A Long, Traumatic Road

[Or'el]

I was born in Louisiana, in the year 1980. By the time I was two years old, the religious drama was already starting. My mom and dad took me to a United Pentecostal Church, where there was a huge list of religious rules. For instance, females weren’t allowed to cut their hair or wear pants, jewelry or makeup – and elbows and knees always had to be covered, for modesty sake. The men had to always wear long pants, and could not let their hair get long enough to touch the tops of their ears. In this church, speaking in tongues and water baptism in “Jesus Name Only” were required for salvation. TVs had demons in them, movies were banned, and secular music was of the devil.

 

There was a lot of emotional stuff tied into this church – people crying, falling on the floor, running down the aisles, and preachers screaming about hell from the pulpit – it scared me. But I had to face it. This is what I was born into. I knew nothing different.

 

Eventually my family ended up getting out of that type of church, but not soon enough. Even by the age of two, my grandparents were questioning things. Later, I found out that they had gone so far as to even accuse my dad of abusing me, simply on account of how obedient I was. I never thought twice. Even at such a young age, I always did what I was told when I was told to do it. Every parent’s dream… Right?

 

Well, I certainly was their dream child for a while. I was known as the good one. I was the one, even out of all the grandkids, who never rebelled… always went to church… never got into trouble… always got good grades. It didn’t come without the price of being picked on and made fun of by other kids, though.

 

I actually overheard my grandmother talking to my dad once (I was about 7 or 8 years old, I guess). She was suggesting that I not be allowed to play with my cousins anymore because I was too good, and they would corrupt me. This status of “dream child” lasted until I was about 10 years old, when I finally got the courage to confess to my parents that I had been sexually abused several years before. To my surprise, they did nothing.

 

It was right around that time when my dad started noticing that I had been a little depressed, and I was becoming a little chubby. It became routine to have to endure lectures about my weight, with Dad saying things like, “How do you expect to get a date with a nice boy if you look like this?” and “You know, boys don’t like fat girls.” I was only in the fourth grade.

As you can imagine, I became exceedingly self-conscious and my self-esteem plummeted. Dad even went so far as to try to bribe me with new clothes, toys, etc. – if I would only lose weight. I adored my dad. I had always been his little girl. I couldn’t understand why he was saying these things.

 

When I was in the fifth grade, my family moved from Louisiana to Colorado. By this time we were allowed to wear jeans, jewelry and makeup… and we even had a TV! The church that my mom and dad found for us to go to, in Colorado, was a Pentecostal church with a shorter list of rules. I was put into a public school that had a Deaf Education program. I fell right in with that group of Deaf kids, grew up with them, learned sign language, and turned that skill into a career that I love today.

 

While I was in junior high school, however, my dad put me on diet pills. But, as we found out, these were no ordinary diet pills. He had gotten them, not from a doctor but, from a friend. Soon, I started to have high anxiety, short-term memory loss, and even hallucinations. At school, I suddenly withdrew from my friends, and my grades started to drop. When people at church started accusing me of being “demon possessed,” Mom and Dad took me to a psychiatrist. The doctor had that diet pill analyzed by their lab and found that it contained an Asian form of LSD. Needless to say, I immediately stopped taking that pill, but it took me a while to recover. Later, we heard in the news that the pill had caused several deaths in the United States.

 

At some point after this, my mom and sister had both gradually quit going to church altogether. This created a division right down the middle of our family – Mom and Sister on one side, and Dad and me on the other – and that division only got bigger and bigger. Dad made sure to let me know that they were the evil ones, and we were the good ones. It certainly didn’t help that I had never really gotten along with my mom all that well, always having the feeling that she didn’t care for me much at all. Dad had begun taking me into his office to tell me all kinds of bad things about my mom and sister, and this went on for years. Basically, it was a slow programming of my brain to convince me that I could never allow myself to be like them.

 

By the time we were teenagers, it became very apparent that Dad was not happy with me or my sister. I was the good one, but I was chubby. My sister was thin and beautiful, but she was the rebellious one. I actually remember it being said that Dad would have his perfect daughter if he could only take my unquestioning obedience and mix it with my sister’s gorgeous appearance. It was plain that neither one of us were good enough. Dad said that it was his job to train us how to make a man happy, because that was our role in life as women. But how could he do that if my sister was too headstrong, and if I was not pretty enough? It was around this time when I started struggling with an eating disorder. It was not uncommon for me to be throwing up in the bathroom, while Dad stood outside of the door telling me how I was disappointing him… and God.

 

At the age of 15, I decided that I would do what I had to do to be “good enough” to earn my Dad’s approval, and God’s approval. I was determined not to allow myself to become corrupted by secular culture, like I saw some of my friends at Dad’s church doing. So, instead of being drawn into things that I thought to be rebellious, I found another church. That was probably the worst mistake of my life.

 

The new church that I found was big. It was a very charismatic and exciting atmosphere, and there were over 4,000 people in attendance every Sunday. It was there where I was introduced to the idea of having a “spiritual authority.” It didn’t seem like anything different than I had ever known, because of how natural it felt to obey, so I dove right in. I allowed them to control my life, even to the smallest detail.

It was openly stated that if one did not obey a Pastor, it was equal to not obeying God. If that Pastor was somehow wrong, God would reveal it to him later. Our job, as congregants, was simply to obey… and we would be judged in The End solely on that – our obedience to the “spiritual authority.”

 

In an effort to try to make up for the shortcomings in my physical appearance, I didn’t tell anyone in my family that I had people “hearing from God” about what I needed to do with my life… sometimes even down to such details as what clothes to wear, what job to have, and how to spend my money. I didn’t tell them that I left weekly “prayer meetings” with bruises and a tear-stained face, from people trying to rip the demons off of me. I didn’t tell them that I had a church counselor trying to get me to physically see Jesus, to be able to talk to him and ask him questions. I didn’t tell them that the same counselor had had a “revelation from the Holy Spirit” that I was not wanted or loved by my family. According to this counselor, I had even survived my mother’s failed attempt to abort me – that was how much they did not want me. That is why I was not good enough. (In reality, my mother had undergone fertility treatments to try to conceive me.)

 

I stayed in this controlling, abusive environment from the age of 15 to the age of 22. I did not realize that I had completely lost myself to the wishes of those who controlled every move I made. I even allowed them, when I was 21 years old, to tell me who to marry.

 

This young man was highly involved in the church, and seemed to be a good match for me. By this time, I was at the church every single day because I worked there. It was my job. Even though he had an outside job, the guy I was to marry was involved with many different aspects of ministry. He was known by most of the church. He spoke in tongues (very loudly), and saw people “healed” when he prayed for them. No one had any clue that he would turn into a very abusive fiancé.

Because we were to be married, he became a “spiritual authority” in my life. He controlled the clothes and makeup I wore, the places I was allowed to shop, the restaurants I was allowed to visit, the friends I was allowed to have, and even what I ate for each and every meal. Eventually, he made it clear that I was not good enough for him either. He told me that the only reason he entertained a relationship with me is because my personality reminded him of my good friend… the one he could not have. Soon, he began telling me how “mentally incompetent” I was, and how he had to fix me. Then he said that I was ruining his life, but he had to marry me because “God said so.”

 

After that, he did not make it a pleasant obligation to fulfill. He became even more particular with my appearance, what I made him for dinner, how I kept his house clean, etc. – and if I did not perform to his satisfaction, I had to “pay” for it somehow. It was his obligation as my “spiritual leader,” after all, to teach me how to behave. My punishments started with a few bruises, being shoved across the room and feeling the wind as a fist flew right by my face to punch the wall just an inch from my head. This was bad enough, right? It did, however, get much worse.

 

Before it was all over, I had been threatened with a knife and had the process of killing a person thoroughly explained to me more than once. He threatened to shove me out of the car while driving almost 100 miles per hour. He started molesting me every single day, in order to put me in my place. When that was no longer a sufficient way to teach me what “God” wanted me to learn, his next tactic was rape. None of these things were from my fiancé, however. They were to be viewed as “God” teaching me to be submissive. He was just the vessel.

 

When I left, I ran for my life. As things happened, I ended up getting out just three days before the wedding, but it was not without being stalked, being “prophesied” to, and even two attempted kidnappings. I believe these people actually thought they were trying to save my life from a terrible family and a vengeful God. But thankfully, my dad took me and fled the state. We went north for a while, but things ended up with him taking me to Bible College in Missouri, because he was worried about my faith.

 

The first time he came to visit me at College, I decided to be honest with him and tell him about all the sexual abuse I had endured as a child, and then as a young adult. He was horrified. He talked about what he would have done if only he would have known. (I didn’t remind him that I had tried to tell him about it when I was ten years old.) I could tell his heart was broken. But even in that broken hearted state, he blamed the abuse on my appearance. He said that if I were thinner, that abuse would not have happened. I felt like I had just had the wind knocked out of me.

 

I did stay at Bible College for a year and a half, but I was a mess. I was woken up often by other girls in my dorm, saying that I had been screaming and fighting in my sleep. I had troubles enduring classes and chapel services, due to high anxiety. I saw a therapist and was diagnosed with Clinical Depression and PTSD. I often had panic attacks and complete mental breakdowns.

 

Even though this terrible stuff was going on in my religious life, things that were probably equally as terrible were going on in my family. At some point in my teenage years, my dad decided that he had heard from “God.” He was to quit his job and write a book. His book was to be on the new theology that had been revealed to him. He worked on that book for well over a decade, all the while living off of an inheritance fund that should have been invested to serve our family for years to come. During this time, it got to the point where he was incapable of talking about anything but his new theology, how evil American churches are, and how no Christian denomination measures up to what he was writing in his book. I remember being cornered in the kitchen on many occasions and quizzed about what I thought this scripture or that scripture meant… only to find that I was wrong and needed to be corrected. Those lectures would sometimes last for hours.

 

His mission, in addition to writing his book, was to go around arguing with Pastors and trying to get them to agree with his new revelation. Of course, he ended up getting himself kicked out of several churches, including the one that he had attended for more than 16 years. He even made it a point to contact the Pastor of every church I tried to attend. He would call them and argue with them about the Bible, then call me and explain to me how I couldn’t go to that church because they weren’t teaching truth. My eternity was on the line, and he had to make sure I was headed in the right direction.

 

When that inheritance fund ran out, he maxed out all the family’s credit cards and expected my mom to support the family with her quilting business. He had not allowed her to get a college education and become a doctor like she had wanted, so she relied on her sewing skills to make money. She finally had enough after 27 years of marriage, and left.

 

By this time, I was married. I had met a really nice guy at Bible College, a Children’s Ministries Major who had been voted “nicest guy on campus.” Things were very good for the first year of our marriage, a little tight financially… but good. Just after our first wedding anniversary, however, things started to change.

 

He got involved with a cult.

 

This was a very militant “End Times” group who focused on dreams and visions about the end of the world and God’s judgment on the peoples of the Earth. It was lead by a licensed minister of the same denomination of the Bible College that we had gone to. The people in this cult would sit around and talk about current events, and how they lined up with Biblical prophecy. They would interpret dreams and visions that had been reported by individuals. They would shut themselves up in a dark room and watch documentaries on radical Islamic groups, and plan how to save the world when the United States got brought to its knees by these fundamentalists.

 

The men all “heard from God” that they were not to have jobs… my husband included. (Deja’vu?) They were to do what needed to be done to prepare for the coming judgment – and part of that was to stockpile weapons and to build make-shift nuclear shelters in the basements of the homes that were involved.

 

The men in this group were all very “male privilege” oriented, and my husband picked up on that. I could not believe it when he started talking about submission and obedience. I could not believe it when he started becoming violent. I just couldn’t believe it, so my brain shut down.

 

I ended up working myself into illness and exhaustion. I would work from 7:00 in the morning until 11:00 at night sometimes, and then not be able to sleep because my husband would come into the room and wake me up to talk to me about the latest teachings from his cult leader. I did not want to go to the meetings with him, so he had to find some time to teach me the truth. If I tried to go back to sleep, he would even resort to standing on the bed to keep me awake.

 

My intense working hours, and then being kept up at night, went on until the doctor had to put me on a strict bed rest for a week. My career is interpreting sign language, so working that much caused my fingers, hands and arms to swell. My feet and legs also were swollen to the point of extreme pain if I put weight on them. The doctor said that I was not allowed to get out of bed for anything, except a short trip to the restroom.

 

My sleep was interrupted, however, by my husband. He was hungry. I am ashamed to say that I actually got out of bed, against doctor’s orders, to fix food for him to eat… and to take care of the dog that he had gotten (in spite of my allergy to animals). I would go back to sleep only to be woken up again. He was bored, and I was not being any fun. I finally convinced him to leave me alone, took a pain pill and drifted off to sleep.

 

The dog was a beautiful Basset Hound, with those sad eyes and big beautiful ears. When my husband would get mad at me, he would hit that dog. He would kick that dog, and bite his ears. I cannot tell you how many nights I fell asleep with a pillow over my head, trying to block out the sound of that dog crying as he was being hit and bitten.

 

Then it got to where he would come find me after he beat the dog. He forced me into some very painful sexual situations, sometimes even drawing blood while he ignored my crying and begging. It was all to work out his anger for something that I had done… something as small as asking him to take out the trash. I should’ve known that he had bigger things to be focusing on. My husband thought that “God” was going to send him a check for one million dollars, and the only thing keeping it from happening was my lack of faith.

 

In addition to these horrific details, eventually there was no food in the house (for humans or dogs). There was no money to buy my asthma and allergy medication. The money was being spent on weapons and other supplies for the end of the world. All we had to eat for months at a time were buttered noodles. (Doctors have said since then that me being in that situation for so long is what kick started my severe allergic reactions to anything wheat or dairy. I now have to eat a gluten-free and dairy-free diet.)

 

When I finally left him, my husband threatened to kill me… threatened to kill himself… threatened to do other horrible things. I got phone calls from his cult leader, thanking me (in advance) for going back to him and being a good and patient wife. Thankfully, I just turned and ran.

 

I ended up in Arkansas with my mom for a while, but it didn’t work out very well. We were both too raw and restless from the situations that we had just come from. I ended up staying in Arkansas alone for a little while, and even tried a church or two. I just never found a place where I felt safe. I just kept finding myself in troubling religious situations, so I quit trying. It was about a year and a half later when I finally realized that I no longer had the ability to identify myself as a Christian.

[charley]

I read most of your account. I don't see that you are asking for any input, and that your entry was a catharsis for you, which is great. At the risk of breaking my rule of not giving unsolicited advice (I do, anyway), I sense you are trying to get your feet on the ground. I suggest that the work you do with deaf children is your way out of the hysteria you've endured, which is abuse to me that is like a psychic rape. I hope you will give yourself the time and care you give others. Then I think you will find your own answers.

[Brakeman]

Wow, ... I'm very impressed that you are able to break out of that. Congratulations. You must be pretty strong.

[★ Citsonga ★]

Sorry to hear about your abusive past. Nobody deserves to go through that kind of crap.

 

Your story seems to need a "To be continued" ending, because it left me hanging. I certainly hope everything works out and that you can recuperate from the garbage you've gone through.

 

Good luck....

[lunaticheathen]

Wow. I would have become a psychotic hermit if I had to go through all that. I'm so glad you're out, and several people in this tale need to be beaten with a hose (in my opinion).

[dichotomy]

My goodness what a story and journey. You've really been through it, and the abuse you've received from various people is just terrible. You must be strong indeed and I hope that you can find a place where you are able to settle and feel safe and to recover from everything you have endured.

[Or'el]

Wow. I would have become a psychotic hermit if I had to go through all that. I'm so glad you're out, and several people in this tale need to be beaten with a hose (in my opinion).

 

LOL! Sometimes I feel like a psychotic hermit! Things are getting better, though... sometimes in the "two steps forward, one step back" mode... but hey! Progress is progress, right? One thing I am having to learn right now is how to deal with all the surpressed anger that I have hidden for so many years. Sometimes I'm not quite sure what to do with myself, but that's why we have therapists! )

[lulukan]

Wow. I would have become a psychotic hermit if I had to go through all that. I'm so glad you're out, and several people in this tale need to be beaten with a hose (in my opinion).

 

LOL! Sometimes I feel like a psychotic hermit! Things are getting better, though... sometimes in the "two steps forward, one step back" mode... but hey! Progress is progress, right? One thing I am having to learn right now is how to deal with all the surpressed anger that I have hidden for so many years. Sometimes I'm not quite sure what to do with myself, but that's why we have therapists! )

 

Writing my blog has helped me to get some of it out. My daughter calls me an angry ranter, but it does help. The right therapist would be good too.

[Euthyphro's Thorn]

Wow. I would have become a psychotic hermit if I had to go through all that. I'm so glad you're out, and several people in this tale need to be beaten with a hose (in my opinion).

 

LOL! Sometimes I feel like a psychotic hermit! Things are getting better, though... sometimes in the "two steps forward, one step back" mode... but hey! Progress is progress, right? One thing I am having to learn right now is how to deal with all the surpressed anger that I have hidden for so many years. Sometimes I'm not quite sure what to do with myself, but that's why we have therapists! )

 

You have made so much progress, and now you are free to decide where you want to go from here.

 

You're one tough lady, Or'el, and you have my utmost respect. I wish you all the best.

[Or'el]

Wow. I would have become a psychotic hermit if I had to go through all that. I'm so glad you're out, and several people in this tale need to be beaten with a hose (in my opinion).

 

LOL! Sometimes I feel like a psychotic hermit! Things are getting better, though... sometimes in the "two steps forward, one step back" mode... but hey! Progress is progress, right? One thing I am having to learn right now is how to deal with all the surpressed anger that I have hidden for so many years. Sometimes I'm not quite sure what to do with myself, but that's why we have therapists! )

 

You have made so much progress, and now you are free to decide where you want to go from here.

 

You're one tough lady, Or'el, and you have my utmost respect. I wish you all the best.

 

Thank you very much.