Breakdowns

Although the term "nervous breakdown" has perhaps gone into disfavor, I can find no better words to describe a couple of specific periods during my time in the cult.

After leaving the first "leadership" couple to which I was emotionally attached, after having cared for their children for over 4 years, and even having had a child with the husband of the couple, I found myself in a new situation, one that I had dreaded, and in a state of mental shock and inability to function. 

I had left the comfort of the situation I shared with that small family to whom I felt I was needed and a part, and was thrust into an overcrowded group home where I shared a room with many children and a newly "married" couple. Their bed can be referred to as nothing if not the "centerpiece" of the room, with the children's and my beds arranged around the sides. This couple thought nothing of having sex daily during our mandatory "quiet time" (2 hours of rest after lunch), and I wanted nothing more than to escape the cringe-worthy awkwardness of the situation.

I would take my baby for walks around the neighborhood to get away from that place as much as I could manage, although unfortunately, not during those rest periods.

With that new situation came a new leadership couple, whose children I would be taking care of. Before getting involved with them full-time, my new leader asked me to do a simple sewing project for her children. I knew how to sew, but the project seemed overwhelming to me at the time, and I literally was incapable of doing it. In fact, I was in a daze for several weeks after that upsetting change.

The second time was after the birth of my 3rd child, while I was living in a relatively small apartment with 12 children packed in each of the bedrooms - two children in each bed of the narrow triple-bunk beds. I was given lengthy to-do lists each day, and I found myself unable to do anything. I would fall asleep on the floor in one of these busy rooms, and be effectively dead to the world. I could do nothing more than care for my baby.

Clearly, the stress of disrupted relationships, overcrowded conditions, strict standards of thought and behavior were exceedingly unhealthy. Were we "Family" members really "the happiest people on earth"?  

The delusion continued.