One of the worst things a social animal can experience is to be cast out from their primary groups of social support. Many cults maintain their power by the threat of casting out those who choose to not conform, even worse if their families are part of the cult: Jehovah's Witness, Amish, Scientology, FLDS, etc.
This post is another perspective. Not hopeful, but how I've survived and managed. It is not a cult story, but about being cast off from two families. It may not resonate with you. I accept that your experience is your own, different from mine. Before I talk about my story and experience, I acknowledge and honor yours. Thank you for sharing, and I hope you receive something of value for having done so, even if it doesn't come from me. I send you my empathy and a hug, or whatever would bring you comfort if you don't like hugs.
I am adopted. I found my biological mother in adulthood, had a relationship with her, my half-siblings, and extended family for 15 years.
Both mothers were controlling and negating of me, one aggressively, the other passive-aggressively. Both had the position of power in their families and a system of enablers. When I stood up for myself to each of them and didn't back down from my boundaries and autonomy, they each led both families to cast me out. With the adoptive family, separations happened many times over the years. The final breaks in both families happend about six years ago, each with later aftershocks that reaffirmed the breaks, one of my choosing, the other not, but in retrospect I'm grateful.
I know and define myself. Neither mother accepted that. Both made sure no one else accepted it either. Both made me out to be the villain for rejecting their abuse and attempts to control. It was hard to go through, but I did not know how to be anyone else as they wanted me to. I couldn't conform to who they wanted me to be, and rejected their control. In retrospect, I'm glad I couldn't and that I took the hard stands.
Life is fucking hard. Standing alone, cast off from support, can be hard. But it was never really support, it was a promise of support if I gave up me. Then the illusion of me could be cocooned in their illusions. I've learned for myself that life is more comfortable with illusions, floating along in them, but there is no centeredness, so when the shit of life hits, all that's available are the illusions of lifeboats, rather than the connection to self that can (maybe) roll through it all and still be there, hurt but there. If I'm in the illusions, I'm not there. I'm under the control and power of something else. I cannot control all that happens in life, but if I have my self, that is my center of control in the midst of all the rest. Sometimes it is not enough, as there are things can overwhelm, but it is the only thing I can cling to with even the smallest amount of certainty. When faced with the worst that I cannot survive even as my self, that would destroy my self, I can maintain my self and instead release life. At some point, I likely will. It is the most rational. I've already tried, the methods failed. There are other methods, I'm just not at the point that I am pushed to experience a more difficult death than I prefer, but I anticipate that I will.
Even for those for whom life isn't hard, it can be at any moment. Certainty is an illusion. One war, one change in government, one epidemic, one loss of a loved one, the loss of income, the loss of health, and life is fucking hard. No one is immune to the possbilities, only fortunate if they are passed by. The vast majority of humans who have ever lived, past or present, are not passed by, it only seems that way for those who live in parts of the Western world that have been for some time unscathed by war and other long-term catastrophes such as poverty and disease on their shores, and who have never had to deal with the harsh realities of the ghettos so close by and yet unknown to them. They are cocooned, and they are not prepared to handle the shit of life when it hits. Even those who live long and comfortable lives will have to face the suffering of the deaths of their aging bodies, and hope for an easy death, and if they're truly lucky, a drawn-out and painful death will pass them by. If it does not, they, too long for the release and freedom of death. The lucky ones are not the norm.
Those who have been cast out have a power that others don't have. If they survive it, they can weather some really hard storms. If the storms don't come, they have a groundedness, awareness, and presence that those who are cushioned and illusioned don't have. It's not as easy, but I personally prefer life without the cushions and illusions. I prefer facing reality with reality. I've had illusions, and I strove for reality. Reality sucks, But the illusions exacted too high a price for me, like when I tried to have faith in a Judeo-Christian god that never showed up; I was afraid of hell if I chose to embrace what I knew to be true: that there was no such god to embrace, that no such god was embracing me. I have been less cushioned, but I have been less burdened. I got free. Illusions cushion, but they are heavy, and demanding.
My families were demanding. I am less burdened. Reality sucks, and within it I am not fully free, but I'm more free than I was when I had the illusions of family.
I'm sorry you were cast out. I'm sorry you are likely a scapegoat. But scapegoats are some of the strongest people around. If you need and seek that strength, I hope you find it. And if it's all too much, I get that, too. Life. is. fucking. hard. No one has to stay in it, and in the end, no one gets to, anyway. There is power in getting to choose to leave when one decides, or at least in knowing that they can. It's those deceptively cushioning illusions that burden us and say we can't.
