Recently, an old pastor of mine went on a podcast and admitted that the discipleship program I had participated in was more of a cult than a college. He said, “When I looked up that definition, and when I finally one day sat in my house and I broke it down and made a list of all the things that we did… I looked at those two things in front of me, and there is no way I could say that this was not a cult and I was not a cult leader.”
For ten years I’ve been trying to write about my experiences there, but I can’t find a way into the story. It’s confusing, all the good and bad that occurred simultaneously. Even now I am struggling to compose simple sentences. I don’t want you to think it was evil— there was much that was good. Yet.
I was only in the program a year. I was seventeen and extraordinarily awkward. I had just moved several states down the East Coast, and instead of completing my senior year at a new school, I went to this program. In a lot of ways, this was one of the best years of my life. It was my first time living away from home. I was surrounded by kind, well-intentioned people in a beautiful city. My needs were covered. I was not alone.
What strikes me most, in memory, is how vivid it looks. Memory tends to fade over time, but that year stands out in full color, laminated for future reference.
I don’t have big T trauma from the time I spent in the program (can I call it a cult, now that he’s said it? Or is that a grab for attention? Can I make it a joke?), but I wonder, now, how much of my personhood, my worldview, is shaped by this time.
I spend much of my life breaking down my past and analyzing my personality. A friend told me yesterday that I like to “talk about [my] issues.” That is a correct analysis. I like to trace patterns, find cause and effect, determine why. In all my reflection, that year is often skipped over, set aside as irrelevant, a blip in the timeline.
There is so much grief to being human. It is unbearable, the grief that fills from behind, a stale-water spring.
Even now, how can I tell the stories? How can I convey the truth?
Recommended Reading…
If you haven’t read Elizabeth Strout, you’re falling behind the curve, sorry to tell you. I’ve finished two of her books, started four, but I will certainly read them all. Lucy Barton is my favorite character in this world of stories. Her voice is clear and lonely. She doesn’t see the world, so much as listen to it. This novel is one of a mother and daughter, both all grown up, navigating memory and a long stay in the hospital. If you want to know people, you need to know Lucy Barton. She’ll haunt you.
I have no new poetry for you this week, but will certainly bring some to the table soon. I am learning about the business of writing, taking my own writing practice more seriously, and what it means to be a face on the internet (ba, humbug!). You’ll find writing updates, reading updates, and pictures of my face on my instagram, but nowhere else. Sorry for it.
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