The Chaos in My Head

I have always believed that to write well, one should write what they know. I’ve found some problems with that since my post a few weeks ago. Those are the experiences that are not the easiest to explain anymore. They seem to be the lessons learned the hard way, the loves you regret, or the things you know you felt, but maybe still haven’t found the words to say. Mostly, they are the things that make you feel exposed. My last blog was one hundred percent honest and made me feel one hundred percent exposed. It took everything I had to write it and share it. I deleted it five hundred times. Maybe that’s why I felt as though it had to be shared. It is my biggest lesson-learned-the-hard-way and it comes up every time I try to write. I write honest. I write real. When I sit and explain my heart through words, I have no filter. Since it came up every time I tried to write and I felt I didn’t know how to talk about it or explain it well, nor did I know how to expose it without feeling stupid – it kept me from writing…. But I was born writing.
I love to write in a way I can’t explain. I need it. It’s a way to take off the filter and get it all out, to take the chaos in my mind and create something that’s beautiful to me. For me, it's huge. The religious abuse I went through has affected me in a lot of ways in the past three years. There were many repercussions, but mostly, I have found it has made me guarded. I am once again out going. I am once again out spoken. I once again have a lot to say, but now, I’m more cautious about who I share things with. If I learned anything during the bad experience, I learned that I know nothing for sure. None of us do. My blogs used to be about my theories or religion, life, love and god. Now, however, I feel that I don’t know anything about those things outside of what is deeply experiential, completely intuitive, and very subjective. My opinions of those sensitive areas are based on my worldview and my life, and I think it’s silly to say that someone else should feel something because I do. I used to have so much I “knew”, so much I was sure of and so much to say. Now I question everything – even myself. Everyday. But, I think that’s good. It’s the only way I can stand to be. If you don’t question everything you believe, you have nothing to stand on anyway. If I would have questioned life, people, ideas, and theories then, the way I’ve learned to now, I wouldn’t have ended up in a cult. So this is complicated for me. I believe to write well is to write what you know, but I know now for sure, that I know nothing for sure? I would never want to pretend that I knew something that someone else should live by. I know that sounds a little intense, but some people thought they knew some things I should live by and it destroyed me for awhile. I’m a little afraid of that.
So here it is. I will write what I think… what I think I know… and what I think may be leading me to knowing something for sure. I will just write. I will let it flow out of my heart and not care who it pisses off. It’s part of me and I need it. Maybe something I say will cause people to think out of their box a little. I’m not sure. I’m not sure why I love it or why I feel made for it, but I’m going to pursue it. It’s me like love is me and counseling is me and school is me. It’s just me.
So here’s to putting the past behind me and not letting anything that has ever happened to me or anything anyone thinks stop me from doing anything that I love.
So take that, haters.
(PS: Anyone who messaged me about the last blog – Thank you so much. I will write you back. I promise.)

My Hidden Secret

Three years ago yesterday, I ran away. Usually, I consider giving up or giving in a bad thing. I am a fighter. I think that with my will, I can make anything work. However, this particular time, it wasn’t a bad thing, at all. It was quite possibly the best decision of my whole life. Why? Well, that’s hard to explain. I am always confused about how to explain the two years of my life between Rhema and ORU. Sometimes I say I worked, sometimes I say I lived on the beach, sometimes. . . I tell the truth. Sometimes I will try to get comfortable enough with someone to say that I was in a really controlling, really frightening situation in which I could not be myself, live my life, call home too often, talk to a myriad of people from my school or hometown, date, drink, hung out with people who dated or drank, visit another church, be close to people that did not commit to my church, talk about my life to anyone who wasn’t at a higher ranking then me in their little system, etc. I could try to list the dynamics further, but I don’t think that’s the point. The point is, I was in a cult. Two years of my life are unexplainable, barely recognizable, painful, and pointless. I never know what to say or who to tell.

The thing is, I know it was partly my fault. Things got crazier and crazier and I stayed. Crazy starts to seem normal when you’ve been cut off from society for long enough. And when the 200 people around you think the crazy is holy and the rest of humanity is just “in-sin” or has “an un-renewed mind” and is basically just a group of unworthy outsiders, you want to stay in the group, because the group is all you have. I’ve been studying cults for a long time. And each time I read something new, I hope that the group I was in doesn’t fit the criteria. I hope this one time that it doesn’t add up and that I wasn’t really in a cult. Each time it does. Every time. The way the leader acted, the way the followers acted in response to the leader, the insane boundaries, the isolation. It always fits. And then each time, I look at myself, and say, “Okay, there it is Amanda. You really were in a cult.” But that never makes it better. Explaining it doesn’t make it better. Understanding it doesn’t make it better. Nothing makes it better.

I feel so helpless when I look back. I can’t go back and help the people I knew there. I can’t go back and help the me that is stuck there. I can’t redeem the time. I spend a lot of time worrying about people who are still there. I worry about them a lot, but I can’t do anything. I can’t go light the church on fire. I can’t shake them and say, “You’re good enough on your own. You don’t need this. This does not impress God. You don’t have to fit his mold. You don’t have to be cookie-cutter. Live a life you love. Follow your own damn dreams. Follow your heart. That’s where God is.” But I can’t do that either. If I say too much when I do get that sporadic call from someone who is thinking of leaving. . . I could push them away. I know how badly I fought everyone on the outside, who wanted to help get me out. . . It’s a lot to handle.
I get over-whelmed a lot.

I have gone to counseling twice now and brought up everything in the world besides… well this. And this… is probably the one thing that needs to be talked about in counseling. Talking about your ex-boyfriend and dealing with your time management issues are great, but I have to stop letting this hidden secret, be a hidden secret. I have to know what to do with it, day to day. I have to get help. So that’s where I am at on this journey. I left three years ago yesterday. I drove down A1A Beach Boulevard with everything I owned in my car, in the middle of the night, afraid of everything, but knowing that if I could just make it out, I would go to school, I would live my life, and I would make a difference in the world. Now, I am living my life, going to school and making a difference in the world, yet the pain hasn’t stopped. I guess I’m ready for what’s next: dealing with this. I’ll be sure to let you know how it goes.