Taking the Long Way Around

"They say time heals everything, but I'm still waiting."

I am grateful for my upbringing. It was innocent, safe, decent. My mom was a single mother, so it couldn't have been easy on her. She's a strong, intelligent woman and I have an immese amount of respect for her. BUT. I woke up this morning getting ready for a dinner party tonight, and I accidentally pulled out the wrong cookbook. My ex-best-friend had made me two books when I got married. One with recipes, one with recipes for a good marriage. From all my old friends. They are identical.

So I sat down and read it. All that good advice that didn't work in the long run. Because my husband picked the cult over me and immediately got re-married. My favorite piece of advice was "Don't go to bed angry. Stay up and fight!"

I know I revisit the past a little too often. But I'm pretty sure I have post-traumatic stress. They say people who leave a cult are as damaged as those who have lived through a war. Yes, the "casualties" may still be amoung us, but they're not people who left you because they died. They left on purpose because they want to teach you a lesson, because they view you as the worst possible people. They'll go out every Saturday morning, and spend the day trying to "help" the less fortunate, but they will leave the people they love for dead, or worse. And it's not their fault. It's the cult.

And while I will continue to move forward and try to be positive, it's hard. My good friend is going through a difficult time right now, and her parents won't even talk to her, hell, they wouldn't even let her call them when she got engaged to tell them the news. I'm grateful to finally have a relationship with my mother. It's taken forever. But to be honest, I don't even know if I want it. It just opens the door to all those emails about how I'm ruining her life and I'm a horrible sinner because I won't come back to "the way". Those aren't that fun to get.

I get it. Anger and resentment only hurts us. Part of me though, is always going to be angry about this. And I don't think that's a bad thing. Someday, I'm going to be heard by a lot of people, and they need to know how dangerous it is to blindly believe in something that hurts so many people. They need to know that love is the answer, to everything.

In the meantime, I'm taking the long way around, but it's ok. The journey matters, not the destination. To be honest, I have no idea right now what the destination even is. But we'll all get there. :)