Emotional Pain

One of the best things about my life now is that I have finally found some relief from the emotional pain I was in for so many of my childhood years. If you've read some of the post on my blog, you probably realize that my current emotional state is not the greatest and my relationship with my husband is very rocky sometimes. Despite these painful times, the pain is so much less than the emotional pain I felt throughout my childhood.

As a young child, I was pretty happy. I never remember crying for what seemed no reason at all. Sure, there were times when I had to sneak out of bed at night with my brother so that we could find food. But at least I wasn't hurting emotionally. My parents started homeschooling and reading and promoting the Pearl books before I was born. However, their descent into the cult was more gradual. While I was still young, my parents moved to another state, probably to avoid CPS investigating our family. Moving to that state accelerated my parent's descent into the cult. A family friend suggested a church in the area. My parents were quickly drawn into the church and they were now involved in a full-blown cult. Soon after joining the cult is when my emotional pain started.

I still don't understand Mother's logic, but she likes to be different. Dear Mother bought fully into the cult concerning modesty, patriarchal beliefs, homeschooling, corporal punishment, and exclusiveness. However, Mother insisted that we had to be "different" in some way so that we could prove we were better than everyone else by not "conforming to the laws of man." Being "different" to my mother meant that we could not wear clothes exactly the same as everyone else in the church. We still made our dresses at home like everyone, but she would alter the pattern a small amount so that it was a little different. Our head coverings had to be a different color and a different shape than everyone else at the church. Being "different" in a cult where everyone  had cookie-cutter similarities was painful for a young girl that just wanted have friends and to fit in. I would push so hard just to have a dress that looked like all the other girls in the church. Or to even have a pink dress like everyone else instead of all my ugly brown dresses. Being "different" made me stand out and that was when I started to feel I was inferior to the other girls. I was thankful for any girl that would pay attention to me because I was the strange one. I was the ugly one. Only because Mother didn't want to "conform."

Although the next decade did have emotional pain of being "different," I still managed to keep two good friends. They usually accepted me, even if I was "different." I still wished I was part of a different family. I would still fantasize day and night about being in another family. But at least I wouldn't cry in bed every night about the emotional pain. But that all changed when my whole world crashed around me as a pre-teen. My Dad announced that he actually did not believe in the church that we had been pouring our lives into for the last decade. He had become a leader in the cult, and yet one morning he announced that we were leaving and that he actually never believed what we had been taught almost our entire lives. The cult was highly secretive, so I had no idea that there were even troubles between my Dad and the other leaders. That's when the emotional pain hit the heaviest.

Over the next year, the emotional pain got worse and worse. I would cry myself to sleep every night. Sometimes I did not even know why I was crying. Not knowing why I was crying only made things worse. By 14, I was secluded without any real friends and crying myself to sleep every night. I continued to cry myself to sleep for the next four years. Losing my friends was extremely painful for me. And now I was an outsider of the cult that I had been taught my whole life was the only true path. Now my Dad was telling us that his new ideas was the only true path to heaven, but how could I be sure that this was definitely the only true path? For a decade he let me believe the cult had been the only true path. Plus, my Dad's new ideas and new "church" had many problems. People came and went as a constantly rotating door. I just needed someone to tell me that I was on the right path and that someone actually wanted to be friends with me.

During this time, I started feeling extreme loneliness. I did not have many peers my age. The few girls that were my age that I was allowed to associate with were very toxic. My parents constantly warned me that they were not "good children" and that I should not hang around them very much. Because I did not have any peers close to my age, I developed strangely strong attachments to young mothers in our group. I am still baffled by the strength of emotion I felt for these women. They were my idols. They were on pedestals for me. But these young mothers never really paid attention to me. Sure, they would occasionally speak with me because I was constantly tagging along with them, but there was never any real communication. I would just sit and listen to them and soak up every detail of their lives. But the painful part about my obsessions was the extreme secrecy that was always kept in the cult. Even though I had already reached puberty and was going to be having babies of my own one day, everyone in my life made sure absolutely no one mentioned woman's issues around me. When one of the woman would become pregnant, it would be whispered about for months before finally telling me. Of course, by then I had already figured it out on my own.

During this time, I also craved any kind of physical contact. I would never dare to touch or hug my brothers. It was my job to make sure they kept pure and we already had issues within our family. I had to keep a safe distance from my brothers. While I loved my sisters, I would never imagine hugging them. The only time my parents touched me was to spank me. Some families believed in hugging after spankings but my family did not. Usually my Mother was so angry after spankings that all the children would flee the house for as long as possible. I would go months without so much as a hug from anyone. I remember longing so much for just a hug. I remember every day wishing that one of the young mothers would just hug me.

On top of the lack of friends, attention, and physical contact, my Dad's trouble with keeping people around that believed the same as he did deepened my hurt. For me, it was just one rejection after another. At one point the [Miller] family needed a place to stay and planned on moving into our house. I was ecstatic. I would have a young mother to be with me all the time! I looked forward to it for weeks. But it was not to be.

August 26, 2004 -- Thursday

The [Millers] are not coming to our meetings any more. They are not going to move into our house. They are leaving because: [other family's wife] speaks in the meetings, [single mother who was attracted to the group after her husband left her] head is not covered and she doesn't dress modestly and she speaks in the meetings. The [Millers] are angry because we did not address these issues before we tried to help [singer mother] in her financial place. [Mr. Miller] thinks that all of these should have been addressed awhile before this. Dad and Mother said that they think that [Mr. Miller] is just going to have to learn the hard way from this. I wish I could fly on wings as eagles away from troubles that tempest here; not to hurt when people leave. But we cant.

I clearly remember that day. I was sitting at my desk in my room crying like a schoolgirl who had her heart broken by her first boyfriend. I think the pain I felt that day was comparable to the pain young girls feel when they first get their heart broken. My attachment to the family was not normal. My attachment to the family was so strong that it broke my heart when they stopped talking to my family. I hurt so badly. I quickly became attached to another family, but they too would break my heart. When I read the passage from my journal that I posted here, I noticed something new. "Dad and Mother said that they think that [Mr. Miller] is just going to have to learn the hard way from this." When all of this happened, I always thought that my parents felt just as much pain as I did. However, when I read that line I could see that they could care less whether that family came or went. I'm sure they had no idea about the emotional attachment I had with the family, but even if they did they still would have had complete disregard for my feelings. That family and my feelings were just another pawn in their game. The family was disposable. My feelings were disposable. After that entry, my life just spiralled darker and darker. More and more people left and my parents had less and less regards to my feelings. Not too much later I stopped journaling for the most part.

My memories of the next couple years became blurry as I started to just try to survive. We lost our house and lived in a small space on another family's property. My Mother did not want to "interfere" with the lives of the family we were staying with, so she would keep us secluded outside in our cramped space for hours or even days at a time. Often we did not have water and the small amount of food we had was often disgusting. While we were forced to stay out of sight, my Dad and Mother would spend endless hours with the family. Often they would stay up late into the night talking with the family. Sometimes their laughter would float out into the night while laid on my cot and cried from loneliness. I could never figure out what was so wrong with me that my Mother did not want me around other families. I wondered what was so wrong with me that no other families ever stepped in and intervened. I wondered what was so wrong with me that other families often had so much good food to eat and yet they would never offer it to me or my painfully skinny brothers.