258 - Uprooted returned home...

***multiple trigger warnings : religious cult, cptsd, psychosis, and mention of suicidal ideation***


Expanding on post 241, I want to tell the tale of my uprooting when I was really young, and skip ahead to the year that brought about my return home. 

I was uprooted when I was merely a child. Actually, during my formative years. As a child of divorcees who fought for custody, I was taken away by my father, from my mother, during a school holiday. I was supposed to go back home 2 weeks later, but instead of 14 days, I spent more than 14 YEARS away. 


I was brought from one country to another, where I had to learn a whole new language and where I survived a lot of trauma. (read : growing and living in a religious cult  ; my cptsd bucket of traumas and other entries with these keywords - knowing that some overlap : cptsd, religious cult, trauma). 

I do have some rare, happy memories, such as those with my paternal grand-father, with whom I was quite close. He taught me a lot and opened my mind to curiosity and many things in life, had told me the truth about my mothers (the real, biological one, as well as my step-one). 

During the last year or so of my life there, I was trying to study for some exams that might have given me an equivalent of a diploma, but the real goal wasn't this achievement - the real one was to avoid being drafted into the army, for many reasons into which I cannot go right now - except mentioning that I was a pacifist. 

As one of my half-siblings was an infant at the time, I couldn't concentrate. So, after some of my slavery errands, I fully moved to live with my father's disciples, where I could study, and where I also became a full-fledged disciple myself - with all the additional spiritual and physical duties and house-chores that this massive new VIP position I was so magnanimously granted by god (aka that father of mine), entailed. 

During this difficult period, my suicidal thoughts were really high, as I was losing hope to ever see the end to my suffering. 

"...I became severely ill with a disease that normally kills, but I didn't care to fight it, because I thought my death-wish being granted ; for many months, my body started shutting down. I had lost a lot of weight, because I couldn't eat much anymore. Towards the end, I could only eat bananas. But, against my wish to just wither away into nothingness, I had a surge of survival instinct that may have been the mystical experience I thought it was for many years, or a psychotic episode". (post 241). 

Indeed, for a very long time, I took that experience as a mystical one, because I had grown with a lot of new-age ideas and beliefs ; I had been reading a lot of mythology for years at that point in my life, and thus the ground was fertile for an already over-active imagination that was stirred up by my need to escape the realities of my tough life conditions, and thus felt like an entity talking to me, whispering to me that I had to fight my illness and not give up on my life. That things would get better.

Back then, and for quite some time, I believed this was a non-corporeal entity that had manifested itself  to humanity as the Egyptian goddess Isis, but the truth of it is that with critical thinking, and knowing that humanity invented all those deities, much like Yahweh, Zeus et al, that non of them ever really existed. So, although we cannot be sure that there aren't beings that cannot be seen, floating about in space as a much different life-form that our carbon-based, bags of mostly-water ones here on Earth (that's us, humans, by the way!), I do have to take my background as a set-up for this experience. 

Let me tell you that I've known this for some time, but wasn't sure how to address the topic, because psychosis is a term that scares people - and it actually scared me when I realized the truth about it. The fact is, I lived through a few of those pseudo-metaphysical, mystical experiences that were, in reality, psychotic episodes. This realization isn't an easy one ; but, as time have elapsed, I can understand it better and finally tell you about it.

The backgrounds are simple to see : 
Repeated traumas, life in a religious cult, which included many occult beliefs ; many years of reading mythology, and new-age topics. 

The brain changes due to cptsd are real ones, and we know the brain is capable of creating a host of false-truths as coping mechanisms : false memories, or altering the perceptions of known ones into different nature, such as hallucinations (especially that I'd been given some drugs to "get closer to god"...), and in this case, hallucinations in a psychotic episode. 

Let me tell you what I think happened : this voice was my inner voice, the voice of my own psyche. I'd given the word Isis to it because of the symbolic warrior-aspect this particular deity inspired me, as a tool, because I had no real support and my life was in severe danger. Distorted belief-systems in a religious cult are not easy to realize, as our personality and perceptions are both altered, as we (victims of cults, that is) suffer daily conditioning and depersonalization. 

Thus, it's easy to fall in traps of the mind and to create false-memories of events, as our brains are wired in a very wonky fashion. It took me many, many years to even start doubting the realities I thought were part of my memories, as my brain was tangled in a mess. 

Because my cptsd wasn't fully understood nor treated (as my first psychotherapist didn't help me much), I experienced more psychotic episodes in my life, even after I came back to my home-country. Again, I believed those to be really mystical experiences that enriched me spiritually, because that's the kind of belief-system that was fed to me for so many years. 

As I read of psychology subjects over the past 2 decades, I learned more and more about these topics - especially since I started my second psychotherapy, nearly 6 years ago. 

With critical, logical thinking,  I made progress in my self-understanding and recovery ; and started de-programming my conditioning. In this long-term, slow paced process, I stepped away from my religious upbringing and beliefs in supernatural deities overseeing my life and everyone else's ; I no longer believe in any god, because they were invented by humans, seeking to understand the universe around them. 
I broke away from organized religions as well, because those are tools to control the masses, through fear and manipulation of truths. I became an atheist.

I practice critical, logical thinking. I blend Mr Spock's and general Vulcan lifestyle in Star Trek, as a basis of my quest for knowledge, but remain a human being, with emotions and feelings, and fully embrace my hyper-sensitive,  emotional nature - as a bag of mostly water.

Let me now backtrack ; sick as I was, after my experience - mystical in my then-belief, but better understood now as a psychotic episode that seems to have had a positive influence on me, 
" I decided to fight for my life, accepting doctors' recommendations in diet, medication and eventually regained some strength. 

A few weeks later, there was an incident in which my father and I almost killed one another, and a few weeks further down the line, he summoned me to the most important discussion of my 15 long years with him : he told me part of the truth - that part that I had a biological mother, and this discussion was the cusp between my life with him, and my return to my home country, and maternal family from whom I had been cut all those long years." (post 241). 

" ...incident, after I broke the rules and was reported for having gone to the supermarket despite having been expressly forbidden (as I was also breaking the rule about talking with women), and this situation escalated to the point I received the worse beating of my life. It was also the only time that I tried to protect myself by hitting back, and that day, my father and I almost killed one another." (post 249). 

That incident was a catalyst, because my father could no longer ignore my growing disobedience, and the risks that other disciples would take notice of my example and follow it were great. When he summoned me, he acted like a concerned father, but this, I am more than sure, was a façade. Indeed, one has to take everything he ever says with one giant pot of salt, and to assume it is a lie, or some sort of manipulative subterfuge. 

After taking great lengths to ask me if I knew that I had a "real, biological mother" and observing my reaction as I answered that I didn't,  he proceeded to ask questions as to my "spiritual strength" to withstand "material comforts" that the devil, through my mother, might offer me. 

My reply that I didn't know I had a real mother,  btw, was a lie. His own father had told me this truth many years before and had made me swear to pretend that I didn't know, because he feared his son (my father)'s wrath if it ever reached his ears that his own father had betrayed him... 

My answers to his questions pertaining my aforementioned "spiritual strength" were that I would indeed be able to refuse any temptations so I could remain his steadfast, most trusty disciple.  We started forming a plan as to renewing contact with my birth-mother, but even that was a story to itself. To be short, I'll just say that he pretended to be really stupid as to the way to do so, and I had to tip-toe my suggestions to him. 

A couple weeks later, I was summoned again, and had my first telephone conversation with my birth-mother, over 14 years since we had been parted. I had to hide my emotions, as I knew my father was listening-in from the other phone (that shared the line) and had to renew this caution every time that I would be thus summoned to another talk with my mother, every once in a while. 

Later, my father had started pointing to a possible trip to my birth-country, with him, to meet my mother and spend a few days with her. Plans had been made, and thus with a worried heart, I asked my doctor for advice. I was prescribed some anti-anxiety treatment, as he thought I would have a bout of emotions upon meeting my mother after so long, but for some reason, I didn't take it. 

We travelled a few days early, so we could visit some relatives and so he could go 'save some souls' and thus, the fated day crept on us as we arrived to meet my mother.
My father stayed a couple nights, before he headed on other soul-saving missions, leaving me with my mother - and with a mission of my own : to convince her to break away from her "material life", and follow us both, away, and to marry him in his godly and divine harem...

During his stay, I had to contain all my emotions, bottling-in nearly 15 years of absence of physical presence and shortly after he left to his "divine adventures", all these emotions exploded in my face and I sank into a coma, for 36 hours.

I was brought to a hospital, where I remained for over a week (part of it in observation), regaining strength. My mother told me, much later, that she feared that my father had deprived me of food (I was quite emaciated when I met her, and indeed, was under-fed due to all my withheld meals and aforementioned illness), and that he had drugged me with something fatal, so I'd die upon my return, as a poisonous, ultimate revenge on her. So, she had asked the hospital to run all kinds of tests to make sure that I was okay, and had also requested to hide my identity, as she feared he may show up and finish the job of my murder if he found out I was still alive. 

Every day that I was there, my father was calling home, and my maternal family (if not my mom herself) would tell him that I was gone away and would be back later... 

Eventually, I was released as my status cleared, and had to see my father, one last time, as I feared of his violence if I refused. I told him how I'd prepared my return as soon as I knew of this trip, and that it was my intention to stay there, all along. I told him not to blame anyone because I wasn't coerced. He had no choice but to accept the situation, or at least pretend to, all the whilst slipping me a note that we had to stay in touch and indeed for many years, we would - but that's not a problem anymore as I finally cut all ties with him over 10 years ago, and details of that are irrelevant to this tale of my return home, since the original uprooting as a child and reuniting with my mother and breaking away from my father.... 

I had lost hope and had nearly given up on my life... Yet, in fighting an illness and suffering a psychotic episode in the form of a mystical experience, I regained enough physical health to organize my return, and have ever since, striven to rebuild my life, one bit at a time...

It's possible to come out of the worst situations, so I urge you to never give up on yourselves and bid your time if you must, to recover, heal and eventually thrive - even if means a partial recovery and struggling through difficult events, emotions and situations. This is life, enjoy if and what you can.