I haven’t been writing as much lately, for a reason. The 🤬 hospital changed their policies again and this time they reduced our screentime. It’s hard for me to fit everything I do on the phone into a brief period of time, so I don’t get to write as much as I would like.
What’s Been Helpful: Camaraderie with others who have been there
Anyway, things have actually been going quite well in the meantime despite chaotic hospital policy. In my early twenties, I went to grad school and got an MEd in TESOL with the sole purpose of living in Latin America. Then, C-PTSD symptoms became impossible to ignore (though I didn’t have a diagnosis yet), so I had to re-direct my energies toward mental health. Which is a lot less fun than international adventures. Then, all my efforts to improve my mental health pretty much universally failed because nobody knew what was wrong with me so they were treating me for all the wrong things, and I became severely suicidal. Even when I had a break from the suicidality, I just lived with the assumption that someday soon I would snap and end it all. There was nothing I could do in the moment that would stop Future Me from what Future Me was going to do. Having spent my life in horrible situations that were made bearable only by big dreams, I lost the ability to be future-oriented at all. I even started shopping differently. If I was choosing a food item (say, rice), instead of looking at unit prices and shopping for the best deal, I assumed I would be dead in two weeks and bought a smaller bag that was cheaper. I even ran up credit card debt partly because I had to pay for therapy, but partly because it didn’t occur to me that I might live to see the bill.
Since being in the hospital, I’ve been watching this process rewind. First, I started spending less and less time contemplating the enticing nature of death and more and more time thinking about how to get well. My beef was just that I felt I had no reason to get well, nothing to look forward to.
Now, I’ve finally rewound to the point where I can begin to remember having dreams. My dreams are big and crazy, just like they were from childhood into early adulthood. And that is what motivates me to pour out my all into recovery. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life on the Department of Mental Health’s caseload, being kept alive by having services thrown at me that are usually reserved for people aged 80+ or who are cognitively impaired. I want to travel. I want to have a family. I would say that I want all the things that “normal people” want, but I don’t. I want more.
I’ve found that one of the most helpful things in getting better is finding other people who understand religious trauma. In November of 2019, right before the world collapsed, I scraped together the money to fly to Santa Fe for a two-day conference hosted by the International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA). I’m so very glad that I did. I had to leave halfway through the second day because it was intense trauma work, but I felt held and supported and like I belonged. I didn’t have to feel different from everybody else because I didn’t have any normal experiences growing up like watching popular TV or going to prom. On the first day of the conference, there was a presentation called “Purity Culture as a Form of Sexual Abuse.” I had never heard or thought about this. It was a huge step forward in understanding myself. The speaker recommended this book:
I bought it right away, but life got in the way and I put it aside for a long time. Now, with nothing to do all day except work on my mental health, I picked it back up and finished it last night. Once again, I felt like the author got me. I was amazed that someone who didn’t know me could understand so well. It was like, Oh my god this stuff is real? Somebody else has been through this? It validated my experience and proceeded to give the exact same type of suggestions that everybody else is giving me, such as avoiding black-and-white thinking, but it seemed more profound when she said it.
Now that I’ve finished Pure, I ordered Wayward: A Memoir of Spiritual Warfare and Sexual Purity:
Lack of screentime means incentive to invest in paper books, (but then they get mad that we have too many books and wouldn’t I rather color a picture? To which I say 🤬 you) so I can’t start reading it until it gets to my friend’s house and she can bring it by.
Another helpful thing is that ICSA ( https://www.icsahome.com/ ), the same organization that hosted the Santa Fe conference, is currently doing a webinar that is available to the public:
The first session was today. I was moved by the kindness of the speaker, who was an older man that clearly really, really cared about those of us who were watching. He gave his time with apparently nothing in it for him except sheer altruism. It totally confuses me when people besides me act that way, but I’m slowly learning to be grateful rather than deeply apologetic for having needs.
So, to sum up the first half of this, I’m going to dare to say that things are actually going well in the mental health treatment department. I’m allowed to be self-directed now which means that I can read books that my treaters were previously concerned might be triggering. Sometimes, they are. But to me, the growth outweighs the risks.
My Hopes and Dreams
It’s impossible for me to think about this without first remembering my mother. Whenever someone around her dreamed of being able to do something that they might or might not succeed at, she would gossip in her cruel little way. She feigned concern and whispered to anyone who would listen that so-and so “is thinking they’re gonna… [insert dream].”
So now that that’s out of the way, I’m going to share my wild and crazy dreams that make it worth it to me to have to fight harder for my life than almost anyone else I know. As I mentioned at the outset, I want to travel and I also want to have a family. These two things aren’t actually opposing. The cost of living is so high in my region of the USA that almost no one can afford to have a family without either being independently wealthy or living on public assistance. Not only are we expected to hit the lottery with a fantastic job, but we have to then work that job for long hours and not have any setbacks in order to be able to eke out a very modest lifestyle. Yes, there are cheaper parts of the country but the people out there are mostly jerks who voted for Donald Trump. (There, I said it.) I could move to Kansas or something but why do that when I can improve my Spanish and live a life of adventure?
First, I have to improve my mental health. That goes without saying. Then, I can discharge from here and start working on an Early Childhood Education Assistant Teacher Certificate at the local community college. I already have a teaching license but there will obviously be a huge hole in my résumé when I get out of here, so I think adding a certificate will make me more employable. Besides, I think I would prefer working with little kids.
Step Two, I work for a while as I re-adjust to life on the outside. I think it would be fun to supplement this by volunteering, maybe at an animal shelter or in another capacity with young children. This stage is intended to be hum-drum, so there’s not much to add.
Step Three, move away. I’m not exactly sure where to yet. When I was on study abroad, I really liked learning about indigenous cultures, and I pulled up the following on a Google search:
I also found this:
So, as much as I would like to work with the poor and destitute, I am probably going to be going to therapy for like the rest of my life and that ain’t cheap. But if I could get a job working preK in an international school, I feel like that would give me enough money to survive and thrive and eventually support a family. I mentioned moving to Argentina in a previous entry but now I’m dreaming of either Bolivia or Guatemala. Me being me, I bought some books about them so that I can make use of non-screentime and dream of a life far, far away from these walls. I also made a list of advantages to moving abroad:
- Adventure!
- I would be being true to my authentic self, not my traumatized self
- It would give me a geographic excuse to avoid my parents and if my kids ever asked why they never got to see their maternal grandparents, I could just tell them that they lived far away and not that they traumatize and permanently scar everything they come into contact with
- My experience with countries other than the USA is that they have much better public transportation than we do, which would reduce the pressure for me to have to drive. (I’ve been driving since I was fifteen anda half and I’m over it!)
- Everything I’ve read has said that rent in both countries is wayyy less expensive
So, we’ll see. I’m really looking forward to when my books get here and I’m going to see if I could finagle some CDs as well to make good use of my time when I can’t have my phone.
Wish me luck!
References
Buchholz, K. (2020, October 12). How indigenous are countries in the Americas? Statista.com. Retrieved October 10, 2021, from https://www.statista.com/chart/19633/countries-by-indigenous-population-in-the-americas/
Greczyn, A. (2021). Wayward: A Memoir of Spiritual Warfare and Sexual Purity. River Grove Books. ISBN 978-1632993540
International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA). (n.d.). Icsahome.com. Retrieved October 10, 2021, from https://www.icsahome.com/
Klein, L. K. (2019). Pure: Inside the evangelical movement that shamed a generation of young women and how I broke free. Atria Books. ISBN 978-1501124822
Rick Steves’ Europe. (2019, April 6). Travel as a Political Act: Bolivia and Guatemala [YouTube video]. Retrieved October 10, 2021 from https://youtu.be/x201zBPnP4w
Second and multigenerational adult former cult member recovery series. (n.d.). Networkforgood.Com. Retrieved October 10, 2021, from https://icsahome.networkforgood.com/events/34419-second-and-multigenerational-adult-former-cult-member-recovery-series
