now I stay easy to find hoping to be found

a Molotov cocktail of cult isolation, identity fuckery, and other scary stories to tell in the dark

In 2015 my heart was in a prison, but on the brink of escape. I was a kind soul, but completely disillusioned. I can tell you many stories about just that era in my life, but— Cool Stuff.* I’ll just give you the concise version of this part of my experience with the cult. There is so much I have to leave out. Too much pain, too much to express. Let me see if I can give you the gist of a gist.

[ Content Warning: I will talk frankly and casually about self-harm, ideation, and other shitty things. If these things trigger you, please skip this piece. With that said, onward! ]

My first study-bible as an ordained minister. For you scholarly nerds, this translation is based heavily on Masoretic Hebrew Text, and the Westcott and Hort Text. You can see in the footnote in the image that it also heavily references the Vulgate and Septuagint.

Where were we? Oh right—my heart, my soul—a bit jacked up. I was feeling quite empty, rejected, alone, isolated and hopeless. Maybe I was in that survival state, fight or flight. Feeling unsafe. Trapped. Suicidal. A wavering candle.

I didn’t want to die. In all honesty I wanted to live. But I’m a flame, a fire like my grandmother and we can’t be contained. I wanted to glow. To glow on others, glow on things I love, glow on my surroundings. The thing is, a cult will choke that. A cult will reshape that. It will rob a tender innocence about you. Violate. Grope. I hate how it feels.

I still feel it now.

But I’m a fire, and I escaped that prison.

the part where I describe cult life, extra dismally

My gender dysphoria wasn’t yet fully manifesting, I still “didn’t know.” I didn’t know that in about five years I would transition—a complete twist of my fate. It was 2015 and I just wanted my freedom. To think. To feel. To be. There were memories I carried from the past related to gender. Memories of crossdressing, memories of my identity being questioned. These things still crossed my mind but I suppressed them. I am not supposed to “entertain misleading thoughts” or ‘fall into the sin of independent thinking.’ I am a sheep of the Lord, I must ‘put away the old personality with all it’s carnality.’

These are the kind of sayings you end up being programmed with. Men living off the tithes, living in New York with all expenses paid write this kind of shit on globally accessible publications. It’s how they control the large congregation of almost ten million followers. I would even suggest it’s a much higher number, because they count their member’s “active” status only. For example, I was considered “inactive” before I was excommunicated.

I’ve experienced the ritual of being “publicly reproved,” twice actually. It’s a thing they do to “discipline” you in front of hundreds of people. Shame. Manipulation. Gaslighting. All of it tied together like a nice bow on a shit show gift that someone abusive gives you—with a note that says, “I OWN YOUR ASS BITCH!”

The stakes were high during those times. I always felt on edge. I had a family of five. We were considered “pillars.” I was well respected among them. Literally, letters of recommendation about me to congregations across the country, letters about me to those old men in New York, to decide when to ordain me for higher appointment. Which they eventually approved. Twice. After showing repentance of course. After discarding myself again, of course.

The entire system feels like an onboarding and offboarding process in a corporate job, where hierarchies are everything, where promotions come depending on how “exemplary” of a corporate husk you become.

Me. I’m corporate husk. Waiting for divine orders—Brother.

the part about my crisis of conscience, and her

Before my departure in 2015, I had returned to my ordination as a minister in late 2008. I had left for almost a year, but I returned like their quintessential prodigal child, and regained my position as an “appointed shepherd” over time. I didn’t feel right about leaving my family who was deeply entrenched into the cult’s system. I wanted to believe. I wanted to keep my family together. I wanted to believe the god I was worshiping gave a fuck. I wanted to believe everything she believed. I put in my time from 2008 to 2013 trying to save them. But God gave no fucks and gave my spouse cancer instead.

I felt so alone. The more I prayed, the less I wanted to.

I made myself hard to find. Nobody could really open me up or hear my true thoughts inside. I just kept following protocols. I of course stayed, for her. I was not about to leave my spouse when she needed me most. It’s not like I didn’t love her. That’s what made it heartbreaking when I decided to act.

She believed the doctrines, the dogma, the promise of hope. I don’t blame her. She wanted hope, she needed hope. She had a wounded soul too, just like me. But I can’t tell her story for her, so that’s all I can say.

Eventually I ended our relationship, I could not see us ever leaving the cult. I placed my ring on the dresser, and we had our last fight before I walked out the door and never returned. My shit was flying out the balcony. Culty people almost immediately began showing up to my apartment. I could not see us ever having a normal relationship without the religious guilt always present, always aware of our choices. The way we love each other. The type of sex we were allowed. The kind of things we could talk about. The kind of goals we could aspire for. It was all dictated by the cult. Our closeness was gone for me, it felt shitty. It made me a shitty partner. My soul became unavailable. I felt empty. My unbelief was on the brink, and I felt entirely alone.

(If you need a little bit of warmth in this dark tale, in the end, her and I remain friends. We are still healing, sometimes we talk about these things, a way to let each other know we are okay now. Sometimes we do need the reminders, the chronic survival state is hard to unlearn. We even still co-parent. I like to think we beat those abusive motherfuckers. I like to believe we won in the end. :)

        Let me bring you back to this dark tale though. I am sorry.

I was waking up. In a lot of ways she was too, but our communication was restrained by doctrines, beliefs, expectations and the dissonance. The dissonance, you don’t forget. It’s always there reminding you that your thoughts are being monitored. By you. A version of you that rats you out to the elders. The clerics. The enforcers. The wolves.

Years pass, her cancer in remission, and I am barely there anymore. We got through it, I honored my vow, in sickness and in health. My soul was entirely sapped. I existed in a different world in my head, where I had freedom, and love untethered by dogma. I was awake, but I couldn’t let on that I was. After all, apostasy was enough for your family to disown you. The dissonance was exhausting.

                                                      Pretend. Pretend really good. At night, we sigh. Sigh a lot. Cry secretly. Do it quietly. —October, 2013

But I’m a fire, and just as I can warm things, I can destroy them too.

I disappear, become a scapegoat and regain my family

I eventually did leave the cult. By mid 2015, I had been gone months now, with the intent to stay gone. Since then, I slept in my car, in a shitty roach infested room from some stranger, and eventually my sister’s place. Thank fuck, because my idée fixe was on offing myself. I was tired—suddenly my grandfather dies. We were very close. I sink deeper. I am very tired. I can’t even see my own flames anymore.

I was alone. My extended family was 1,200 miles away, my sister was in the cult too, no one to turn to, all my “friends” treating me like I have leprosy.

My children were being told I was a lost sheep, and that I was living unholy. My spouse, completely devastated, and the cult, there to tell them I was being pulled away by demons, the Devil himself. Suspicions of infidelity were high, rumors and accusations were swirling. I mean I left “God’s holy arrangement” how could I not be sinning? My reputation was destroyed through rumors, so many rumors.

I’ve had people find me in public to only condemn me, embarrass me and question my character. I’ve had people knock on my door to “see for myself” whether I was truly a heretic turning people away from the Lord. Some even suggested I was a psychopath, and that I lost my mind, that I had no empathy for my family or my spouse. I was told I was a narcissist, and only cared about myself. Yeah I was ready to end it. I didn’t want to though, but I could see no relief otherwise.

                                        I made myself even harder to find.

I was so deep within myself, the only way out of this hell was through it and I was preparing for the pain. I wish I could tell you the conflict with the cult was over when I left. Unfortunately, it would be years before I saw relief from them, and in particular toward my family.

While I was gone on my own, I changed my life as slowly as I could. I could see my ex still struggling to keep the faith. Struggling to treat me balanced between former spouse and possibly an apostate. My kids, confused to complete disillusionment. These things still hurt me for them. I felt like I failed my role at that time as their guide, their spiritual lead. Like I failed to protect them from wicked men.

                                                How could this happen? I trusted those people.

I stayed isolated, trying to build a life while seeing my kids on agreed upon days. The days that they did not have mandatory night church. Mandatory “ministry school,” where you’re trained from infancy how to manipulate conversations.

Eventually they started slowly leaving the cult. Very slowly. Very painfully. I was to blame for their “falling away” of course. I was the “head” that took the entire family out of “god’s grace.” Truly a mother of heretics as my sons continued to slowly leave the cult and be labeled accordingly.

I didn’t mind being the blamed reason, I was just happy they were waking up and acting. The first one was my first-born. He tells me, ‘mom I never believed that shit, but it did rob my childhood.’ Then later my older step-son left. Then lastly, my ex and then my youngest son.

My youngest son came up to me and apologized for how they treated me, and for how they did not believe me. He even apologized for challenging my identity when I came out in 2020. He did not leave until 2021. Even well into 2023, the cult has been a problem, but at least now we can resist them as a family united.

Like I said, I still talk with her. She has thanked me multiple times acknowledging that had I not had the courage to leave, she would have never left. She said she was too afraid. I know that fear too, it’s taught to you. We sometimes share a tear or a sigh over the phone about these things, it’s hard not to feel it’s lasting effects. But I’m a fire, and I broke my family out of a cult through blasphemies and motherfucking rebellion.

                                             Heresy if you will.

Now, I just stay easy to find, hoping to be found by someone. Someone that may yet be tender to these things. Found by someone that loves me for who I am, and who I’ve been. To be found by my sons whenever they need me, to trust that I will guide them better than I did in the past. Found by god, still cursing his name and turning his sheeple away from his faith.

Thanks for reading.

                                         I am alone, and I do not know for how long I can stay this way. I hope they leave and still love me one day. —April, 2017

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[Footnote]

*Cool Stuff: a thing I explain in an earlier piece, I included it below. Go check it out!