memories, nightmares, pure confusion.
Date: December 23, 2008 12:52AM
I left the cult I was born in a little over two years ago, and went through a terrible time afterwards. This year, since March at least, has been pretty good. What I've had is as close to recovery, is as close to a normal life, than anything else I've ever known. Trouble is, there's something really painful about normalcy and I've been thinking about this board a bit lately.
Xmas is hard. I don't have any 'traditions' like normal people do. I don't talk to anyone in my family. I don't talk to any of my old 'friends,' not from anywhere.
The 'friends' I do have, cold and distant as they are, spend this time of year going out, drinking with the folk they've known since they were at school. I didn't even GO to school. The only xmas cards I got was from two people at work, my tutor on a course I took over the summer and the organiser of a volunteer camp I helped out with at the last minute earlier in the year.
I'm crying as I write this, not because I'm lonely (I've got my other half, and he's never left me despite what a monster I've been to him, and despite the hell my cult put him through), but just because I feel so broken, I feel like such a freak. I don't belong anywhere. I'm just so different, even different to the people I wanted to relate to.
I just don't know what I'm aiming for any more. I write: I'm on my third novel, unpublished of course, and I'm just sort of dragging myself through life. Recently I found some people who made me really happy and I applied for a job with them and got turned down for it. I guess I feel like I'll always be an outsider. Not just an outsider - I'll always be on the outside.
I don't know why I'm in this world. Everything hurts. I don't feel any hate or pain to the cult themselves any more. All my rage at them has subsided. What happened or didn't happen just doesn't matter to me any more.
I just... wish I could have what other people have. Friendships with people who knew you from when you were a kid. An ordinary upbringing, allowed to make ordinary choices: what A Levels shall I sit, what University shall I go to, what shall I have for lunch, etc. I just wish I'd had the chance to develop normally, instead of spending five years of my life kept away from all human contact, and most of the remaining 19 years trying desperately to follow rules that make no sense and be someone that doesn't exist for reasons that were never explained.
And I know that most of it is my fault (my sibling was never recruited, went to boarding school, and turned out fine). I just still don't understand how it was my fault.
Anyway, this is a bit sprawling. I've been having nightmares the last few weeks, I guess I've got a touch of S.A.D., and my job is coming to an end and I'm worried about getting another one. Application forms are so hard, there are huge gaps in my history and I forget about the lies I've told and stories I've made up to account for them. As I said this time of year is really hard for me too, everyone I know is going out and having a good time, meeting up with old friends and family and I just stop in every night to write and study. It's hard not to feel awful. Ugly, unlovable, unwanted, awful.
Will this go on forever? How can anyone ever understand?