for the negatives. 

Trying to protect yourself is exhausting. Trying to adult for your failed inner child is just another definition for exhausted that I don't quite have a word to put to. You were failed as a child not just once, but countless times. You're on the lookout for the bad actors and how to avoid them. When is their mask going to fall away and the real monsters going to be revealed, you'll wonder. 

Being raised in a neglectful environment that was preached as the best way of life means that bad was depicted as good and good as bad. That black and white mentality was the basis for how young minds in Christian Fundamentalism were molded. The end result: Adults seeing so narrowly that it's nearly impossible to weigh things with an open mind. I still am constantly tripped up by this. 

Society pressures us all to measure up to impossible marks, adding to the sense of being an outsider. For survivors of cults, just reaching plausible life milestones can be delayed, and true to a judgemental society, the judgment can be ever present. I was once told that I have life experience.... A lot of experiences that most people will never be able to understand, but because they can't understand them they usually don't translate as experience at all. It's a complicated life experience–surviving a religious cult. A complication that many, if not most people, are not capable of comprehending. 

The need for validation is a powerful force. Unfortunately, you can, unbeknownst to yourself, search for it in the wrong people. The risk of additional abuse is incredibly high for survivors of high control groups. For survivors that understand this, it can be both a blessing and a curse. Blessing, so you can be equipped with the tools to try and avoid abusive relationships and situations; curse, because the fear of falling prey to any of those things can be incredibly disruptive. 

These are just a few of the complications that follow a survivor after their departure from fundamentalism. 

The beautiful thing about life is that it just continues to happen. The earth continues to spin; day comes, night follows, and then, it's repeat. Like a favorite playlist on loop, life continues. We grow older, often growing wiser in the process. Life brings its joys and sorrows, its exciting, and yes, mundane aspects. It also brings the unexpected. 

I feel that, for me, 2020 has been the true definition of that. There has been heartbreak, but there has also been happiness. There have been the coming to terms with past relationships, but inevitably it made space for the unexpected new. It's been a year of firsts, of experiencing old things but only better, of unimaginable moments of joy. It's been a challenge to grow beyond the box I left and truly search out the person I was meant to be. Or maybe, it really hasn't been about the searching at all, but becoming what was never lost to be found in the first place. It's been about embracing the here and now and basking in the beauty the present holds. It's been about gratefulness. Grateful that the above struggles are proof of freedom. No, they're not easy, but I'm so lucky that they're real struggles occuring in the real world, a world I'm so thankful I'm a part of. 

To cult survivors, to survivors of all forms of trauma, to you who are trying to overcome religious abuse: Be easy on yourself. You're doing a good job; it's all that negative conditioning convincing you otherwise. It's a journey, this life we're living, it's more about the view right now than the destination that deserves our attention. 

So, take a breath. Let it go. 

You're safe. 

You're healing. 

You're overcoming so much. 

You're starting to thrive. 

Isn't it beautiful to watch?

Photo courtesy: Unsplash