Incredible--Chapter 6
The Road Back
I don’t want to leave things on such a negative note, so I have decided to publish these chapters back to back.
I finally talked to someone at the shelter, but I still would not speak ill of the people in the cult. Ah, there it is, the word cult. That is what the group was, a cult, small though it was. I was brainwashed, reprogrammed to a different view of the world. I had cut myself off from my family and given them all my worldly goods. My sense of identity was gone, wrapped in their idea of me.
Eventually, I agreed to see a counselor. It was maybe a month before I opened up to her at all.
In the meantime, I was living at the shelter with women who had suffered much more abuse, many with young children. I felt that I didn’t deserve to be there because I hadn’t been abused. One of the counselors said, “Oh no, honey, you were abused. You wouldn’t even talk the first two weeks you were here.” Nonetheless, I felt I needed to get a job. I wanted to prove to myself that I could make it on my own.
I saw an ad for a live-in caregiver for an 80-year-old woman suffering from aphasia in the newspaper. I thought, well, I could do that, and room and board would be taken care of. I went for the interview, and when her 60-year-old son Pieter, who was doing the interview, asked me how much I wanted. I had no idea what the job was worth. So I thought, well, they will be providing room and board, and I won’t have any needs except toiletries. Maybe $50/ month? He was amazed but didn’t try to dissuade me. I probably could have asked for $2,000 and been happily paid that. I didn’t know that. I thought $50 was all I deserved.
So I found myself living in a tiny farmhouse with an elderly woman named Corrie. She was small, neatly dressed, with her gray hair pinned back in a bun. She was a gentle soul who loved her family, and I enjoyed talking with her. The job was good for me. It took me out of myself for a good part of the day.
The very small farmhouse had been divided into four rooms–the kitchen, a small living room with a heater, a bedroom for Corrie, and one for me. In the kitchen, a wood-burning stove was used for heat, for cooking, and for hot water. It was an ingenious setup. A pipe ran through the stove and heated the water in a tank, which then connected to the bathroom and kitchen sinks. Consequently, the stove had to be lit in the early morning chill before there was any hot water. I got good at lighting fires.
I learned to cook and bake on this stove. I felt very proud of the first cake I baked in it, but it wasn’t that hard. I would put my hand inside the stove to judge when the temperature was right. Once going well, the stove held a pretty steady temperature. I cooked food that might be familiar to Corrie, asking her for suggestions.
I spent time with Corrie every day going over her family pictures and listening to her stories. She didn’t really have aphasia; it was more like early-stage Alzheimer's Disease. She immigrated as a teenager, and came to Montana to marry a Dutch cowboy. This would have been right after World War I. They raised eight children in this small house before it was subdivided or had indoor plumbing. We would sit at the window and watch the snow fall, each lost in our own thoughts. The quiet was palpable and healing.
Corrie still would go out in the middle of the night to collect firewood because she thought she needed to start the fire. It was my job to make sure she didn’t wander off or slip and fall, so I had to sleep lightly.
Pieter would come by once a week to get my shopping list for groceries, and any other items I needed. It’s just as well. I had no winter coat, just a blue wool cape straight out of Tipperary. The hood would keep the snow off, but not the wind.
Somehow, I came down with a cold that turned into bronchitis. There was nothing for it but to go to the doctor. This is where my story began, with me standing waiting for a bus, the only spot of color in a flat white panorama.
No doubt my ongoing stress contributed to my illness.
After I saw the doctor, I slowly got better. The medicine helped a great deal. But I was still dealing with the aftermath of the cult.
I had a small room with white-washed wallboards, a single brass bed, a rag rug in blue, and 1940’s era table and lamp. Each night I would cry and beg God to show me the truth. I didn’t know if I still believed in God, or indeed if there was any truth or goodness to be found, but each night I would imagine carrying all my burdens up the hill of Calvary, then handing them to Jesus at the foot of the cross. He would take them, and throw them behind him down the hill, and they would disappear. I felt like I was lying on a knife edge of my own making, and that if I moved at all I would fall off into the darkness.
I share a poem that was begun at that time in my life. You may recognize a phrase or two, plus later Catholic influences.
Grieving
Lord, save me. Gripping sorrow Blinds me. I stumble pathless, lost, Bewildered, buffeted, storm-tossed. Mother Mary, carve some hollow for my aching heart, so I can see. Wrung, remorseful, aching, Blame eats my bones--where find you, Lord, Within this deep’ning wound? Mother Mary, carve some hollow for my aching heart, so I can heal. I lie upon a knife of my own making, Etched by accusation. My only hope your cross. Mother Mary, carve some hollow for my aching heart, so I can breathe. You saw your Son stretched out, Wracked for our sins. Yet you Could stand, upheld by faith. Mother Mary, carve some hollow for my aching heart, so I can trust. Carve the hollow where I hide within His Heart. (He heals us by his wounds. Mother Mary, be my companion in the dark, until the dead arise and empty be the tomb
One night I decided this world looked like a world where goodness, beauty and truth were real, rather than mere neurological constructs. If there is no truth, no ultimate reality, then there is no basis for science, logic, or reason. If there is no reality then the world is a sham. I also knew there was both good and evil in the world. I had experienced both. Finally, I knew that the world was beautiful, despite the pain and destruction I also saw. It was beauty that brought me to belief in the first place.
I was not yet ready to make a firm statement of faith. but I was on my way. Evil is real. So are lies and ugliness. But goodness, truth, and beauty have overcome them in Christ Jesus, he who is perfect goodness, truth and beauty.
It was Puddleglum’s choice in The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis that did it:
Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things-trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world.
Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that’s a funny thing when you come to think of it. We’re just babies making up a game if you’re right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That’s why I’m going to stand by the play world. I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia.
My road back had begun.
Being in a cult is a life-altering, mind-shattering experience, and recovering from the experience is very difficult. I lived with them off and on for three years, and by the end I had given them everything I owned. At their urging, I had cut myself off from my family to prove my loyalty and had given up my job. I had already given them my car during a previous stay. I had nothing. But to make matters worse, they never truly accepted me, despite all I had done.
Why did I get involved? I cannot explain it fully, especially as things got strange. Why did I not walk away? There are two possible reasons, not necessarily mutually exclusive.
Elena used a method well-known to behavioral psychologists called intermittent reinforcement. This happened to be the basic pattern of my interaction with my mother, I expect, so I was already wired to accept it. Elena gave me verbal encouragement and affection and then withdrew it, rejecting me and making me feel like an outcast. I never knew when things would change, when I would be included again. For someone with low self-esteem, who longed to be accepted, this pattern drew me closer and closer over time. My brain was so wired into belonging to Elena’s group that a threat to that belonging triggered a fight-or-flight response. I was not capable of rational thought about Elena any more.
The other explanation depends on one’s acceptance of spiritual powers that want to harm us. C.S. Lewis wrote about this in his Screwtape Letters. A lesser demon is assigned to a young man to guide his thinking into destructive paths, by planting thoughts in his mind.
What if some of the thoughts in your head are not yours? Please don’t go all psychoanalytical. I am not talking about aural or visual hallucinations. It is much more subtle. More like, “I really should read that paper right now. Oh wait, I promised myself an ice cream for completing my exercise. I almost completed it…But the paper… Go on, go ahead, the walk will clear your head.” And somehow you never read that paper.
In my case it would have been, “That’s really strange. I don’t believe it reincarnation.” “But she’s so loving and good to you. She couldn’t have that much love and be bad” and “She’s the only one who can get you close to God.”
My recovery took years. It began with the restoration of my belief in God. I had lost my way, confused by Elena’s convictions and my self-doubt. I thought she was good, full of the love of God, so I didn’t listen to my own questioning. (Some sort of spiritual blindness, perhaps?) I knew something was wrong, which is why I continually prayed, “Lord show me the truth.” The only answer I heard was “By their fruits you shall know them.” Her fruits were the breakup of marriages and families, and disrupted and shattered lives, as I know now. Love is not warm fuzzy feelings; it is self-giving action and bearing one anothers’ burdens. It is patient, it is kind, it is not envious, or boastful, or proud. It does not rejoice in the wrong but rejoices in the truth.
In hindsight I am pretty sure Elena suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, which makes this story even sadder than it already is. It began with her dreams of a musical group on a world tour, even though only one of us played any musical instruments. Then she said God had told her we were a chosen few, the only ones with the truth. Things grew stranger still with her belief she was St. Clare. It was her illness that led to her delusions of grandeur.
Why did none of us see it? Elena was extremely charismatic. When she smiled, her eyes crinkled at the edges, projecting warmth and welcome. Her voice was low and musical, and her laugh was infectious. It was only as time went on that the darkness inside emerged.
I never was angry at her, maybe because I knew I contributed my own share of pathology to the situation. We all did. Elena had the misfortune to be the one with charisma, plus mental illness. If what I have read about other people with a similar condition is true, she may have felt entitled, even justified in so doing the things she did. She thought of me as evil, I think, like she did of Frank.
What I know is this: No one is created only to be destroyed. God does not make junk, we are each loved by him, and he desires each to be saved. If I had truly known these things I would not have been vulnerable to Elena.
These things happened in the far distant past. In fact, it seems like a bad dream that happened to someone else when I recall it. I recall my anguish at the time but I can barely imagine the mental state I was in that made me go along. Yet I did. It was real.
Several years later Elena called me.
“I want to apologize for all the hurt I caused you. What I did was wrong.”
“It’s OK, Elena, I have long since forgiven you.”
We talked a little longer about various things, that she was in therapy and was thinking more clearly, and taking her meds. Daniel made sure she did. She said goodbye and hung up.
I thought that was the end of it. But a few minutes later the phone rang again. It was Elena.
“Ann… Frank is evil.”
“Elena, please stay in your therapy and take your meds, so you can get better. Goodbye.”
Please leave a comment. Feedback is so important to me as a writer. I would like to hear if what I write touches people or bores them. Just no uncivil comments, please.
Hi Ann, I am 'enjoying' or rather, riveted by, this memoir—but now confused about the chapters. In my email I got Chapter 5, "Disaster.' Ends with you going to the shelter for battered women. It says the next chapter will be called "Climbing out of the Darkness." But the next chapter to come into my inbox is called "Chapter 7: The Road Back." (Yet here in the substack itself the same segment is called Chapter 6!). It begins "I finally talked to someone at the shelter..." Is this indeed chapter 6 (not 7)? And did you change the title, so there is no "Climbing out of the Darkness? I want to be sure to read it all in the right order and not miss anything!
That is the intended point of the book. It is possible to survive and thrive.
How is your project coming?