When you leave a cult, you leave for a variety of reasons. It's usually not just one thing, even if it was one thing that initially prompted you to consider it. And when you're out, you don't magically reject everything the cult taught you from birth to the day you left. That's because nothing is black and white; you don't get to go into your brain and find the folder labeled “Cult – 1986-2009” and click Delete. The cult's teachings seep into everything; they affect everything you believe and think you know. So for years, you'll have sudden revelations, some big, some minuscule, about things you Thought You Knew. Suddenly something that is obvious to most people will become instantly clear to you, and you'll feel really stupid for not having seen it before, and sort of angry because you were raised in such a way that you were deprived of that information, or deprived of the critical thinking skills needed to get to that revelation sooner.
So for the past few years, every once in a while I have these revelations of “knowledge” that come to me instantly formed, and I realize that before that, I was still operating on assumptions/viewpoints taught me by the cult. And there is really no way around this. There's no way to sit down when you leave the cult and analyze every bit of information in your mind to see where it came from and if it is actually valid. The trick is to be ready to admit that something may in fact not be valid; it may really be an old prejudice taught you as a child by the cult. If you can't admit the possibility that you may be unconsciously holding onto some of those things, then you end up being one of those idiots who goes to their grave (long after leaving the cult) insisting that Hershey's really does use blood to make their chocolate goodies, or that “smurf” really does mean “little blue demon” in the dictionary.
It's important that when you have these revelations, you allow the initial response of anger, sadness, betrayal, whatever, to be expressed – my partner is great, he never minds having long out-of-nowhere conversations with me about these sudden revelations and what they mean to my life now. Then, after that, if you can, laugh about it. Like, wow, I can't believe all this time I've been telling people to look up “smurf” in the dictionary. It sucks, I feel ignorant, but... it's kind of funny. If you can't laugh a little, you end up holding onto these old prejudices and bits of misinformation all the tighter, because if you give it up, you have to admit you were wrong and foolish, and then you feel humiliated. You end up sacrificing your own self-improvement to keep your ego safe and sound. Big mistake. Get angry, feel foolish and taken advantage of and held back, and then say, Wow, I'm so glad I got out.
I'm thinking of all this stuff tonight because last night, on my way to sleep, I suddenly remembered an event from childhood and saw it in a different light, thanks to adult perspective and being free of my old cultist mentality.
I was about twelve years old when this happened. I was staying at a friend's house. Her mom sent us to switch out the laundry; their washer and dryer was out on the back porch so we were outside. It was dark. We had the porch light on, so we couldn't see more than a few feet into the darkness. We couldn't see the trees or bushes that surrounded their house.
Well, we were used to being outside at night, no big deal, but then, clear as day, we heard this, coming from the darkness to one side of the porch:
“Psssst! Psst! Psssssssssst!”
No, it was not an insect or something dumb like that. It was very obviously a person's voice. There was no one at the house that could have been playing a trick on us. We got frightened and went inside.
We held hands in her room and sang, We're Jehovah's Witnesses, we speak out in fearlessness!, what we'd been counseled to do when we were afraid. We didn't tell her parents that we thought there was someone outside – because that's not what we thought. We thought, automatically, that it was a demon. That's why it was outside and not in, because there were Bibles and stuff in the house, so it couldn't come in. And why tell her parents? They wouldn't be able to hear it, because after all, “everyone knows” that demons mostly target kids, because they're more vulnerable and because no one will believe them.
Looking back, of course, I have a much more chilling idea of what was in the darkness trying to attract our attention – maybe hoping one of us would wander off the porch.
Thinking of the time frame in which this happened, it was around the time this guy in his late twenties, who worked at Walmart, took a liking to me. Once, when I was with my sister, he followed her home to see where I lived. Another time, I was with my friend's family and he followed them home. He showed up at their house more than once, trying to coax me into his car.
Is it more likely that a demon was saying, “Psst!” or that it was this man, who had already established a pattern of trying to get me into his car? And instead of going inside and telling her parents that someone was outside whispering to us, or calling the police, we went inside and prayed and sang together, terrified that a demon was trying to get into the house.
In a cult, children are basically shaped into little victims, especially girls. I can think of so many times, so many things I should have told my parents. Instead I closed my eyes and prayed.
This is just one example of a “revelation” that can occur years after leaving a cult. Of course it wasn't a demon trying to get into the house! If anything, it's mostly likely it was a man trying to draw us away from the house. When I thought of this incident and realized all this, I felt pretty pissed off. I was angry that I'd been terrified to such an extent by adults telling me over and over again that demons were trying to attack me every second of the day, that it never even occurred to me that it could be something besides a demon whispering to me from the trees. I was angry, too, that the only line of defense I'd been given was to pray to God and sing Kingdom Melodies and repeat His name, and nothing bad could happen then – if my faith was strong enough.
It does feel like a betrayal – a big part of me thinks the adults in my life should have done a better job of protecting me. I also feel pretty foolish and stupid. How could I have thought, even as a sheltered child, that a demon was trying to get me? How could it be that it never even popped into my mind that maybe something else was going on? It's embarrassing just to admit it. But, it did happen that way. Nothing I can do to change it now. All I can do is process it, correct my erroneous thinking, make sure any kids in my care are better protected, and remember How Glad I Am That I Got Out. Because sometimes it's hard to laugh at it; and some things aren't made for laughing at. Sometimes the best you can do is to be thankful you're out of the cult now.
No comments:
Post a Comment