Vacation

It has been years since I actually have had an actual "vacation" of any significant length of time.

I will happily confess that being off the "grid" was utterly satisfying.

There wasn’t a computer in sight for days, I ignored the occasional TV, and those days drifted off into star filled nights that bared no resemblance at all to the life I lived in MOVE, the one ostensibly disconnected from the "system".

Nobody asked me about MOVE. Nobody there cared. Just like most people don’t care. Nobody should have to.

There was a quiet satisfaction in watching my daughter play amongst nature and than have her ever-so-seriously tell me that she "was not a country girl".

In getting away I had the chance to see relatives that I had been separated from by more than distance.

It is true that while in the cult that I never cut off my family in the way that many adherents of the sect do, but I would be lying if I didn’t admit that while being engrossed with MOVE, I neglected the things that truly mattered.

I missed my grandmother’s funeral. The same grandmother who breathed life into my tiny body when I nearly died as an infant. MOVE didn’t tell me not to go. It was my choice. But it was the wrong choice while I was with the wrong people.

What I realize more and more, as the years go by and my time with MOVE becomes a hazy and bitter memory, is that it was a force in my life of severe negativity. It is a cult of hatred, born of madness, perpetuated by myth, and a worship of death. It is not something that could ever bear any fruit of worth.

So, while I never made an official "break" with family, I was on an emotional disconnect that led me to the false belief that I was something better, more than, not equal to. That is the pattern and hook of cults like MOVE. When they are not breaking you down they are building you up. You go up and down until your will is demolished or you say "enough is enough" and go and try and build your life again.

That is why now I try and hold onto to what I love. It doesn’t matter what you "believe in", it matters what you do, the things you care about, how you treat people.

It takes a terrible toll on you to place yourself so far above those around you. To be honest, I don’t know exactly know why that is. Perhaps it is the distance you are putting between yourself and them. Maybe it is the fact that deep down you know that it is illusory and that the lie you are living will be unveiled.

What I got out of it all was a yet another reminder to keep what is important at the forefront of your life and let the things that you cannot control or that are not important go. It is a lesson that I am glad to have learned before it was too late.