I don’t remember a time when I was non-compliant. Growing up, I remember only one spanking, from my Papa, and I didn’t even know what it was for. All my mom had to do was look at me sternly, and I would send myself to my room, crying. I was a people-pleaser, even as a small child. If they were happy, I was happy.
A child of divorced and remarried parents living in the midwestern United States, I was a typical statistic. Still, I was mostly carefree, if not a bit odd when I was young. I dressed up in “princess dresses” whenever I got the chance. I spun around in the field and acted out my favorite Disney princess scenes alone during school recess. My obsession with storms and tornadoes predated Twister. My grades were always impeccable because, again, people-pleaser. I followed rules. Rules made the world run smoothly, and told me what to expect.
I was carefree until I turned nine, at which time my Nana recalls a remarkable change in my personality. I became withdrawn, spending more and more time in my room, escaping into books and writing. I cried in private and slept a lot. Some days I was sunshine, others I was a monsoon. Still, I clung to those rules. I wanted to make other people happy, even if I wasn’t. Inheriting my parents’ crazy sense of humor, this was how I first learned to mask.
Both of my stepparents were emotionally-abusive at times for different reasons, though I didn’t recognize it as such at the time. My stepdad would fly off the rails at me if I stayed up too late reading, or didn’t do a chore. My stepmother bullied me about my creeping weight gain (it later turned out I had an endocrine disorder). All I knew is that I had to try harder. Watch the clock. Eat less at dinner. They weren’t happy with me, and it scared me, because it meant I was failing.
But even that didn’t account for the change—why I so abruptly transformed. To this day, I still don’t know. But it was a catalyst that opened up wounds that were susceptible to the poison that would later seep in.
I lived in a good, Christian home. We went to church (mostly non-denominational, but at one point, a fundamentalist church very similar to the IFB, which was a nightmare for me. I’ll get into that another time.). But I still had those suns and storms. When unexpected things happened, I was scared. If I upset my stepdad again, I’d cry and shake under the covers. (My older siblings were not people-pleasers like me and eventually went to live with our father. I was too attached to my mom to leave her side.) When I felt I’d pleased my parents, I was on top of the world, and all was right. Things were safe and secure.
As I got older, my mental state only got worse, but it also sparked creativity. I had a small, but encouraging group of friends who would read my stories and listen to my “concerts”. I had good things going for me as well, not just the bad. At one point, I was in The Saint Louis Children’s Choir. In spite of my problems, the future was anything but bleak.
But then mom’s depression got really bad, especially after giving birth to my younger brother, followed closely by my two younger sisters. We stopped going to church, which at the height of the Left Behind/rapture/satanic-panic craze, scared the tar out of me. “Growing cold” in your faith meant hellfire and demonic attacks. As far as I was concerned, my foundation was shaken. I was home-schooled from eighth grade on, so no church also meant I was more socially isolated, which worsened my own depression and anxiety.
It was a nightmare scenario for a young, mentally-ill (and, at the time, undiagnosed autistic) girl.
One of my neighborhood friends had recently joined a strange church up the road and had started wearing skirts, stopped wearing makeup, jewelry, and didn’t cut her hair anymore. She invited me to church, but I blew her off at first because it was too odd, even for me.
One weekend in October of 2000, when I was only 14, however, my world fell apart. I was at my dad’s house (like I was every other weekend). It was my dad and stepmom’s anniversary and they got into an awful screaming match. My dad left the house. My stepmom cried. She never cried. Despite our problems, it tore me up to see her sitting on the floor, sobbing. So, I stepped out of my compliant shell for the first time and left a scathing voicemail on my dad’s phone, scolding him for his behavior. My stepmom drove me home because I was too scared to stay after I realized what I’d done. I refused to talk to my dad for days, and that was the last time I regularly went to his house.
I had a new void that I desperately needed to have filled. So I called up my friend and begged her to take me to church with her. Little did I realize how vulnerable I really was. How easy it would be for a hunger to be filled with ash and years of decay that would slowly eat away at every bit of light I had left. Often, I wish I had a time machine. But only hindsight is 20/20, so thus my story brings me to a fateful door.
The door of a cult.
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