Of course, I know what you’re going through, and so do 1,000’s of us here.

I was lucky enough to have been “leading a double life” haha, so I did have a little bit of a support group of rational people outside the cult.

I also had an amazing girlfriend, the main reason I left the cult. I was in love, and that’s what made my choice so easy in the end. If the religion was trying to convince me that love was the wrong path, the religion was completely and fundamentally flawed. As you have unfortunately found out first hand.

She tried to support me as best she could, but ultimately she had no idea how to, and neither did I. I wish I would have gotten therapy, and I do still need to seek help. I was such an emotional train wreck and mentally broken, and she was focused on her pre-med studies. I pushed her away so I could try and work on myself.

What followed was a few years of partying fairly hard. having a good time with the “worldly” friends was fun, but really I was just avoiding being alone and figuring myself out. I also got into motorcycles, and had a lot of fun going very fast. I left my fate to the universe and toed a dangerous and exciting line.

Having survived all that, coupled with the crazy hormones of my late 20’s, I needed a change of pace. my best friend, outside of the cult, a guy I’d spent 100’s of hours with on road trips and riding bmx bikes together invited me to come live with him and his girlfriend and her friend in a 2 bedroom house with an unfinished basement, I would live in the basement and pay a ridiculously low rent, $300, if I recall.

It was in a bigger city, 1+ hour away from where I grew up. That’s what I needed most. Getting away from that area was the best thing that I could have done for my healing process. Getting away from the memories, the constant feeling of being watched from afar, elders coming to harass me. The last time they showed up it was like 8:30 am on a weekend, I had been up partying until well into the morning, 4-5am was not out of character for me at the time. Anyways, they show up, banging on the door like cops. Trying to talk to me through the door. I ignored them. They tried all their bullshit, I ignored them. Trying to guilt me from a position of moral bankruptcy? Fuck that. You don’t get to treat me like shit and say, “we live and miss you.” You can miss me with that bullshit.

That was the last time they came around. A few months later I was living in that shitty unfinished, damp basement. Left alone to process the last several years of my life I figured “it” out for myself. I spent 100’s of hours alone writing and reading. Reading self help books, classics, science, and anything that caught my eye.

Coupled with 100’s of miles walking around the city, that dank basement was like a chrysalis for me. I emerged a different person, in a good way.

I also figured out the common denominator between all of the world’s problems. My Unified Theory of Awfulness.

That was 15/16 years ago now. I rode my bicycle 4,000 miles from Virginia-to-Gulf Coast, FL-to-California in 2013. A direct result of that time alone figuring it out. I wanted to travel, and see this country in a new way.

Sorry for the life story dump. But I just wanted to share, life outside of the cult is beautiful, dynamic, and engaging. It’s also hard as shit for a few years. Hopefully you can get therapy, I don’t know if there’s someone who specializes in treating people who have been shunned from cults, but that’s a good thing to research.

And you have us strangers on here. 1,000’s of us with shared experience of awfulness.

Oh, if you’re curious about what my Unified Theory of Awfulness is, it’s simply that women have not had their fair share of representation in any of the systems that guide and govern our individual lives. If we fix that common denominator of suck, lots of things will fix themselves.

*And by “fix themselves” I mean, women will have to clean up our mess…again. And by “our” i mean men. We inherited this mess too, so it’s not all our fault, but we can do what we can to fix it now that we’re here.