Why would anyone join a cult: Scene Two

Project in process...
To read Scene One, click here.

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Why would anyone join a cult?
Scene Two

I put 100% into Transcendental Meditation (TM)- volunteering at the TM Center, assisting with classes and initiations, and planning to attend the Maharishi Mahesh University in Iowa after high school graduation. Within eight months of starting TM I broke the relationship with my dealer boyfriend. A few months later he got busted and sent to prison for over a year. It was a big bust, lots of PCP which the cops found while searching his car as they were in process of arresting him for burglary.

About one year into TM, I met my next boyfriend who was four years older than I. I moved in with him in the fall of my senior year of high school. He was faithfully involved with a small Baptist church. Yet, he smoked pot on an almost daily basis, and we cohabitated "living in sin" for ten months. Because I wanted to please him I dropped my involvement with TM and decided I'd believe the Baptist doctrine, which was difficult, especially the hell-fire teachings. Almost every Sunday I found myself at the altar in tears of shame wondering if I truly was "saved."

We planned to marry in June, a few weeks after my high school graduation. But in May I broke the engagement. I couldn't come to terms with belief in a God of damnation. And I felt that for our relationship to work, I had to believe. I was also struggling with mood swings, depression, and low self-worth.

I felt driven to find "the truth," to discover God, to find my way "back to the garden." I was eighteen years old.

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Some may wonder about parental guidance through these years. Why did my parents not guide me to better choices?

When I was an infant and toddler Mom was hospitalized for months at a time, two different times, in two different hospitals; one in Georgia and one in North Carolina. Mom had manic depression, now known as bipolar disorder. Her treatment included a cocktail of drugs and shock treatments. During those years, the care of the family fell to Dad who was challenged with anger issues possibly as a result from a brain injury due to an almost fatal car wreck before starting the family. I am the youngest of three; my siblings are four and seven years older than I. From the get-go, I was set on a path of trying to nurture my own emotional childhood needs; it was up to me.

I acted out with violent temper tantrums and slept with an empty baby bottle for comfort until I was eight years old. I made my own homemade chore charts. My friends had chore charts; shouldn't I?

In my younger years Mom played with me when my older siblings were off doing older-sibling things. She would sometimes rub my back as I fell asleep at night holding my baby bottle surrounded by my stuffed animal friends. When I was a teen she helped me when I came home drunk, but we never discussed it afterward. Just like we never discussed the jimson seeds or my psychedelic drug use or my boyfriends or sex. In my elementary years Dad taught me to snow-ski and took me on drives in the Blue Ridge Mountains and on rides in his little sailboat at Lake Hickory. Our family went camping in the mountains of North Carolina, and every summer we vacationed in Daytona Beach, Florida. In 1961, when I was around two, our family had moved from Daytona Beach to the North Carolina foothills. It was our only move.

From the time I was around eight years old, Mom and Dad worked outside the home. They were both in sales, so were often away into evening hours. I was a latch-key kid with few disciplinary boundaries. But I was free to explore, and that's what I did.

Our neighborhood was full of kids. We rode bikes all over the place and played pick-up football, softball, and rolly-bat. I loved to run and played lots of tag, relays, and hide-and-seek. In the warmer months we camped outside in our yards or the surrounding woods; sometimes I'd camp out alone. We directed our own play; adults were seldom involved which was the norm in the 1960s and '70s.

One of our next-door neighbors owned and boarded horses. By the time I was four, I had fallen in love with ponies and horses. My parents bought me my first pony when I was six. His name was Dynamite; a cream-colored, Shetland pony. I later owned Princess and then Black Eagle. I rode almost daily until I was thirteen years old. Sometimes I'd even ride before school. I loved grooming my four-legged friends and caring for them. I liked riding bareback and pretending I was a Navajo or Cherokee. My friend, Marie, and I would pack saddle bags on our ponies and pretend we were explorers. But, it wasn't pretending; we were explorers.

Like many of life's "why" questions, if they can be answered at all, the answers are complex and layered. I do not begrudge my parents for their lack of better guidance, which I may not have heeded anyway. For their perseverance in the face of some harrowing life challenges, they have well earned my utmost respect and admiration.

Dad died in 1996 at age seventy-three. He lived his final twelve-plus years as a quadriplegic, the result of a head-on automobile collision; Mom was his main caregiver. Mom died in 2009 at the age of eighty-three.


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Click here for Scene Three.