Part 2
So, I was sitting in (what I know now to be) the reg area, talking to a guy telling me about this booklet called “all about drugs”. He was telling me how it can effect me spiritually and how I wouldn’t be able to get any better if I continued. I thought it was a load of shit, to be quite honest. (As a sidenote here, interestingly enough, I had planned on becoming a psychologist after highschool.
) I argued with him about everything. I stood by my statement that there was no possibility of a god, and we’re not spirits or souls and that when we die that’s it and that he was nuts. Then he showed me an e-meter and did the whole cat mental image picture thing and the pinch test. I have to admit that he got me thinking. I’ve never been one to back down, but after all the years of questioning my existence, it seemed that something existed that could actually PROVE the existence of something… better. Here was something I could see with my own eyes. Eventually I agreed to start a course. I was on course every weekend at the mission, doing a lot of the basic courses.
After a while, I started doing courses at the org, and stopped smoking weed completely. I was 18, just out of a long relationship that didn’t end very well, and looking for help. A short while after that, I met this guy, we’ll call him Darren. He was sweet, and caring, and he was there for me. He was not a Scientologist, in fact, had never heard of it, and I bought Dianetics for him. He never read it, but it didn’t really matter to me. For a while, things were good. Just before my 19th birthday, we moved out to the wife’s house (my father’s 2D, the scientologist). I was not happy at all. She ran her house like an org, with cleaning stations and condition assignments. It was farther from Darren, and I couldn’t see him as often. Being away from each other took a toll on the relationship. He began saying things that would subtly hurt my feelings, justifying it later. He began to become hard to get in touch with. I felt that I was losing him, and I blamed the wife for it, I felt like she had stolen my father. If it wasn’t for her, I thought, I’d be happy.
When they (my dad and the wife) went on vacation that year, I did something really stupid. I can’t really say what happened at this time, but I was kicked out of the house when they returned, after refusing to do condition write ups for her. So I moved in with Darren.
Shortly after moving in, Darren became a different person. He was getting angry at the slightest thing, becoming violent and mean. Then I found out I was pregnant, and he called me a slut for it, saying that I was fat and that I’d be a horrible mother. It was just awful. I couldn’t get in touch with my father, they’d cut the comm line. I’d stopped going on course too and I was working two jobs. Darren had lost his job and hadn’t found another. He would take the money I made (I was waitressing) at the end of each night. Things were very bad, I started thinking about suicide again. But the life growing inside of me kept me from going through with it. I wanted to die so badly, and couldn’t. I was so frustrated and angry and sad. We were starving too, no money to eat – I don’t know what he did with the money, he’d just slap me if I asked. I went to bed in such pain from being hungry. So I started hiding money before I got home.
There’s just so much about this part of my life, its hard for me to write it out this way. It’s a huge part of why I made the decisions I did when it came to Scientology, in the end.
One night, he beat me so hard I ran. It must have been 3 or 4 in the morning, and I called my dad from a payphone, leaving him a crazy message. After about an hour, I went back to the house, and Darren apologized, saying he would never do that again. The next morning, my father showed up with an aluminum bat. Stupidly, I told him everything was fine. I didn’t want to admit to him that I’d fucked up and was failing at life.
Eventually though, it got to be too much, and I called my dad again, and met with him. I told him everything. He called the wife, and told her the situation. I don’t know what she said to him but the next thing that happened was my dad was setting up an appointment at planned parenthood for an abortion. I went along with it, because at the time I felt I couldn’t bring a child into the world with that kind of a father. I couldn’t bear the thought of being connected to Darren for the rest of my life.
A lot happened after that. Darren and I got evicted from our apartment in the dead of winter. I spent 2 months sleeping on the street. I was surprised to find that people were actually very generous, and I was always able to get something to eat. Finally I was able to find a place to crash with an acquaintance. It turned out to be a very bad situation, but I was able to get a job and save some money for my own room to rent. I was back in comm with my dad and he insisted that I go back on course, which I did.
At one point, I joined staff, but it was very disorganized. I was an expeditor for ages, only ever writing letters and I didn’t like having my time taken up that way, so I left. I had never done any of the staff statuses and no one ever said anything to me about it. I was still doing courses, mostly basic courses and some life repair, which I thought didn’t go very well. I didn’t feel like I’d gotten the wins that everyone else was talking about from auditing. So I just said forget it and started a major course – PTS/SP.
A couple years later, when the Basics came out, I started doing the book courses. At the time, things were going pretty well for me. I had a job, money, and was doing well in life. Of course I attributed it to what I was doing in Scientology because that’s what everyone who noticed mentioned to me. I didn’t think anything of it. I felt I was doing the right thing and seeing improvement in my life only reinforced that idea.
I joined staff again, and this time went through all the proper steps. The org had gone SH size since I was last on staff and things were much smoother. I was actually having a good time and made a lot of friends. Slowly, though I didn’t really realize it at the time, I was losing touch with my “wog” friends. Eventually, the only people I knew were other Scientology staff and public.