21 Jul 2012
Adapting to life outside by Juliana
The most common line the cult uses against the ex-members who try and pursue justice for the wrongs they have suffered is, ‘Why cannot they just get over it and move on? They need to leave the past behind and look ahead to the future. Forgive and forget.’ Now at last on the other side, I understood the reality. You may be able to forgive, but you cannot just ‘forget’, nor erase a lifetime of memories. Unlike a computer memory, the mind has no ‘delete’ button.
Most of the time I pushed it to the back of my mind, a distant nagging memory, but the smallest incident would bring it all flooding back. The trigger could be something innocent like a person passing out literature on the street corner, or when a well-meaning stranger asked, ‘so, where did you say you grew up?’ And suddenly it would all hurtle back into my consciousness. My mind would go cold, and I wished I could just crawl into a safe place and hide from people, because it was obvious they would not understand; I was terrified of being looked upon as a freak.
I was guarded and kept to myself more and more when I was not working. I was only entirely comfortable in my own company. If I met a stranger who wanted to know about my past, what would I say? ‘I grew up in a cult. What about you?’
Pain, anger and sorrow were just shadows of a much deeper emotion. Some days this feeling would roll in like a heavy cloud smothering the sun and it took all my energy just to keep up a semblance of normality. Being around people felt like a relentless pounding inside my head, or fingernails being dragged down a chalkboard. Painful.
I did not want to leave my room. People around me seemed engaged in a slow, masked dance, leering grins painted on their faces like carnival masks. I did not have a mask and I felt naked and exposed. I was sure I had “cult victim” written all over me.
I had been four months out of the cult, and two months into my job, when I started to shut down. It was the same feeling I had when I was dragged down by anorexia; a deep, suffocating sadness; spiders. Swarms of them, shrivelling everything I touched under their putrid stench, snuffing out my dreams.
I became an insomniac; I lost my appetite. My cheekbones jutted out prominently and dark rings circled my eyes. For the first time since leaving the cult, I felt that I was floundering dangerously. I avoided even my closest friends because I did not want them to see me in that state. They had tried to help me and I felt I was failing them. The battle with my personal demons had to be conquered alone.
The only place I felt at peace was on the roof of the four-story apartment building where I lived. I would stand balanced on one foot at the edge of the pinnacle, not because I thought of jumping, but because it put all the madness back into perspective. The building was on a hill overlooking Kampala and the city lights glittered below me. I felt alive again. No one and nothing could touch me up there. It was the closest thing to flying. I had always wished to fly. When I was a child, I would imagine myself flying away with the birds. Now that I had broken free from my cage, the freedom frightened me.