Here’s The Odd Way Growing Up Cult-Adjacent Actually Helped Me
Is this a matter of me embracing that side of me, or is it because I just don’t like society?
So, I’ve mentioned this before, but I grew up adjacent to a cult. My best friend was a Moonie whose family went to extremes like mass marriages and eventually moving to a war zone with active concentration camps nearby.
Because my best friend Lyla* was in a religion that was extreme by default, my childhood involved me getting raised in a cult-like way. Some of the more unusual rules included:
No talk about sex, marriages, or other adult male interaction with friends. We could have male friends, but that started to go away once we became teenagers.
No talk disparaging the True Parents. That’s what the head of the church and his wife are called. It does not matter what they do or say, you say nothing bad about them or Christianity.
Wear baggy, androgynous clothes while with your best friend. I could wear girl clothing, but it was heavily discouraged while with my bestie. Also I was closeted nonbinary so it worked in my favor.
Blacksmithing, glassblowing, fights, sword fighting, and dueling were okay, if not outright encouraged. The particular “flavor” that my bestie’s parents subscribed to was already pro-weaponry and already was establishing ties to the gun industry by 1999. It has since become “the church that blesses AR-15s.”
No internet was allowed until we were already preteens. Even then, most of our entertainment was books, sticks, swords, and other more traditional forms of play. We also would occasionally look for road kill so Lyla could make jewelry out of it, which was somehow just okay to do.
Phone conversations, email, and written communications would be monitored. Occasionally, my friend’s mom would chime in while we were talking to remind us “not to sin by speech.”