Author: Eleanor Skelton

Eleanor Skelton is a freelance journalist and educator. They were homeschooled kindergarten through senior year of high school within the high-demand subculture of fundamentalist Christianity during the 90s and 00s before completing their bachelor’s degree at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. Eleanor speaks about their experiences in leaving a cult to advocate for other survivors. They are currently enrolled in a journalism graduate program at the University of Alabama. They write about deconstruction and mental wellness at www.eleanorskelton.com.

Emotional Hypothermia, Part 2: Dare You To Feel

Editorial Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Eleanor Skelton’s blog. It was originally published on September 23, 2014.

“We’re talking about anger here, Fraser, a human emotion.
Are you human? Because if you are, human beings feel things, okay?
They feel anger, they feel love, they feel lust and fear, and sometimes,
and I know you don’t want to hear this, sometimes they even cry.”
– Ray, Due South (2.17), “Red, White, or Blue”

My wall shattered one morning.

I was merging onto I-25 early on a gray Monday in January 2012 to head to campus.

The weekend before, my family had been out of town and I’d watched some brand-new Faith Lessons by Ray VanderLaan, a Biblical archaeological DVD series, and sobbed for the first time in months at the idea of radical love, acceptance even when I failed to measure up. That I was worth love simply because I was alive.

And then Switchfoot’s song “Dare You to Move” came on 103.1 WAY-FM. I lost it.

I’d made a pact against crying around the age of 8 or 9. Crying showed vulnerability and weakness, neither of which I felt safe exposing around my family or church members. I prided myself on my refusal to cry at Passion Plays or sad movies. My mom would recount the entire Easter story with A Beka Bible flashcards, depicting the scourging in graphic detail. She cried. Not me.

I could hold it in when no one else could. I told myself over and over: “I am ice. Ice does not melt.”

I did Elsa’s whole “Conceal, don’t feel” thing before it was cool.

Well. Then I couldn’t cry at all. Even in private.

Most of my teen years were spent reversing the choke hold I’d imposed on my tears. And halfway through college, the rest was crumbling. “All the walls you built up / Are just glass on the outside / So let ’em fall down / There’s freedom waiting in the sound.” (Tenth Avenue North)

I described the experience to my friend Elraen later that cold wintry week on chat during one of our all-nighters.

I said, “I wasn’t really expecting it. It was one of those times when Jesus really gets your attention, and you realize just how much He really loves you, and you cry your eyes out. Somehow…I’d had two experiences like this in high school…but nothing quite like that since late 2005.”

“I guess I thought maybe experiences like that were over in my life.”

Elraen knew what I meant. She responded, “I hope that more and more God can bring moments like that into your life, breaking through the walls that have been put up to shield yourself from hurt […] I hope that healing comes and drives deeper and deeper into your life. Because He DOES love you. So, so much, no matter what [people] say about you or accuse you of — His love does not ever change.”

My soul was reawakening, but I’d have to fight my tendency to lock up. Numbness felt like being a ghost in my own existence, but at least it kept pain at bay.

The next few months, I felt like this little bubble of hope protected me, which I needed for the “coming of age” phase of my life story.

I still questioned the wisdom of feeling over the next two years. Doesn’t it take more energy than necessary? In late high school, when I read through all four Gospels twice, one detail stuck with me.

Jesus is about to be crucified. He is offered a drugged wine to dull the pain. He refuses.

“And when they came to a place called Golgotha (which means Place of the Skull), they offered him wine to drink, mixed with gall, but when he had tasted it, he would not drink it.” (Matthew 27:33-34, ESV)

My Nelson study bible explained that “Jesus refused it; He wanted to drink His cup of suffering fully aware of all that was happening.”

From a logical perspective, this seems incredibly stupid, like refusing anesthesia before surgery. But often love isn’t logical.

If you wanted to identify with someone else completely, to live in their skin, you’d choose the full emotional and physical repercussions. Not out of cold obligation. With fire in your chest.

I know. Because I chose this once. I wanted to know the everyday struggles of my friend in a wheelchair. So I didn’t take the gloves she handed me or the foam seat cushion. I wanted noodly arms and a sore butt at the end of the day, because it would be a more honest reflection of her experience.

And this is how I realized that really choosing to live, embracing love and peace, grief and pain without censorship, requires a bravery I was still discovering.

Part three of this series will be about how I learned to be honest about my anger.

Emotional Hypothermia, Part 1: The heart is deceitful

Editorial Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Eleanor Skelton’s blog. It was originally published on September 22, 2014.

In this cocoon
Shedding my skin cause I’m ready to
I wanna break out
I found a way out
I don’t believe that it’s gotta be this way
The worst is the waiting
In this womb I’m suffocating

Feel your presence filling up my lungs with oxygen
I take you in
I’ve died
Rebirthing now
I wanna live for love wanna live for you and me
Breathe for the first time now
I come alive somehow
– Skillet, Rebirthing

“How does God speak to you?”

My friend Cynthia Jeub was asking me. It was January 2013. I’d only been moved out on my own for five months.

“Through his word. Through the Bible,” I answered.

“But how does God speak to you now?” she persisted.

I hesitated. Cynthia wanted to know if I believed God could speak directly to me.

“But doesn’t the Bible say that the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked and who can know it?”

“That,” Cynthia Jeub said, “is the number one verse that has killed the Awana generation.”

– – – – – – – –

Rewind to July 2012.

My parents had just presented me with two options: transfer from my state school to Bob Jones University or move out without assistance. I’d stopped obeying their 7:30 pm curfews and read the Harry Potter series the previous summer. Clearly the secular university experience had corrupted the homeschool alumna.

“Eleanor, I think you should have a conversation with your heart before you decide,” my chemistry undergraduate research professor said.

I gave her a puzzled look. My mind whispered, But the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked, how could I trust it?

– – – – – – – –

I’m a frustrated, sobbing four year old.

“Stop crying. I saw how fast you turned those tears on, you can turn them off just like that,” my mom commands, snapping her fingers.

I stop. It hurts, but I shove all the tears back in where they came from. My breath is ragged from crying after a spanking.

If I’m ever going to earn my grown-up card one day, I must learn to hide what I really feel.

– – – – – – – –

Hannah Ettinger writes on her blog Wine & Marble about rediscovering her identity after being taught to avoid following your heart, and about what emotional repression did to her friend, whose parents and church victim-blamed her when she was raped.

“Jori is a very smart person, and after such strict parenting and high pressure in our church to have your emotions under control all the time, she became highly skilled at playing social roles that were expected of her. But when something traumatic happened to her, she wasn’t able to connect with her emotions to display them for an audience on command — she was too far gone into trained disassociation with her own feelings.”

Back in 2010 to about 2012, when many of my friends first met me, I couldn’t tell them how I felt. My typical response was to quote Bible verses or renowned authors on a given subject. But what did Eleanor think about this? What does Eleanor want to be when she grows up? How does she feel? No one knew.

I went around everywhere being really HAPPY for everyone. Because I hoped if I could shoo away their sadness and make them whole, somehow I would defeat my own issues with self-harm and suicidal thoughts. That maybe I would be healed in healing others. But that’s not really how it works. You kind of have to confront and do battle with your own darkness before you are ever ready to help someone else with theirs.

I lived in a state of emotional hypothermia.

Another friend, Cynthia Barram, defined that for me earlier this year, when I wrestled with accepting all of my emotions, even the angry and ugly ones, as part of being human.

I explained this over chat to Cynthia Jeub in March: “when you [guys] first met me, I was in stage 3. Where *I* didn’t even know there was a problem. In stage 1, you shiver a lot. In stage 2, you’re going numb, but you’re still fighting it. Stage 3, you don’t even know you’re cold and dying.”

Cynthia Jeub responded, “Right, they went really in detail about hypothermia in my hunter’s safety class.”

“But…Eleanor. One major symptom of stage 3 hypothermia is ecstasy.”

In tomorrow’s post, I will discuss why daring to feel is worthwhile.

The Herdsman, the Maiden and the Coyotes: A Fable

Editorial Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Eleanor Skelton’s blog. It was originally published on January 17, 2015. This story has also been reprinted on the 412teens.org blog under the title “The Herdsman, the Maiden & the Coyotes: A Fable.”

Sometimes, she danced with the wind, her blue skirt swishing to synchronize with its rhythm.

One day the whimsy of her dance led her to a crater blistered with brambles and dagger-length thorns. She stumbled over the precipice into the midst of them. Her dress tore, and her skin scratched.

A herdsman from the village nearby heard a child crying. He looked down and saw her caught in the briars. He leaped down into it, wincing as the thorns tore at him, but he struggled toward the girl.

When he reached her, he half-smiled and reached out to pull her up. But she was crying so much that his face was blurred, and all she could see was the blood covering his clothes and hands. Shrieking, she drew back from him, wounding herself further.

Finally, she let herself be carried out of the thicket. The herdsman tried to soothe her, singing her a lullaby. All she could hear was the painful undertone in the song.

By the time they returned to the dandelion field, the girl had cried herself to sleep. The herdsman laid her down under a tree, cleaned her scratches with a damp cloth, and kissed her forehead. And he went back to tend his flock.

The girl awakened the next morning. Glancing at her scabs, she sobbed again, remembering the herdsman’s wounds. She sat in the field all day staring at the dandelions. She had lost the dance.

In the evening, she crept back to the edge of the valley, grasping at the brambles.

She separated out the thorns from the stems of the plants, clenching them in her fist.

If she hadn’t fallen into the crater yesterday, she wouldn’t have cried out, and if she hadn’t cried out, the herdsman wouldn’t have come, and if the herdsman hadn’t come, he wouldn’t have bled. It was all her fault.

She used the thorns like claws across her arms. Surely she must hurt, because she hurt him. Only her own blood could satisfy this.

Every night for years, she returned to the crater. The bleeding was never enough. The craving to satiate the guilt was as fresh each night as the one before. Sometimes the coyotes came out to follow, nipping at her heels, licking up the warm blood dripping from her wounds.

She thought she must be an outcast, even though the villagers never mentioned it to her. A word or sharp look made her tremble, thinking they blamed her. Surely everyone knew what she had done to the beloved herdsman.

She sometimes would see him or other men leading their flocks over the distant misty hills. He tried to approach her on a street corner a few times, but she shuddered and turned away, lest she see his blood. The blood. She could never forget the blood.

But the coyotes never left. They became the girl’s companions when she felt like the village hermit. They walked with her when no one else would.

The girl grew into a maiden. A lonely maiden, wearing a ragged blue gown that barely covered the dried clotted mess covering her arms and legs.

One night at the crater, she returned to the top with her fist full of brambles. A coyote was waiting for her. She could smell him. He would lick her wounds before he’d let her pass by. She wondered when he’d just lunge for her throat and the pain would end. Coming over the edge, lantern light fell across her form and she shrank back into the shadows.

“Little girl.”

The voice.

“Little girl. Don’t be afraid. You aren’t lost, are you?”

She trembled and clenched her teeth. Of all the villagers, he especially she could never face. Not with her scars.

He reached down for her hand.

“Come on. It’s all right.”

The coyote snarled in the brush nearby.

“Wait here.” She heard his sandals crackle against the dry grass, and the swish of his club.

His footsteps returned, and he peered over the ledge down at her. “It’s safe now.” He smiled.

She dared herself to glance into his eyes. “Thank you.” A girlish whimper.

She let him pull her up into the lamplight. They both sat down, each looking off into the distance. Her gaze wandered to the herdsman sitting beside her, to his rough cotton robe, to his ragged sleeves.

His arms. So many white echoes of pain. But just echoes. No blood.

Without thinking, she traced one of them lightly with her finger, then drew back. “I’m sorry.”

He turned to her. His eyes twinkled in the dim light. “No need to apologize.”

Pulling her arm closer to his, he drew it into the light. “Those look painful,” he said as he traced the dark crimson lines on her arms.

One wet drop fell onto the lap of the blue gown.

“You know,” he said, “If a little girl fell into the crater tomorrow, I would pull her out.”

The sob couldn’t be stifled. She looked down, eyes memorizing every hole and rip in her dress. His arm wrapped around her shoulder like a winter’s cloak, warm and safe.

“I carry my own lambs high above the thorns when I pull them out of the crater. I can handle being scratched, but I don’t want them to bleed,” he said.

Tears trickled, refusing to be shoved back. At last, she relaxed and lay against his shoulder.

He plucked a dandelion head and handed it to her. They blew it out together. And dandelion seeds floated past in the moonlit breeze, the wind gathering the fluff up into the stars.

He spoke again, his hand held out towards her. “Would you like to dance?”

Self-injury: A Worldview

Editorial Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Eleanor Skelton’s blog. It was originally published on August 15, 2013.

Content note: self-harm, suicidal thoughts

“Told I talked too much
made too much noise
I took up a silent hobby—
Bleeding.”

― S. Marie

Self harm. When the darkness inside at last leaks out and mars your body.

The reasons most people give for hurting themselves are complicated and diverse. Verbalizing the pain, punishing and satiating guilt, desiring control, a grasping to keep out the numbness.

My years of personal self-injury were mostly guilt-driven. As a preschooler, I saw an Easter play and believed that I needed to hurt myself for hurting Jesus. Every year, the repeat of the same drama I desired and dreaded so much drove deeper into my heart this need to crucify myself.

Little girl me thought that Jesus had to obey His father in the Garden of Gethsemane and die for me because she was a child and had to obey her parents. Surely it would be wrong not to, and Jesus couldn’t sin. Therefore, little girl me believed Jesus was like this abused child that was forced to sacrifice Himself for her.

She couldn’t understand free will. That Gethsemane was not about “I must” but “I choose.” That His love could never be forced.

So self-injury was more than just cutting. The bruises in hidden places and perpetual scabs all around my fingernails were just a symptom of an underlying issue. The proverbial iceberg that sunk the Titanic. An entire worldview lay under the icy waves.

When you believe that you are worthless, that you deserve to be punished and denied love, this perspective seeps mercilessly into every area of your life.

Self harm can be subtle. Some of my closest friends have said that they don’t deserve friendship or to even simply enjoy life.

“Aren’t we supposed to be focused on the next life and not enjoying this one? I don’t have to have friends. I’ll just be alone.”

“Why I am so stupid?”

“I don’t want to inconvenience the waiters at IHOP because I’m in a wheelchair. I don’t have to have pancakes.”

“Wouldn’t you eventually get over it [my suicide]?”

The words from our conversations drip like blood. Emotional wounds seeping silent tears. They don’t see that every person’s unique genetic composition and personality combination makes them irreplaceable. John Powell explained it like this: “You have a unique message to deliver, a unique song to sing, a unique act of love to bestow. This message, this song, and this act of love have been entrusted exclusively to the one and only you.”

The voices in our heads telling us that we are worthless are lies. Jesus said, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”

Abundant life. Abundant even in the little things. Enjoying hot, syrupy pancakes with friends. Late night laughter. Life contains hardships, but we don’t have to seek them out. My friend Cynthia Jeub recently wrote that we don’t need to live like we were born to be martyrs.

I can live free, and be “free indeed.” I have not been denied love. I am (and YOU are) so loved.

P.S. Me and Pastor Mark Adams from First Baptist Church of Beaumont who used to play Jesus in the Passion Play. I went back to visit last month.

********
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Why my parents aren’t villains

Editorial Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Eleanor Skelton’s blog. It was originally published on January 17, 2015.

The morning I moved out, I texted my research professor who was helping me leave that my parents weren’t letting me take the heirloom violin, but left me an old laundry basket, a case of canned green beans, and a pot they didn’t like.

She replied, “That sounds like Harry’s birthday presents from the Dursleys.” Yep. The crazy relatives who made Harry Potter live in the cupboard under the stairs.

Sometimes my parents act like the Dursleys. Or even Miss Minchin in A Little Princess. It’s easy to compare my parents to fairy tale bad guys. And even helpful sometimes in predicting their behavior.

But villainizing anyone denies the psychological complexity at work.

My parents are more like the mature antagonists in classical literature. They’re more similar to Javert in Les Miserables, whose sense of justice and punishment for lawbreakers overrides any compassion, rendering him incapable of giving or accepting mercy.

And the pastor who said honoring my parents as an adult meant absolute obedience isn’t a villain either.

Sometimes I feel like fundamentalism was like living in Wise Blood, one of Flannery O’Connor’s Southern Gothic novels. The story is riddled with variations of extreme street preachers proclaiming damnation, but unable to uphold their own rigid moral standards.

My parents paid tuition for the A Beka Academy video curriculum, which was more than other families at our church could afford and made sure I graduated with an accredited high school diploma so I didn’t have to take the GED like my other homeschooled friends.

In 3rd grade when I was diagnosed with ADHD and prescribed Ritalin and a depressant, my mom saw how unbalanced I was. She told the doctors she’d make our home quiet so I could focus. She copied my long division problems lengthwise on lined notebook paper so I’d keep the columns straight.

My parents noticed I wasn’t on the growth percentile charts at the pediatrician’s office. They appealed for insurance coverage for my growth hormone replacement therapy when I was 12 to 16. Female growth plates between bones fuse around menarche, so my parents worked with my endocrinologist for an experimental combined treatment that delayed puberty and gave me more growing time.

My dad was even going to sell our more expensive car to afford a year of treatment without insurance.

If not for the daily Nutropin and monthly Lupron injections, today I’d be a real-life dwarf. I wouldn’t be able to drive a regular car or reach dishes in kitchen cabinets.

And they did pay for my first three years of college. My dad always said he wanted to give me “every advantage in life.”

I know deep down my parents love me.

Even if they don’t believe I am an adult yet. Even if they try to control what I believe and what I do.

Their beliefs dictate that they should shun me because I don’t measure up to what they think God wants.

Back in high school, the pastor at my last church talked me through why the King James Version isn’t an inspired translation or the only valid Bible to read. It was one of the first conversations that helped me to recognize the fear and control inherent in legalism.

And now he too believes I should be ostracized.

The summer I moved out, I borrowed the graphic novel Watchmen from my punk friend Kat. It’s about the second generation of a group of superheros blended into American history. But the first generation wasn’t as perfect as the press advertised.

“Who watches the Watchmen?” the book asks over and over. Who makes sure the good guys don’t become bad guys? What happens when authority is corrupted?

And (SPOILER) at the end the “villain” is one of their own. Disaster is sort of averted, they save the planet, but there is no real hero, either. Life just continues.

It’s not black and white.

Like Cynthia Jeub wrote, of course it wasn’t all bad.

My parents did many good things. And many hurtful things. I’m not obligated to give into their demands, I don’t have to lose my freedom. The bad doesn’t void the good and the good doesn’t cancel out the bad.

But if I don’t recognize their human complexity, then I am refusing to see the raw reality. And I will blind myself from the truth.