(This is a story which started in 1969. Yes, a long time ago. Why am I writing about it now? Because some people have expressed interest in hearing about my time in a religious cult and because I needed something about which to write.
Buffy has an amazing memory for details of her life. I am not so gifted. I will try to remember as accurately as possible but if anyone is reading who was in the group at the time I beg you to forgive me if I get some things out of sequence or don’t remember them the same way as you. I have changed the names of everyone except the top leaders who I feel should be named for the abuses in which most of them participated.)

Laura and I had taken a long weekend to go to Miami and look for work. We registered at Cedars Medical Center for training as nursing assistants and were looking forward to a brighter future than we had in our small town existence in Tennessee. We would make one last visit to South Beach and then return home to pack our things.

They were there witnessing on the beach that day. Witnessing? Witnessing is telling people they won’t get into heaven unless they ask Jesus into their heart and then praying with them to insure the salvation of their souls.

There was a baby boy in a play pen and a couple who particularly intrigued me. She was tall with fair skin and long blonde hair. He was shorter with very dark Hispanic skin and a guitar. I think it was he who approached me first, but maybe not. Of course, I explained how I didn’t need saving. I had “come to the Lord” in my church when I was twelve years old like any good Southern Baptist girl. He took me over to meet Faith and she asked me if I had ever been baptised as a witness to other people of the change in my life. I hadn’t really thought there was much of a change in my life but I could see her point about being a witness to others. I was baptised that day in the ocean at South Beach and got strangled on the water.

Later when they were packing to leave, my friend and I were asked if we would like to go home with them for a while. By this time I was already in love with everyone there. They were so kind to me and talked to me as if I were the most important person in the world to them.  

We followed them home and not long after arriving someone asked if we would like to contribute some money toward dinner. I handed over $20 and they praised God for providing for their needs.

I talked to several diffferent brothers and sisters and found that they all lived in this house together as a family. Faith and her husband Arnie were the leaders. There were two other married couples, the ones I mentioned before and Arnie’s brother Artie and his wife, Claudia with their baby boy along with several single boys and girls. They offered to let us stay that night so we slept on the sofas.

Being the fair skinned person that I am I had gotten quite a sunburn during the afternoon. Before going to sleep three of the boys quietly came to where I lay, knelt on the floor and prayed for my sunburn and for the pain to go away.

I didn’t leave for good until 1978.

Why was I so susceptible to this cult? I began to tell this story once starting it with a brief overview of my life but got all offended at a very nice person’s post which I thought was aimed at me and deleted it. I feel that it is important to know about my past to understand why I did what I did. One thing I know about cults is that every person who joins one has their own reasons so I urge you not to draw conclusions based on my experience alone.

MY EARLY LIFE
I can't remember when I was very small but from old pictures I was a normal size child until  the second grade when I started to get chunky, OK, fat.

In fourth grade my parents bought a little grocery store which they kept open seven days a week so there was no normal family life. I spent a lot of time next door at my maternal grandparents house.

Sometime in here I started to attend a Southern Baptist church. Neither of my parents went to church but would drop me off and pick me up every Sunday.

In eighth grade my mother had another daughter which brought the total to two girls and a boy. My brother was two years younger and gloried in tormenting his older sister. Life had been a mix of working in the store and going to school and now taking care of baby sister.

High school was when I really started feeling the rejection. I had strawberry blonde hair and freckles and blushed whenever anyone, particularly men, spoke to me. Still do to this day and it is the bane of my life. If someone comments on how red my face is it just gets worse. I knew I wasn't pretty and the blushing didn't help. Boys and men seemed to get some kind of perverted joy in making me blush and eventually to cry.

Academically I was in the top ten in class, Beta Club, school newspaper editor one year but never the best at anything. My father would often remind me about the accomplishments of his brother's daughters and wondered why I couldn't be more like them.

During my high school years, my mother and father divorced. He moved to South Carolina to be with his family and Mama and us kids stayed in Tennessee to run the store.

I was defined by my weight and appearance. The fat girl who couldn't run the laps in PE without getting winded. The fat, ugly girl who went to the school dance because everyone else was going and then spent the night trying to smile as she sat by herself.

My mother bought me a beautiful green dress to wear to the Junior Prom. It looked so good in the dress shop and I felt like Cinderella. After returning home I tried on the dress and one of the boys from my class who was working at the store was there. I looked at him and realized that I could buy all the beautiful dresses in the world but a boy like him would never look at me and think I was pretty. Running back to my room I took off the dress never to wear it again.

Mama was furious at me for wasting her money. She told me that I had better learn how to cook because that was the only way I would ever get a man as if "getting a man" were the goal of my life.

Toward the end of my senior year I was called out of class one day. In the principal’s office sat my mother. She wanted my brother and me to come with her right away. When we got back to the store we found that she had locked the doors. She told us to pack as much of our clothes as we could and we were off to the airport.

When my father had left, the store was deeply in debt and Mama had been unable to dig us out of our troubles. We were running away.

It seemed like a great adventure to me. Graduation was coming up and I didn’t want to participate anyway. I had won a couple of awards and would have to go up in front of everyone to accept. It terrified me. And then there was the Senior Prom...

We spent a few weeks with my mother’s brother and his family in Texas. Finally, my mother, sister and I returned to Tennessee leaving my brother to finish the school year with our cousins.

I had missed so much school that I had to go to summer school to make up the credits. It was an ego builder to be in school with the kids who had failed a class the previous semester. For once, I was the smartest kid in class.

Finally I got a job in a furniture factory where my father had once worked upholstering recliners. Then my uncle got me in where he worked. He was a machinist keeping the paper roller machines working. I stamped and wrapped rolls of adding machine and cash register paper. Not what I had dreamed for myself. I might not have been attractive but I thought I was smart and could do better than this.

So when my girlfriend, Laura, suggested that we go to Miami and look for better work I jumped at the chance.

It was quite a few years before I returned home.

The first post in this series is about my marriage in the cult.

http://open.salon.com/blog/lifehalflived/2009/04/18/seven_years_from_her_virginity