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"her · it · age"
property that is or may be inherited; an inheritance.
i visit my hometown for the first time in a decade. i have never felt more or less like me. before today, i was no one because i had nowhere to remember and nothing that was truly mine. and now i feel like someone again. someone with roots.
my roots are filthy, nasty, rotten. set in a town with more bayous than banks, backwater, backwoods. my roots are set in trailer parks with moon crater puddles of stagnant water. my roots are set in putrid places where flowers refuse to bloom.
but at the corner right past the railroad that goes on forever, there is a trailer home without air conditioning where the hummingbirds fly. that is where my murky, trashy, broken roots begin and they are mine.
i buy a french vanilla cappuccino from a corner store that's open all night. the cashier takes one look at me and say "that'll be a dollar forty-nine. yer one-a dem Gauthier girls, aintcha?" and I nod politely, say yes ma'am i am, though i'm a Gauthier in face and not name. i pay a dollar bill and 2 quarters for my drink. she gives me a dime in change. by the time i realize she got it wrong, it's too late for me to turn back. i pocket the 10-cent piece. maybe I'll frame it.
there's a man selling peaches by the basket on the roadside. i buy a single one. it drips down my chin and tastes like heaven like home, and the scent won't leave my breath. i turn the car around and go back, understanding now why he sells them in batches of 20.
the clouds are fallen angels turning their backs on the world. everything prays for the south-- the grass, the grain, the dirt. eventually the angel clouds turn back around, casting their shadows at the rusted crucifix on Margie's purple wall.
there are no towers on the horizon, no mechanical sepulchers sinking their teeth into the ground to drink the oil like parched soil drinks the year's first rainfall. there are no towers here, just trees for miles and angel clouds and rickety train-cars fallen on their sides.
the roads are almost empty, where they exist at all. there is more traffic at night. some of it is ghosts. no one questions this.
the neighbor ladies sip sweet tea and their gossip sounds like ice cubes clinking against smudged glasses, "didja hear Jessica's baby ain't right in the head?" "sure ain't. and who would be, under the circumstances? can't believe she married Chantelle." "funny, i never reckoned she'd be a dyke." there is an edge of disdain in their tea-glass voices, overshadowed by boredom.
strange things happen in the church on 1st street. the trains rush through the town. before anyone hears or sees them, they make their presence known by shaking the ground. everything is dilapidated now. the buildings are broken like a child's lincoln log castles. the families are shattered like mother's good vases.
the morning light comes and dew glistens over everything, spiderwebs stretch out bigger than my face, clover fields and dove feathers and honeysuckles litter the ground.
everything has changed but its all the same, there are still pieces of me scattered through the world. at least i have this one back.
it's time for me to leave.
#my pics#southern gothic#poetry#spilled ink#poem#poets on tumblr#tw: homophobia#tw: slurs#tw: church mentions#tw: religious themes#tw: ableism#spilled poem#poetry community#poets and writers#hometown#nostalgia#ethel cain#my hometown gives me ethel cain vibes okay it's just a thing#names changed for anonymity
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i am given birth to by my mother. i am brought home to a falling-apart trailer. i am fed and i am not fed enough. i am aged into a small being with opinions and some semblance of autonomy; my childhood is a video game and i am given three objectives: sit down, stay quiet, and cease to exist. i am made good at the last part; it is a god-like sort of art, and so i do. silence is suited for me as well as i am suited for silence.
i am told, gently, by my third-grade teacher to stop writing in passive voice. the noun of the sentence should be the actor, the doer, the taker. i am not a taker. never the actor of my own consciousness, of my own unconsciousness, remember, now, i am ceasing to exist.
i am uprooted like a wilting plant, no sunlight, chipped terracotta pot, placed, never planted. grow, says the sunlight seeping between the drawn shutters, and i deny its case. i am made a masochist at all of eight-years-old, i am made for withering away. i am made mother, made martyr, made clever, made more, made machine.
i am placed in a foster home and told the new rules. i will sleep at 2130 and wake at 0600. i will eat blueberries and coconut yogurt and i will make good grades. i will behave. i will sit down, i will stay quiet, and i will cease to exist.
i am told, gently, by my ninth-grade teacher to stop writing in passive voice. like this, you are the subject of the sentence. i am brought home; i am subjected to my sentence. i am taught, i am created, i am embittered, i am disillusioned, i am ceasing. it is all i know how to do.
blurring letters litter the pages before me. maya angelou, oh pray my wings are gonna fit me well. oh, tell the hell-child to return to her cell. mangled beast, worthless mongrel, ceasing. perfect child, perfect victim, passive. the sentences are diagrammed by my expert hand and i am diagrammed as well, pages in a folder, problem child, trouble-maker, mentally unstable. infinitive, preposition, page-break.
my eleventh-grade teacher is asked why was it okay for maya angelou to write in passive voice? she responds, because to write in active voice would take the focus from the corpse to the crew. i like that. i understand it. the pages aren’t so blurry anymore. i trace them with my fingertips, letter-by-letter. her bones were found//round thirty years later//when they razed//her building to//put up a parking lot.
i am no longer still, silent, ceasing. i am no longer wilting, and no longer made, i am maker.
grow, says the sunlight seeping between the drawn shutters. i am neither the corpse nor the crew. i reach forward with trembling hands,
and i pull the cord, and the light floods through.
#poetry#poem#poets on tumblr#spilled ink#spilled poem#parentification#original poems#poetic prose#poetry community#poets and writers#foster care#tw: death#tw: neglect#tw: emotional abuse#passive voice
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"my mother's addiction as a list of fallen cities"
-
atlantis
your eyes were bloodshot//hands bright blue//arms tattered up and down//you smelled of sex and grenadine and i was//too young to know what that meant//but even so//i knew i had lost you for good
you told me//do as i say, and not as i do//i tried to save you//how you said you'd save me
your broken promises//flourished like a crocus in the sun//dead within days//i tried to save you//how you said you'd save me
you were a city in ruins//you took me down with you
only now do i wonder why it was me saving you//
and not you saving me.
pompeii
in my dreams//my teeth rotted out instead of yours//when i woke, nothing changed
you destroyed you//you took me down with you.
i still wake up//from dreams where you're drowning
and the walls come//tumbling down//and i reach for you, frantic.
while i was drowning//you were high//i reached for you, frantic.
i did as you did//and not as you said//this time.
sodom
when you tell me you are//leaving it behind//doing better//trying harder//i don't bother getting my hopes up;
it is no surprise to me//when you disintegrate down//into a pillar of salt.
this time//i don't look back//i just run.
#tw: drugs#tw: mothers#poem#poetry#poets on tumblr#spilled ink#spilled poem#family dynamics#family issues#abusive family#poet#poetry community#poets and writers#poems on tumblr#tw: addiction
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what i said:
good morning, beautiful. did you know that vultures lay their eggs at the edges of cliffs?
what i meant:
every year i fight the urge to reinvent myself, to shed my skin and take a new name. i’ve got a manic flight hidden in my bones somewhere, down to the marrow. i’m scared of needles. i wanna get better but i don’t know how. i’m glad i didn’t know that the last time i saw you was the last time; it was better that i didn’t spend it dreading your absence the way i spent two hours trying to figure out why vultures lay their eggs at the edges of cliffs.
what i said:
some things just don’t have an answer, beautiful. vultures were associated with catharsis long before they ever were with death.
what i meant:
some things just don’t have an answer. i never believed in love at first sight until i saw you. the birds are singing and it makes me smile and it makes me sick.
what i said:
i’m falling for you, beautiful. did you know that a group of larks is called an exaltation?
what i meant:
i only loved you long enough to set my soul in flight and watch you become my ceiling. i didn’t want what we had to be short but meaningful. i just wanted it to be meaningful.
what i said:
i’ll miss you, beautiful. did you know mourning doves are related to carrier pigeons? did you know they used to send them overseas to sing funeral songs?
what i meant:
maybe there’s another world where i wake you up every day with bird facts but i don’t think it’s this one.
what i said:
goodbye, beautiful. did you know that nightingales die faster the more they sing?
what i meant:
i would’ve sang myself to death, for you.
#poetry#poem#spilled ink#spilled poem#poets on tumblr#bird poem#nightingale#guys i got a call at work today where some guy got stuck in a fucking vending machine#and i was like bro#how surreal is it that i get calls where some fool is fighting for his goddamn life because he had to have his doccy pepper#i am just some guy in a cubicle eating a sandwich#anyways pls enjoy the poem i worked hard on it#sorry i never post work is a circus and i'm the one wearing the clown shoes#god i love my job#the tags are also a poem it's a concept poem okay
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"siblinghood, as a series of seasons"
//
[spring]
our father brings you out into the hospital corridor. you are swathed in a linen blanket. i am impressed that you are not crying.
on the way home, our mother makes some comment, something like i hope you aren’t upset that the baby was born so close to your birthday. i do not respond. i am staring into your eyes, and you are staring back.
-
[summer]
summer, in all its brutality, is us together in the scorching heat. it’s me, the only one who can interpret your toddler babble. it is looking over as you take shaky steps and knowing, before anyone else, when you are about to fall.
you are old enough to walk now. i still spend my spare time wondering who will catch you.
such is siblinghood. such is life.
-
[autumn]
when everyone else thinks of autumn, they think of golden leaves.
we think of the reason why they turn.
this is the nature of siblinghood; we grow up in a burning house. we leave with ashes under our nails. you are the only one who will ever hate our parents as much as i do. you are the only one who could ever love our parents as much as i do. you accidentally call me mom once and i say it’s fine, so long as no one’s listening.
i am old enough to leave, and i fly like a bat out of hell. you are too young to leave, and you stand in the hallway with crossed arms and a glowering face and you burn, and burn, and burn.
-
[winter]
winter is an echo of all we should’ve had; a world where we imagine siblinghood and think of warmth instead of salvation.
our golden forests have faded to gray. i could not save you from the fall, nor could you save me from the flight. i could not save you from the burning house, but i’ll try my damndest to patch the wounds it left. you hate me just as much as you hate our parents and i love you just as much as i love them.
i try to imagine a world where i am not stitching up your wounds as i bleed out from my own. there is no such world.
winter is all we have.
-
[spring]
a patch of dandelions blooms to our left.
have you come to save me? you ask, and i shake my head.
no, kiddo. we already tried that.
well, what are you here for, then?
the answer to your question chokes in my throat. i’m going back to college. your birthday is my phone password. i still think of you every time i eat a marshmallow.
you are still bleeding, and you are still smoldering, and you are still glowering in the hallway. i have stitched up my wounds; they are healing into scars. i saved me first. i saved me at your expense.
i lived to regret it.
i would not have, if i’d stayed.
i’m here to make a wish. i say, and i hand you a dandelion. wish with me?
you puff the seeds into my face. it is just as annoying as you stealing my clothes in autumn when you were thirteen and cutting up my books in winter when you were five and taking what remained of our parents’ love in spring when you were born. siblinghood is a list of sins you’ll never remember and being the oldest means letting them cease to matter.
i reach out. pick a dandelion. blow the seeds off in some unforeseen direction.
would you believe me if i told you that my wish was for you to be happy?
you do not respond. but you do not leave.
i stare into your eyes.
and you stare back.
[in spring, we are reborn.]
#siblinghood#older sister#parentification#eldest daughter syndrome#family issues#family dynamics#family dysfunction#poem#poetry#spilled ink#poets on tumblr#poetry community#sorry i haven't posted in like forever i got a promotion and work is kicking my shit in!
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clocked in; took calls; laughed with my coworkers.
got so loud my boss had to intervene,
but she was laughing, too.
made a joke about it being too slow.
took calls. laughed more.
my callers were human.
i was human.
clocked in; took calls; changed lives, or so i'm told.
clocked in; took calls; answered the phone.
felt the fear crackling in static before i even heard the caller speak.
my caller was human.
i was human.
clocked in; took calls;
listened to a child narrate his mother's death.
clocked in. took calls.
did not laugh, after that.
#this poem's mostly for me honestly#today was not kind but i am still going to be#work was hard and i am going to bed#emergency dispatch is funny like 97% of the time but dear god when it is not funny#it is super not funny#anyways. sorry for the work content! i think i mostly posted this because it's wild to me that i hear humanity's best and worst moments and#then i just go home#and my life is mostly unchanged except the fact that i have heard something that won't leave me#i am okay and my supervisors are very good at helping us debrief after these calls#im just processing#tw: death#tw: trauma
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Sweet-hearted, sugar coated annoyance
she is three foot six shades of cinnamon spitfire.
it’s dinosaurs for days -
which one’s your favorite?
I ask her
the T. rex
she says
because if you don’t move they leave
and I think
what I would give for her to never learn that lesson
there’s t rexes in people suits and they will eat you whole, baby
they will crunch your bones for the sake of the snap and
I will always be your stillness
I will always hold your silence
I will teach you what a violence
gentleness can be
what a well timed rock in the opposite direction can mean
how to leave a room without being seen
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hello friend! just popping in to say hello :) what inspires you to write poetry?
hiya!!! so sorry for the delayed response, this week has been soooo busy at work!
what inspires me to write poetry is, simply enough, when i have an emotion or an experience and realize i've never heard anyone capture that experience in words before. so i write a poem, and sometimes i post them in case someone else has had the same experience and that way a few people feel a little less alone? if that makes sense?
and also birds. i love a good bird metaphor. nature in general, actually. and Greek mythology, and overheard conversations. weird dreams, and random words in spray paint on the sides of buildings, and just about any encounter i ever have with a stranger.
and nuances, and wishful thinking, and people i love and people i loved once. people in general, too. i feel like being human is such a strange experience and sometimes writing about it is even stranger.
i could go on about this for,,,a long time. this was SUCH a lovely ask, and i appreciate you dropping by to say hi! feel free to do so anytime, friend!
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how to leave a cult & stay out (long post)
i know this isn't my usual brand, but i felt the need to make this post given the fact that my poetry journey started as an exploration of emotions after i left the cult i was in. i know a lot of my followers initially followed me for that content, and i wanted to write this in case anyone needs it.
some background: the cult i left was a small evangelical patriarchal cult with a commune-type living situation. i am afab, with little to no family support and no college experience. i live in the US. i have no experience with anything outside this situation, and thus, my advice will not be universal. however, i've left and stayed out of my cult for nearly a year, and i wanted to share what i learned. i remember wishing i'd had a post or a book or anything to help me know what to expect, so here's what i've gathered so far!
tws: religious abuse discussion and addiction/nicotine mentions
leaving (logistics)
work
my ability to logistically and financially separate from my cult stemmed largely from the fact that i had work outside the commune & their sphere. my first attempt to leave was thwarted simply by the fact that, at that time, i worked with other 4 cult members and had no ability to seek outside employment without raising suspicion.
however, i was able to gain permission to seek external employment under the premise that i would be able to tithe more, and that i felt this was "the direction i was being led in." i am aware that this is not the case for every cult. in fact, after i left, it essentially stopped being the case for mine either. however, if at all possible, gaining external employment is key.
if you cannot seek external employment, save every single penny you can [in cash if they check your bank statements], and submit job applications a couple weeks or so before you leave. do not be afraid to quit a job that the members have some access to in order to be in a safer situation, because that mentality will keep you tied there for longer. a script for asking your manager not to penalize you for a sudden exit would look something like this (presuming the managers were not also members or leaders of the cult):
"hello X,
i am experiencing some unforeseen circumstances and leaving a dangerous [complicated, difficult, etc.] situation. my last day will be [day before you plan on leaving the cult]. i understand that this is not a full two-weeks-notice, but due to this circumstance, i am asking for understanding. please keep this confidential, as it would threaten my safety if others knew about this."
if you don't trust your management not to blab, ask for answers from other members, or even just accidentally let something slip, it is acceptable to quit the day you leave. it's better to have a rough patch on your resume than to spend the rest of your life in a cult, and in all honesty, it doesn't really matter much anyways. a gap in your resume can easily be explained away as time spent caring for a family member or staying safe in the current pandemic, and quitting under "unfavorable circumstances" still bodes significantly better than being fired. this is, of course, all worst case scenario. most managers will be understanding.
having another job lined up immediately after leaving will also prevent a great deal of problems with this. job interviews can be completed virtually from a coffee shop you know they wouldn't visit, or the house of a safe friend or family member. in the middle of this post is a list of excuses you could use to step out for a job interview, and if that's not possible: while you're PIMO [physically in, mentally out, a term for still being present in the cult but having the desire and plan to leave] you can schedule your job interviews in advance for the days/weeks after your planned date of leaving the cult.
social life
let me start with this: your friends from before are your greatest asset. they do not hate you. they will believe you. chances are higher than not that they saw the warning signs before you ever did. i can guarantee you a vast majority of them have been waiting for a phone call from you since the day you joined saying that you planned on leaving.
if your family was not abusive, toxic, manipulative, or connected in any way to your cult, they can also be an asset. however, tread carefully with this. you don't want to hop out of the fire and into the frying pan, so to speak. moving out of a commune and back into an abusive parent's house can cause more trauma in the long run.
if there is any sphere where you can connect with people that your cult does not have access to, utilize it. i found friends online, at work, and through mutual friends of people i had met before i joined the cult. even if you work with other cult members, if there are any non-members in your workplace, you can still make an effort to befriend them. if questioned by your cult, you're just trying to convert them.
being friends with someone doesn't mean you have to confess every detail of your plan to leave. you don't even have to mention your plans. friends can be a safety net even if they don't know what you're going through. choose carefully who to trust, but don't shut everyone out either.
housing
if you live with your cult, finding housing is an immediate priority.
the biggest mistake i ever made was my refusal to couch surf for fear of being kicked out or "becoming a burden."
your friends aren't nearly as troubled by you as your cult would have you believe. in fact, to this day, if a member of the cult i left were to come to my door asking for refuge, i would open my home to them without a question. your friends would rather see you on their couch or in their spare bedroom for a month than ever watch you go back to the place you left.
the first time i ever left my cult, i went back because i feared i was burdening the friend i was staying with. it wasn't until she called me sobbing that i finally realized that i wasn't the burden; my absence was the burden. taking up space is not a crime. no matter how much the cult tells you otherwise.
if you can't immediately find an apartment due to credit issues, age, income thresholds, etc, extended stay hotels are an option if you have no friends to stay with. the price ends up being equivalent to the cost of room & bills at an apartment anyways. this is a temporary option, during which you can take the following (vaguely unethical but often necessary) measures to hopefully secure a more permanent situation:
find a friend who's good at photoshop and invent some pay statements. [if possible, try to make them from scratch based off an existing pay stub of yours. landlords, especially of large apartment complex chains, recognize the common templates.]
you might have better luck getting approved [and/or getting away with forged paystubs] at a smaller apartment complex, specifically the ones you can't find on google. you may have to drive around and physically look for these complexes.
look up second-chance apartments
apply for any and all government aid you may be eligible for
work overtime or a second job to make your pay stubs appear greater. this is a temporary measure only; stressful, but worthwhile in the long run.
look on roommate-finding websites! a lot of people won't require credit checks, formalities, etc. a horrible roommate is still generally less of a pain in the ass than, oh, i don't know, 12 horrible roommates who are watching your every move and reporting back to the people in charge.
look for subleasing situations on websites like Craigslist as a last resort. take precautions, don't meet anyone alone, etc.
https://www.apartments.com/
^here's the website i used to find my apartment before i left. it has a lot of good filters. delete your browsing history afterwards.
if you don't live with your cult, the moment you separate, you should file and enforce a restraining order if you feel even the slightest bit comfortable doing so and consider changing apartments within your unit, moving houses if feasible, etc. invest in an alarm system, a vicious-looking animal, a deadbolt, all the security measures you would take if you were being stalked. which brings us to our next point.
privacy
if they're monitoring your bank accounts, open another one in secret if possible or keep as much money as you can on a Pay-pal card, Visa card, etc. funnel as much money as you can into these accounts without arousing suspicion. the moment you leave, immediately cancel any account they may have access to and withdraw all money from it.
keep any incriminating items in your bra and/or undergarments. at all times. this includes vital documents [social security card, birth certificate, etc.], cash that you're hoarding without their knowledge [gross but necessary, keep it in a ziploc and sanitize it with a lysol wipe], etc.
have all mail that would reveal your escape plans sent to non-member friends or a P.O. box.
the day you leave, inform HR at work that your presence in the building should not be disclosed to anyone. change shifts if you can, park your vehicle elsewhere and uber from close parking lots to your building, or take steps to make your vehicle unrecognizable (remove telltale stickers, add new stickers with topics you have no interest in, add new rearview mirror hangy thingies, even remove seat or steering wheel covers if you have to. they might remember your license plate, but at very least your car wouldn't be initially recognizable.
if they have access to your location, do not turn this off until the moment you leave. when you do, do so quickly and on every possible platform. this should coincide with password changes for any account that can be used to trace you (email, Google location history, maps, apple/icloud, Find my IPhone, Life360, Airtags, bank accounts [use cash until the account is cancelled if they know about it], vehicle GPS)
if you have an IPhone, you will automatically be alerted if an unfamiliar Airtag is following your location. If you have an Android device, download "Airguard" or a similar app which will serve the same purpose. at very least, this will give you peace of mind.
a burner phone is an absolute necessity. you can find them at walmart and the combined cost of the phone and prepaid card is usually less than $100 [USD].
clear your browser history. change contact names of all non-member contacts to the name of someone you're in the cult with and delete the texts. people hardly ever check phone numbers if the contact name isn't suspicious to begin with. add parentheses beside contact names with [deceptive] information about who they are.
example: i had a non-member friend saved as "Karen (Boss at Amazon)" in my phone. that way if i got a call, i could play it off as a work call and step away.
packing/preparing to leave
lie and tell them you're organizing things. this is a GREAT excuse to have everything you own in pre-packed storage bins. under the bed is a good location to keep things. the less you act like you're trying to hide what you're doing, the better.
keep clothes on hangers for easy access. when you're packing to leave [presuming you can do so in secret], just grab them off the hangers and shove them into trash bags. don't worry about neat. just find a place to put shit and haul ass.
it's okay to steal shit but don't steal anything valuable at all or anything terribly noticeable. the last thing you want is them having evidence for legal recourse against you.
if there's food, take food. i lived off a tupperware full of chicken salad i stole from the cult for a solid 4 days. bring medicine with you regardless of whether or not you "have a good immune system". even if you don't think you'll need it, you'll need it, i promise.
it's better to leave everything and get out with your freedom than take all you own and get caught. that being said, if you have a feasible way of taking everything, do that. the last thing you want is to be so financially fucked that you feel like your only hope is to go back to them. [it is NOT.]
if you need to relay information to a non-member contact in a safe and private manner while with people, have them call you and pretend to be a business. for example, i had my secret debit card mailed to a friend, and i had her call me pretending to be the bank and read me off the number so i could put it in my apple pay. this could also work as far as pretending to talk to your boss or coworker [i.e. "Yes, I can take that shift starting at 10am" = "Yes, I will meet you at X location at 10am", etc.]
playing it off/excuses to be gone for apartment hunting or other leaving-related matters
doctors' appointments
[a minor medical issue or procedure can be a really good way to get out repeatedly if your cult allows access to medical care. i only know this because i had a real, diagnosed ovarian cyst but i proceeded to make up several appointments for it that were actually apartment complex visits, so.]
illness
[make this season-appropriate and believable. flu in winter and spring and late fall only. don't do COVID unless you can realistically forge a rapid test and trust that they won't make you prove it with a PCR. i don't advocate lying in any other circumstance, but once again, this is not an ethics class. cults play dirty, so can we.
promotion at work/added responsibility
[only works for so long before they try to make you quit the job, but it can make a good excuse in the interim]
car troubles
[visits "to the mechanic"=time out of the house. "car overheated/flat tire/locked out of my car/lost my keys"=good excuse for being late to events/being gone longer than expected]
ill family member
can give you two or three days to "be out of town" if needed, and/or time to go "see them in the hospital" or "care for them" over the course of a few weeks, especially for a chronic issue or an injury that would render them unable to walk and thus in need of consistent care.
[no, this will not bring a curse on your family or "manifest itself," that's magical thinking. if you argue about this in my notes on a post meant for cult escapees who are already struggling with religious trauma i'm reporting you <3]
leaving
pretending to be "late" to a church service is a good tactic if the services aren't held in the same area as where you're living. i told them i was running late from work and in reality i was at the commune house away from the service throwing all my shit in my car.
the second time, they had already caught onto that trick and started driving me to services directly so i wouldn't have a chance to leave. if this is the case for you, 3am is generally a great time to leave. usually night owls go to bed around 2am and early risers get up around 6am, so 3am leaves you with 3 hours to gtfo and an hour of buffer in case anyone stayed up late.
i was living in a room with four other women, so i had to be very, very skilled as far as not waking anyone goes. think critically about your roommates' sleep habits if this is the case for you in your cult. i made sure to walk closer to the bed of the heavy sleeper.
walk barefoot if taking the "middle of the night escape" approach. even if it's cold. if there's snow, you may have to keep your shoes by the front door/window you're escaping from if you're having to make several trips back and forth. wear non-slip socks if you must wear socks. if the socks get wet, take them off. a great way to attract attention is by leaving footprints everywhere, or by busting your ass and getting caught because a lamp broke.
a great excuse for being up late to leave is that you're feeling sick to your stomach and need to be close to the bathroom. fake a v*miting episode if you have to.
don't leave letters. don't send goodbye texts. leave some stuff behind if you can, especially blankets and the like to make it look less empty in your living space. my cult didn't even realize i was gone until 12 hours after i left because they thought i'd just gone to work. that's 12 hours of time where i wasn't being looked for, which made me a whole lot harder to find.
block EVERYONE. as soon as you possibly can. once you're out of the direct cult location, pull off into a safe place where you won't be immediately found and block anyone who is directly there or who could be persuaded into attempting to contact you on their behalf.
after leaving
try not to be alone, if you can help it. now's not the time for self-work. if you know loneliness might trigger the desire to go back, don't get lonely. hang out with friends all the time, go to clubs [responsibly and safely], take extra shifts at work if you can. try to hang out with your coworkers, i think like 80% of my friends back then were people i worked with. they might not be the best friends you ever had, but this isn't about making forever connections. it's about not going insane from loneliness.
online friends are also great! i had/have quite a few who helped me immensely in the months after i left. if you're the kind of person to stay up late when none of your other friends irl are awake, online friends with opposite time schedules are *chefs kiss* lovely. join discord servers for your interests if you aren't sure where to start with, but some discord servers can be toxic asf so don't be afraid to abandon a groupchat if it's too much.
don't pick up habits if you can help it. one habit turns into a million, especially when you're this vulnerable. i smoked a single cigarette as an act of rebellion and two years later my nicotine addiction can be directly traced back to me self-medicating my anxiety.
that being said. and i am toeing the line heavily between realistic and ethical here. but. if i had to choose between staying in the cult or having a nicotine addiction, i'd choose the addiction. i can break an addiction without having to change my account and routing number, soooo. yeah. take that as you will.
post-cult agoraphobia is real. don't feel guilty if it's hard to leave the house at first. grocery delivery is an option. grocery pickup is an option. uber eats is a thing that exists. you'll find your safe places & start to feel less threatened, over time.
idk if this will help anyone else, but i personally benefitted greatly from making a comprehensive list of shit they told me not to do and doing it anyways. please do not endanger yourself in this process, but. fuck it! i dyed my hair purple. i did a shitty job, but it made me happy. i kissed an embarrassing number of people. i came out as a lesbian. i adopted a cat. i wrote a book. i found myself through losing the pieces of the cult until the pieces of me filed in and took their place.
if you can help it, try to avoid the physical location or even the city the cult is located in for awhile. i understand the morbid urge to keep visiting but don't, if you can help it.
nostalgia is a BITCH and a LIAR. that cult leader was not your replacement mother, she is a bitch. the other cult members are not your brothers and sisters, they are traumatized brainwashed individuals. don't try to save them, either. if they reach out to you for help that's one thing but now's not the time to be a martyr.
most importantly: breathe. i used to physically look at a clock and talk myself through every minute on the very bad nights. just "one more minute. i can survive one more minute." it's fun to watch it grow to two minutes, then five, then an hour, and eventually you realize you're not counting your survival in increments anymore, and then one day you realize you're thriving. but be nice to yourself in the interim. it's been two years for me and i just now don't feel like i'm drowning anymore.
please reach out if you need more advice/someone to talk to. you don't have to do this alone. i believe in you and you're gonna get out and stay out.
you will survive this. i promise.
#cult#ex cult#cult survivor#cult escapee#exvangelical#ex fundie#exmo tag#ex jw#ex jehovah's witness#domestic violence#escaping abuse#religious trauma#religious abuse#spiritual trauma#spiritual abuse#leaving abuse#abuse#abusive family#emotional abuse#if you have any other tips or advice feel free to add them in reblogs! the more the merrier#my experience is not universal and i understand this so more advice is always welcomed
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Venus and Jupiter Conjunction: Planets to almost touch in night sky
i.
we are supposed to be the gods of this story.
the only problem is that i don't know the first thing about lightning and you don't know the first thing about love, so we end up in this tepid middleground between apotheosis and apostasy instead.
[make me a paragon, on my terms. a saint, but my body was never yours to burn. press the kiss of death to my lips and i will fall even more in love with myself. isn't it kind of pointless to evangelize me? isn't there always some sense of non-consent in disenchantment?}
ii.
we are not the gods of this story.
i know this because you run off my roof like a rainstorm and i keep the scent of our death-marked-love lodged between my teeth, a sacrifice snatched from a burning altar.
everything i've ever loved has left me, burning the same dogshit promises like barbecued birds in their funeral pyre mouths, all charred feathers and maimed incense tumbling up their throats. someone will love you in all you are and i promise it can never be me.
i contemplate what it'd be like to unleash a hellstorm of dopamine and oxytocin on everyone who ever abandoned me but that just sounds a little too tiring so i settle for mortality instead.
iii.
a news article from 2022 reads "Venus and Jupiter Conjunction: Planets to almost touch in night sky,"
wouldn't you love to be that holy, you ask. so alluring in our failure that everyone gathers around to watch us almost-touch?
i look up at the sky and shake my head.
no. i wouldn't trade our sin for the world.
iv.
how's that for apotheosis? you immortalize me on mondays and wednesdays and during business hours and every other weekend when all my half-truths cave in on each other. how much longer before pathology swallows our pride for us and leaves us both tangled in misgiving?
vi.
we are not gods, you whisper.
and i reply, we were never meant to be.
vii.
we can barely even handle being human.
[@nosebleedclub, march prompt #1, Venus and Jupiter]
#poetry#poem#spilled ink#spilled poem#poets on tumblr#apotheosis#nosebleedclub#as always my sincerest thanks for the prompt!!#and my thanks to anyone who reads my poetry <3 <3 i adore you all
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"birdbones"
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ever since my mom abandoned me i've felt like a baby bird waiting for its mother to regurgitate a worm into its mouth. she will show back eventually with feathers ruffled in all directions and bloodsquirm tumbling from her beak. she will say it was to feed me and not for the sake of the carnage, and i will let her, for the song of a mother bird is nothing but truth
[even when she lies, it is nothing but truth.]
the motherwound aches like a song for the ages. i am the bird and i am the worm squirming between her teeth. i am swallowing bloodshed and it is fine, because i am told not to fight the hand that feeds me, even if it feeds me poison and rot. even if it feeds me the pieces of myself and tells me it is my fault for leaving them scattered around the house.
[she wanted to erase all traces of my presence; do not leave your lipstick ring on my coffee cups, do not touch the good china. do not break my vases and hide the pieces beneath rotting meat in the garbage. i will find them. a rotting thing is no qualm for me. i will kick you from the nest and say i am teaching you to fly, and it will be a lie, but you will learn to feed yourself this time.]
aren't we all just baby birds squawking in the trees for mothers that will never come? aren't we all abandoned tree-hollows of human beings, inhabiting a set of squalling orphaned birds in our pores. wondering if it's true that life overcomes death in the end. wondering if death and life are just two sides of the same coin.
[my mother collected coins off of sidewalks, and i was the pavement beneath her feet.]
they say it's fine, in the end, because the story has a happy ending. it's like, the unspoken rule of animal movies. you don't kill off the dog. the baby birds live, so it's fine. the baby birds grow into adults who warble their songs from the rooftops, red-winged blackbirds singing themselves to death, still waiting for a mother to come feed them praises, even though her hollow bones are buried in a child's shallow grave somewhere,
[and i knew, i knew when she caught me with my hands on something decomposed she'd huff in disgust at my squalor. what she never understood is that it wasn't just a funeral for the birdmother, it was a funeral for the dreams of mine that died when i looked at her and never saw them glint back off her eyes. ]
and when my grandpa died in 2015, my last words to him were a promise to finish building the birdhouse he left half-done on his workbench in the shed, but what i really said was i will not be like your daughter, and here i am, still building homes out of bird-bones, still sheltering a house of hungry mouths with the sins of their mothers, all laid out around them in a legacy of ivory and hollow, and damn
isn't that something? i watch the next motherbird land on the ledge, feathers ruffled out in all directions, and she sings songs of lies and they sound like lies.
damn. isn't that something.
damn. isn't that.
something.
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[@nosebleedclub, march prompt #10, red-winged blackbird]
#poetry#spilled ink#poets on tumblr#nosebleedclub#bird#tw: mothers#tw: emotional abuse#tw: death#tw: gore#thank you to nosebleedclub for this prompt#reflections on mothers
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i. my name is abby, and my pronouns are she/her & they/them!
ii. my approach to writing is very...chaotic! i write when inspiration hits, and i don't really plan out anything i write, yet it somehow ends up coming together into something beautiful at the end. well, most of the time, anyways.
iii. poems: the mother by gwendolyn brooks, tulips by sylvia plath, i died for beauty but was scarce by emily dickinson, two-headed calf by laura gilpin, landscape with the fall of icarus by william carlos williams, how do i love thee [sonnet 43] by elizabeth barrett browning, many in aftertimes will say of you by christina rossetti, sonnet 130 by shakespeare, i found orpheus levitating by nick carbo, even before your elbow knocked over the glass by emily rosko, remote disjunctions by mónica de la torre, aspiration by tian-ai, "the animal that is most vulnerable is usually the most cruel / it is impossible to separate it from what it remembers" by precious okoyomon, born. living. will. die. by camonghne felix, what he thought belly down, when I was 8 years old by duriel e. harris, glossolalia by eugenia leigh, farnaz by farnaz fatemi, lion by tina chang, the dark night (xviii) by may sinclair, [since feeling is first] by e.e. cummings, the city by nathalie handal, good grief by kb brookins, for the bird singing before dawn by kim stafford, [subterranean / dreaming grace roots] by nat raha, not by stephanie cawley
^so sorry for all of that, i've been needing to get these out of my system for a minute now.
iv. i like to explore topics of deep and varied and nuanced emotion, of mental illness and the complications of human interaction, and of what it means to be a lesbian in our world as it stands. my favorite specific imageries are flowers, birds, architecture, human anatomy, war as a metaphor for emotion, and nature as a reflection of humanity.
v. i wrote a lot of [very rudimentary attempts at] poetry, some prose/fiction, and occasionally dabbled in visual art but found i had no real penchant for that, haha.
vi. i have a WHOLE bunch of prose in progress, but most of it is fanfic. i'm trying to regain some passion for my original novels, but so far that's been pretty hit-or-miss. i'm also attempting to write a poem every day, and to be more open to sharing my writing.
vii. poetry, i create anywhere that inspiration strikes me. i've written poems on restaurant napkins, candy wrappers, receipts, even on my own hand if i truly don't have a writing surface nearby. digitally, i keep all my poetry on evernote and transfer it over to google docs if i'm sharing it with someone.
for prose, i mainly write at home in bed, on my couch, or at work. oddly enough, inspiration tends to strike me at work and i always keep a google doc open on the other screen in case i have an idea while i'm working on a call.
viii. i'd KILL to have tea with sappho of lesbos. i'd have to learn greek first, but i'm up for the challenge. or: literally ANY of my online writer friends, they're all so talented.
Nosebleed Club Interview
Introduce yourself to your fellow writers / artists in the community (everyone can do this)! This can be a good way to discover other writers / artists as well. Please reblog with your responses
1. Name / Pronouns?
2. How would you describe your approach to writing / creating art?
3. Literature / art / films you’d recommend?
4. What are some themes / imageries you like to explore in your work?
5. What type of art did you make during your childhood?
6. What are you currently working on?
7. Where do you like to write / create art?
8. Which writers / artists (dead or alive) would you like to get coffee / brunch / dinner with?
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hello! i came across this post and it was so well-written that i wanted to say something even though it's so personal. but the way you wrote it just made me feel it so well and the way you've written about everything in it just has so much color and personality. i have a similar relationship with some of my family members and it's very bittersweet. second-guessed sending this ask because it seems so personal that commenting on it felt invasive, hell even reading felt that way. but i suppose that's just a testament to how well you wrote it :)
hello friend!!
thank you so much for sending this ask my way, i appreciate it more than words can say! i am so glad the bittersweet aspect came through, because family can be such a...nuanced thing, and writing about it can be so cathartic. all the better if i share it and people understand!
i am so glad you ended up sending the ask, it made me smile so much. i love knowing my writing is read and my experiences are understood. and honestly: up-close, personal, and a little self-evocative is my general writing style, & i love hearing people's thoughts on the things i write. once again, thank you so much! i hope you're having a wonderful day!
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i. - if , by dymphna rey
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i know i didn't, or at least,
i am not what i was.
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i'm not sure what survives the destruction.
i'll stick around to find out.
What survives the destruction?
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ten of. fuck
(image description in alt text)
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