I lost my dad when I was 10. A new abuser moved in when I was 12. I ran away when I was 13. And within five years I was in a cult. I’d like to tell you something about being in a cult.

Many of us, after the election, look at the numbers and say: half the country are people who support Donald Trump and all the evil he stands for and they are evil and stupid. Maybe so. But when you’re in a cult, it just doesn’t work like that, logic and stuff

The devotion to the dominator defined me during my cult years, which ended with my cancer diagnosis when I was no longer a useful financial scam victim. Devotion to my abuser defined my identity. Separation was more agonizing to my identity than the abuse to my body

All these years later, I dream about the cult leader regularly, I’m still thrashing it out. I don’t know how to describe the process it took to get out other than, to say, pain, loss, and many years. Many years to get ready to leave, many years after leaving to heal.

When you are inside a cult, there isn’t really an outside. Each decision I made brought me further into a kind of bondage, until i realized there was no way out. And at that point I had no more choice. And he made every decision in my life right down to clothing.

My cult leader became the thought that preceded every decision, every expression of opinion, what I liked or didn’t like, eat or didn’t eat. Couldn’t have friends or lovers. I placed him first, after all he was The Gods himself. How do you tell someone in that state, get out?