Here they are. They will be weeded down.
I was looking for something worthwhile to do with my life, some way to help people. I won't say that I was hugely happy all the time or satisfied with my life, but I was more concerned with others' lot than my own. Plus the "space-opera" aspects appealed to me as an ex-hippie in 1972.
Those were the hippie days and I was greatly influenced by the Beatles and the idea of enlightenment (the Beatles had spent some time with the Guru Marharishi in India). So I thought I'd make my way to India, to find the answers. But I only got as far as Amsterdam where I got involved in Scientology by doing a communication course. I got caught up in the idea that I could improve myself, attain spiritual freedom and help others to achieve the same, by doing Scientology.
I was really trying very hard to be a good "left-wing intellectual long-haired hippie" but I didn't really feel good about it. And I wasn't doing good in high-school, so when my two elder sisters and one elder brother told me that it would be a "smarter career-move" to join $cn I was just very likely to "bite the hook". I felt as if I was a failure, and I didn't have high thoughts about myself, so I was just about as vulnerable as a teenager can be. And I trusted my siblings blindly. A few years later my younger sister joined too.
Mental state? I was a mature, well-educated adult in a period of career transition. I was bored to some degree and rather without a sense of wanting to pursue anything in particular. Family and finances were fine, so I was secure.
was in my early 20's. I'd had a bad year, in and out of relationships, was confused about my direction in life, no clear career path, feeling lonely and missing my ex-boyfriend
I took drugs, some times in excess but I would not have at that time nor now, for the matter,consider that I was an addict. I also drank and sometimes heavily, but usually only on weekends.
I was an immature and immoral egotist. I was scared and angry most of the time and had an unhealthy preoccupation with death. I wanted to know the answers to the proverbial questions: who am I, what am I doing here and where am I going when this body ceases to be.Deep down, somewhere in my pettiness and madness there was also an idealist.There was also a fanatic waiting to freed.
I knew I was weak and irresponsible and that I needed discipline;
depressed/griefy, I didn't belong anywhere, had no friends, no goals, no hopes or dreams. The only difference besides a lot more life experience is that I don't have to be afraid of being beaten up, because my ex-husband died.
To have gone that far away, and to return right back into the middle of it all so suddenly. It was like the scene in "Life of Brian" when Brian is being pursued by the group of Romans, and he goes through a million different events while getting away from them, including being taken aboard a martian spaceship, onto Mars, and anally probed, only to be set right back down in front of the Romans who were originally chasing him, and having to keep running and running...
Here's how it started. It was the summer of 1987. My daughter was 1 1/2 years old. I was NOT doing well with being a stay at home mom/wife. My first husband and I had a lot of third party on our lines. Also, I was still pretty young - 24. My mother had died 3 years prior and I still was not fully out of that grief. Plus, when I'd gotten pregnant with my daughter, I had just (by chance) stopped my cocaine habit. So, when I found out I was pregnant, I also stopped smoking, coffee and alcohol. And back in those days, people didn't really talk about postpartum depression - and I had it pretty bad.
Here's what happened. Husband and I got into a huge fight due to some third partying we had gotten. In my fit of anger I thought it would be a good idea to shoot him - for real with his .45. Since he was holding our daughter while I pointed the gun at him, I figured it wouldn't be a good idea after all - since I'm not that good of a shot and didn't want to miss and get my daughter, nor did I want to spend the rest of my life in jail. Instead, I asked him to send me to a mental hospital - obviously I need some time away from the real world. He refused. So, instead I went to bed praying for some relief/help. Here's the bizarre part - I didn't believe in God. I'd been a Jehovah's Witness for 3 years and I didn't find God to be all that responsive. But I prayed anyway. Something had to be better!
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When I was 11 years old I saw the TV commercial for Dianetics and felt a very peculiar urge to read it. I originated this to my mother and she spouted off about it being a scam...I didn't think about it again until years later...
(btw my mother was and is a psychotic, child abusing, freak...like I was sometimes made to strip naked and was beat with electrical cords and she let her random alcoholic boyfriends beat me as well)
