Dear Megan,
Boy that was a lot of questions you asked there. I will say one thing, that the abuse has made me lose my mind, so that I talk to myself. To get me to do what they wanted me to do, they had to make it sound like a big emergency. So they had to tell me really how terrible I was, and therefore I had better change and become not so terrible or else. What happens a lot of the times when a person is abused is they learn to do it to themself. I don't really know how or why. So now in my head I still tell myself that I am terrible.
Another thing is choices. Because in Straight, people were always getting stood up for doing something even though they had "had a doubt" about doing it. So anyway, now I still get really anxious about choices and I am wondering just how much that has to do with Straight. I need some serious post-cult therapy but I don't know where to go for that really.
But I was just recalling when I was back "home" on second phase, my old room that I used to burn candles in and sterilize my knife blade over a flame before I cut my arms so I could cause myself pain and be in control of it instead of all the pain from the domestic violence scene getting at me, well I don't even remember that room so much, but it was mine! So then on second phase there I was and the walls had even been painted, everything of mine was gone, it was blank white walls and two beds and a dresser or something. My mom closed me and my newcomer pet in the room at night by setting some alarm on the door from the outside. So now, my room was a cage! Can you imagine the deleterious effects of this on a person's mind, trust of their parents and every damn body else pumpin up and down the block with their fuck ass opinions of me and gossiping with their kids about me so that two little boys taunt my little sister about me doing drugs or whatever, then my little sister is mad at me about it?
See that's how bad everyone wanted to convince me that I was bad. Well Straight taught my family to be mad at me for the most ridiculous things. Like, at open mic, my parents stood up and very pathetically said how disappointed they were that I had melted candle wax onto my textbooks or something. Feel free to laugh out loud. That's just how much Straight liked to crank people's brains around to have a really stupid view of their child and everything. People do that anyway, but Straight had a whole dogma to teach everybody about how bad and manipulative we were. So years and years later my mother still called me manipulative when I was just trying to get some help from her, like people do for their kids, normal people really do.
See we were scapegoated.
It's good to really remember a lot and figure it out -- I just don't have it in me to answer your questions more concretely, but I think other people will. If they don't I will come back later.
