tiptoethrutheminefield
Patron with Honors
In the 1960's my brother, a college dropout, devourer of science fiction and jazz enthusiast, got recruited into Scientology by some friends he met at the bowling alley in our small town. 
My memory of this period is that he started responding to anything that was said to him by anyone in our household--mom, dad, my sister or I--with "got it." He would stay out all night and the rest of the time walk around like a zombie, very uptight (this was usual for him) but no longer seeming to have any connection to us, even to yell or criticize. 
"Got it" was said even in response to direct questions, so it seemed punitive and weird to me. But you couldn't challenge or tease my brother--he would get physically violent with you. 
My mom, a self-educated woman and big fan of metaphysics in an abstract sense
, kept up a contradictory babble for the next few years about how crazy, demonic and dangerous L. Ron Hubbard was
, and what a horrific and dangerous cult Scientology was, while at the same time continuing with her 'party line' that my brother was a glowing, misunderstood genius and, underneath his apparent personality (which had been apparent for as long as I could remember), a real hero and all-around nice guy.
Did I mention my mom was nuts? She would say that Scientology was keeping my brother safe in Vietnam and allowed him to read minds, in one breath, and in the next she would whine and cry about how it was stealing him away from her and turning him into a robot. :confused2:Very confusing for me, but luckily I was a teenager and had my own life to concentrate on.
There were a lot of problems in our family.Suffice it to say that we all "acted out" in various ways; there was no honest communication, mostly manipulation and venting of our resentments. After my dad died in the early 1970s, there was almost nothing to keep us in contact. I started having problems with severe depression
around this time and after getting a college degree and having a college 'romance' that went badly, I had a nervous breakdown and retreated to live with mom--where I was miserable, of course.
My brother was in Los Angeles and had a kid with a woman he'd met at the L.A. Org.
She was on staff and later joined the Sea Org. She couldn't take care of their daughter, so he took her, then met and married another Scientologist in around 1977. 
They came to visit and I liked his wife--it seemed a miracle to me that she had married him. He barely made a living and was the same stiff and grim person he'd always been. He always walked around like he was in a s**tload of pain, and as far as I could tell, Dianetics and Scientology had only made him more self-righteous and judgemental. 
However, at least after he married he made some semblance of communicating with us and seemed really psyched that he had a family. I felt happy for him. 
His wife, a cheerful, attractive woman, told me she'd been clinically depressed after having her kids and that auditing had saved her and enabled her to divorce her 'wog' husband. She was a Clear and she and my brother planned to raise their kids in Scientology. She seemed to have absolute certainty about her beliefs--she was not on staff, though, and had a decent job, which made me feel relieved, as my impression up to then had been that all Scientologists were poor and devoting themselves to the org like they were nuns or monks. 
She was pretty open with me about Scientology and carefully explained every vocabulary word to me. I was cautious, as I was in approaching everything and everybody. Caution, timidity and repression were probably my most obvious and dominant characteristics at that time.
The kids seemed pretty happy--her two sons and my niece were all around the same ages. She would use Hubbard's jargon when dealing with them, but they all seemed pretty happy.
Her ex- was a doctor, so there was a monetary cushion there as well. Given my family background, this was like an oasis in the desert to me--maybe we weren't all doomed losers! Maybe Scientology worked--maybe it made families happy! 
My memory of this period is that he started responding to anything that was said to him by anyone in our household--mom, dad, my sister or I--with "got it." He would stay out all night and the rest of the time walk around like a zombie, very uptight (this was usual for him) but no longer seeming to have any connection to us, even to yell or criticize. "Got it" was said even in response to direct questions, so it seemed punitive and weird to me. But you couldn't challenge or tease my brother--he would get physically violent with you. My mom, a self-educated woman and big fan of metaphysics in an abstract sense
, kept up a contradictory babble for the next few years about how crazy, demonic and dangerous L. Ron Hubbard was, and what a horrific and dangerous cult Scientology was, while at the same time continuing with her 'party line' that my brother was a glowing, misunderstood genius and, underneath his apparent personality (which had been apparent for as long as I could remember), a real hero and all-around nice guy. Did I mention my mom was nuts? She would say that Scientology was keeping my brother safe in Vietnam and allowed him to read minds, in one breath, and in the next she would whine and cry about how it was stealing him away from her and turning him into a robot. :confused2:Very confusing for me, but luckily I was a teenager and had my own life to concentrate on.There were a lot of problems in our family.
Suffice it to say that we all "acted out" in various ways; there was no honest communication, mostly manipulation and venting of our resentments. After my dad died in the early 1970s, there was almost nothing to keep us in contact. I started having problems with severe depression around this time and after getting a college degree and having a college 'romance' that went badly, I had a nervous breakdown and retreated to live with mom--where I was miserable, of course.My brother was in Los Angeles and had a kid with a woman he'd met at the L.A. Org.
She was on staff and later joined the Sea Org. She couldn't take care of their daughter, so he took her, then met and married another Scientologist in around 1977. They came to visit and I liked his wife--it seemed a miracle to me that she had married him. He barely made a living and was the same stiff and grim person he'd always been. He always walked around like he was in a s**tload of pain, and as far as I could tell, Dianetics and Scientology had only made him more self-righteous and judgemental. However, at least after he married he made some semblance of communicating with us and seemed really psyched that he had a family. I felt happy for him. His wife, a cheerful, attractive woman, told me she'd been clinically depressed after having her kids and that auditing had saved her and enabled her to divorce her 'wog' husband. She was a Clear and she and my brother planned to raise their kids in Scientology. She seemed to have absolute certainty about her beliefs--she was not on staff, though, and had a decent job, which made me feel relieved, as my impression up to then had been that all Scientologists were poor and devoting themselves to the org like they were nuns or monks. She was pretty open with me about Scientology and carefully explained every vocabulary word to me. I was cautious, as I was in approaching everything and everybody. Caution, timidity and repression were probably my most obvious and dominant characteristics at that time.The kids seemed pretty happy--her two sons and my niece were all around the same ages. She would use Hubbard's jargon when dealing with them, but they all seemed pretty happy.
Her ex- was a doctor, so there was a monetary cushion there as well. Given my family background, this was like an oasis in the desert to me--maybe we weren't all doomed losers! Maybe Scientology worked--maybe it made families happy! 
