Trying on Scripts– Building a Little Cult
After I ran away, I really struggled to invest myself in my home cult. I knew that dying on the street would feel better than being in my home. My feet touched the floor in the morning. I put on clothes, walk up the stairs, perform the scripts, and all the while my authentic self was sinking inside me.
Emptiness is so painful.
It’s no surprise that I was drawn to weirdos like me. Anything felt more real than the scripts I came from. When I was taking psychology, there were a few instances when I tried on disorders. I would take the symptoms and descriptions of the disorder and embody them.
My friends were very convincible.
This really confused the real for me. I didn’t have SCRIPT Theory back then to explain what was happening, but I did know that my performance of the thing made it socially real, and that social reality didn’t match my internal reality.
My social reality had never matched my internal reality, but until these revelations, I had always thought that the social reality that I couldn’t perform correctly was right.
Being right or real has nothing to do with it. Being convincing has something to do with it. Being charismatic has something to do with it. Controlling the SCRIPT has something to do with it.
Building a Mini Cult
Things definitely got out of hand, and I’m glad nobody go hurt.
There were three of us that were just a little extra outcast, and a little extra defiant of the social order. K was a badass with a black belt in jujitsu and a love of anime. She wore a trench coat and a leather Panama hat. She was a redhead and was ridiculously smart about things I didn’t know. Her parents were from Minnesota, and still spoke with a heavy accent that I would pick up all too easily when I was at their house. (I was only ever there twice).
R was dark, emo, seductive, and quite convinced that she was a vampire.
As the three of us spent time together, we built an entire alternate reality complete with an entire cast of Astral characters that we regularly interacted with.
In the beginning, K would make a claim, R would repeat it with adoration, and it became cult core. All I had to do was agree, and I was in. Dude!
Now, I’m the creative type, so once I was in, I quickly became a claim maker, and R was the ultimate lacky. K definitely welcomed my contributions and shared the world that was originally her creation. She would enhance my credibility, and back up my claims as I did hers.
There were several times that we pushed the limits of what was safe or sane. Somehow, miraculously, we would “chicken out” when we were really pushing the limits, and the change of direction could always be smoothed over with circular reasoning.
I was right all of the time. Even when I was wrong I was right. It was powerful and scary, and untenable. Within a year, it was obvious that K and I could conceive of absolutely anything, and that R would be thirsty to serve that reality.
There was a pressure to keep creating, to make more lore, to go further. It was clear to me that we were at the boundary of what could be safe to explore, and I stopped hanging out with them.
I just started dodging them in the halls, not answering calls. I would act distracted and disinterested when I was with them.
K co-constructed the demise of our Astral world. We killed off characters. We created consequence where there had been none.
R held on to it a lot tighter than we did.
What had scared me, gave her purpose.
I’m still pretty shook about the thought of what might have happened if more people had become involved.
Looking Back
I met with K decades later, and she and I were both candid and honest about what it had been. It was interesting being on the outside looking in. K had kept in touch with R. R was still trying to make that world real, and never left the cycle.
It’s still really sad.
I did not reach out to connect with R, and that was the last time I spoke with K.
Survivor Literacy 
What do you think?