Free therapy, the cult! in Free Therapy

I don’t know where I am going to be going with this, I am just letting my fingers glide across the keyboard. I am sorry to my friend that I did not include a warning with my last entry. I was just letting stuff out. I did have a few questions regarding my last entry that perhaps some people who didn’t say anything may have had as well.

Some were about the adults. Yes, they failed me, but I am also well aware that the 80’s was a different time. Back then kids were expected to deal with their own issues themselves. Man it up as you will. Kids were sent outside for hours a day and expected to just deal with it. It being anything and everything. My Mom would lock the door and make me stay out, and my friends had the same thing happen. If I had to go to the bathroom it better be an emergency that’s for sure. I would have to open up the nifty mail box flap we had in our front door and yell to my mom that I had to go. That was the only reason for coming inside. Thirsty, drink from the hose, hungry, swallow your spit and wait for dinner. Adults did not sit around and worry about kids and what was going on like they do now. When I was a teacher I zoned in on anything that could be happening in my classroom. There was going to be no child going through what I went through on my watch. I even told them that when they got big and were in a different class that if they needed me to come back and I will take care of them.

And yes, I did hate those kids for years and years. It’s so far in the past now that it just does not matter. Obviously they had a lot of hate in their life to do that. Looking back at Kim and Jim they must have had one horrible family life. Kim was probably just putting onto me what was put onto her. I don’t think it’s normal for a 5/6/7/8/9 year old child do say and do the things she did without there being an outside force.
Or maybe she was just plain evil.

I did find out a year or 2 ago that Jim had fallen off of a ladder and is now paralyzed from the waist down. I confess I wasn’t too sad about that news. I am sure that makes me a horrible person.

Now that that is out of the way, I am going to chat about the other big huge thing in my past that effects me so much today. I was reminded about it when one of my friends on Facebook asked if you could relive something what would it be? I have to say the first few years of marriage. My husband and I lived in a motor home and had no cares in the world. Our rent was $125 a month (for real!) I taught 1st grade and got decent pay at a school where I had 2 months on and 1 month off. This meant my husband and I could travel 4 months out of the year. We had friends in the RV park, and the managers took over as being adoptive parents. Even though we were married we were still rather young, 20/21, and there was a family with older teenagers and we would play together. Yes, we loved watergun fights and things like that. don’t judge. And we would all hang out in the swings by the office and talk and talk for hours. This was before cell phones or people being on social media all the time.

We should have just stopped there, but who knows, I don’t even know for sure how it really happened. It was kind of like well, we are Jewish but we don’t know anything about being Jewish. We decided to look up synagogues in the area in the PHONE BOOK (yes, I am that old) and there was only 1. Messianic. Hmmmm, what is that? We had no clue.

My husband called to find out service times and we went that Friday. Oh my gosh it was the best thing ever. I felt like I was home. Everyone was SO nice. There was another bigger service 40 miles away the next day so we decided to go.

Seriously, if you could walk into a place and feel like you belonged, especially after knowing what my school life was like as a child, I am sure that you would just eat it up. And eat it up we did.
There was so much warmth and my husband and I discovered that we had a natural talent for Messianic dancing. Who knew right? We joined the dance team and performed all over in those years, including in front of 1000’s of people at a Paul Wilbur concert. Yes, seriously…

The rabbi started introducing us as his adopted kids, and that my husband was going to be a rabbi some day. We became the young adult leaders, and we would plan fun trips and do havadallah and I think you get the idea.

It was awesome, we felt loved, we felt like we belonged…

But then this guy shows up. He was a wheeler and a dealer and just something else. He did not like us and started to spread rumors about us. Suddenly I was not trusted with the money. Suddenly they did not want my husband to help out with something. Suddenly they called us in and started asking questions.

The first one I believe my husband was called in in front of the elders. They said that I was too uppitity and I needed to be controlled. He needed to take control of the situation and realize that he was the head of our household. Now one thing about my husband is he is just amazing and awesome and thought that was a crock of bull. I do believe he said he wasn’t controlling anyone.

Then we started getting pulled in and questioned about this and that and it was a witch hunt basically. The place which once showed us such warmth and love had turned on us. My husband and I took a trip a few states away for a few weeks and while we were gone we decided to leave.

I really don’t feel like hashing that out right now, but it was nasty.

There was a time, way back when I started my first Open Diary in 2002 that this was so fresh and raw I could hardly handle it. Now it just feels like blah blah blah. The cult gave me 3 very close friends that are really like family, but they are way on the other side of the country now. (not their real names) Monet, who is wild and crazy and won’t take anything from anyone. She got kicked out of the cult because she married someone without their permission. Jer- who is my gay best friend. He was kicked out because he is…gay. He had a really bad stroke a few years ago but he’s doing a lot better now. And Sam, also gay, but he left on his own. We were able to meet up with them all a few years back and I just love them.

I do not love very many people.
I really don’t.
Heck, I don’t even like very many people.

I think what I am missing is just how much that cult was of my life. We went Wednesday nights for Dance practice, Friday nights, Saturday ALL day, like we would get there at 10am and stay till 7. And then many Sundays there was stuff as well. We moved away from the first RV park the summer of 2000, so we had lost that friend base, and so basically every friend we had was in that cult.

And yes, it was a cult because if you did not conform, if you were not what they wanted, they would do things to try to make you be that way.

Yeah, I guess it just does not matter that much to me anymore, that’s a good realization!