Anger

This week I realized that I was angry more than anything else. The medical doctor I first saw when I left the cult, he decided to do a lot of blood work. He needed to see where my health was at since the nutrition inside the cult was questionable at the best of times. Food, at least good nutritious food, was not a priority. Inevitably this is never a good thing. This week I got the results of that blood work back, and they were not good.

The blood work showed that I am anemic with low magnesium, low potassium, and low calcium levels. I am in kidney failure stage 2 now most of this can be managed with diet and some, but I will likely live with the effects of malnutrition for the rest of my life especially kidney failure. It makes me angry because most of this was preventable by just having good food. So, now, in addition to learning all about the modern world, I now have to relearn how to eat to meet nutritional needs that I did not previously have.

The good news this week is that I was able to spend most of it by myself working on my classwork and my therapy. I am forever grateful that a person stepped up to help pay for the psychological care that I need. I have also learned that being by myself is slightly terrifying. I know that this comes from never being allowed to be on my own and the cult. I know I will eventually become more comfortable being alone, but it will take time.

This week was also full of phone calls. Some of them were from members trying to get me to return others were telling me that I am going to hell for leaving. These calls are the hardest, partly because I still feel guilty for leaving, but more so because I no longer believe the same thing or anything that they taught. My therapist has been helping me realize that I was groomed for being a member of this cult. Now that I have left, I have much to learn to keep me from falling into those same thought patterns or seeking that same reassuring behavior. It will be hard work to not only disengage but to rewire my entire thought process. It is truly a process of de-converting. I am deconstructing a lifetime of belief.

In other good news, I have two new job offers this next week that will help me further separate myself from the group and their influence and at the same time be around others who are also enduring similar circumstances to my own. I am looking forward to being around others who are further along this same Journey.

Maybe one day I will be able to take a look back and see this day as a stepping stone into the future where others do not have to live with the pain of leaving or enduring the pain inflicted by those who lead cults. In the meantime, I keep wanting to rust the healing process. I want to get to the point that I am free of the guilt and the shame that comes of having joined a cult and now the process of having left and the healing that needs to come. These somewhat weekly notes of what has happened are part of the healing process. By bringing you along on this journey maybe someone else will be saved from having to take the journey at all. There is so much beauty in the world. Maybe someone did create it. Yet I am learning it is through ourselves that we truly learn the freedom of living.