As for the second topic of tonight's writing session, it's one I've been succesfully avoiding up until now. Aside from being brought up in a disfunctional family, this is probably the one other chapter of my life that fucked me up. But I feel that it is time to get this off my chest now. After all, you can't start the next chapter of your life if you keep re-reading the last one.
So here we go.. Back in 2008 I was running around pretty aimlessly. I had graduated the year before and didn't get into university for the courses I had intended to attend so I took on some minimum-wage jobs and started promoting bands. I started to separate more from my parents, travelled a lot and made friends quickly on our various promotional meetings. I was one of the few lucky ones who got to hang with the bands and listen to soundchecks. Finally, I had a purpose other than science, studying and doing researches on retrospectively hilariously uninmportant topics.
This was the time when C, drummer of band that will remain unnamed for various reasons, approached me on myspace. He said he was different, he didn't want to simply advertise his band but to get to know me. And he kept his word. We became close quickly and I got to know more and more of his family members, i.e. the band and crew members that were all living and working together. Being rejected by my parents ever since I developed my own mindset and yet not having experienced the true meaning of friendship, I thought I had found what I was looking for all along. I was considered a family member and even invited to visit them in Canada after meeting C and some of the other German supporters in Cologne in October 2008.
Even though I had started studying Biology, German and Educational Science in the meantime, I visited C and "the family" in March 2009. C took most of the time off and we walked hours and hours through beautiful Montreal sharing our hearts. I will never forget the evening he took me to the top of Mont Royal to watch the sun set behind the breathtaking skyline. Neither will I forget the night I spent with S, the band's lead guitarrist, crying our eyes out on the way back home from Quebec City. Those couple of beautiful days I got to spend with them convinced me that it was the real thing, that my home and happiness where with them.
Back in Germany I started working with them, promoting them, translating their numerous blogs and subtitling their weekly videos. At some point they asked me to move in with them and I gladly accepted as there was nothing to hold me back in Germany. So, back in early October 2009 I left Germany and moved to Montreal, filled with expetations, excitement and hope - all to be destroyed during the months that were to come.
Living with the crew and band turned out to be totally different from what I had expected. I learned the hard way that how they portrayed themselves on the internet couldn't be further from the truth. Behind the curtains it turned out to be a cult lead by an borderline psychotic establishing a totalitarian system of control by means of fear and religion. I had to work 16 to 18h a day, had to recrute a certain number of people each day (about 150 in the end), write messages, "spread the word" and most of all "reach out" to all the allegedly "lost souls". Only upon being part of their daily business I realized that what A, lead singer and "spiritual leader", used to fuel this movement was the believe in the Christian god. Since I am an atheist I had C assuring me that this wouldn't become a problem before I moved in. No problem my ass.. Plus I'm allergic to being controlled and pushed in a direction I know is not right for me. So my struggles begun...
At first I thought I was the problem, that I should appreciate more what had been given to me. Then I thought I could change how things worked until eventually I was counting the days until my pre-scheduled flight back to Germany was to leave. I collapsed more times than I can count during those months, it was a constant mindfuck. When my dear friend S, the band's former IT girl, left, I saw how everyone slowly turned against her and it made me realise even more how the system was set up. Fear of losing the family and hate against those who dared to leave of their own will was what kept this bunch of roughly 25 people together.
And I was to become one of them. I slowly lost myself and had noone to turn to that wasn't brainwashed. Even when I and another crew member became close, they used it to control us. When I started to become a troublemaker in paradise they separated us and when we eventually saw each other again, he was an entirely different person filled with ridiculous ideas about some higher purpose but without the sparkling in his eyes that I always loved so much. It broke my heart.
When everything came down to me leaving, however, I waited up for the guys to say our goodbyes and those most important to me and I parted on rather good terms. C assured me he loved and trusted me and that we would stay in touch and see each other again soon. I took A less than a week to brainwash him and all the others in believing that I was their new enemy No. 1, all up in arms and ready to destroy their precious family.
Everything had fallen apart, I felt the most intense pain I ever felt in my entire life rushing through my heart, piercing every individual cell of it. The days that followed where the only ones I actually toyed with the idea of killing myself and it's only thanks to three girls that had left the band/cult before I did that Mont Royal didn't become my grave. S took me in in her tiny tiny little one-room flat for the remaining time until my flight was to leave. M.E. and most of all M did their very best to keep me entertained and made sure that I was never alone for long periods of time. They saved my life.
It was all too much to handle and endure and I eventually just became numb. And I'm not talking numb like I am right now, I'm talking numb as in not feeling a single fucking thing. No joy, no pain, no hate, no excitement. Nothing. I had such a very hard time resuming life in Germany but learned how to trick most people with a fake smile so that they would percept me as a rather average girl. Only few weren't tricked but I couldn't let them close for real...
About half a year later I met F who finally taught me how to feel, live and love again. He's the one other person I truly owe my life to. Maybe this helps you understanding the struggle I went through since, as well as F's importance to me. And if it doesn't, this definitively helps me closing the doors behind it. I have long accepted that I will live with a hole in my chest for the rest of my life but the wounds have become scars and do not hurt anymore. I dare saying I'm an entirely different person now and I am thankful that not only scars but also true friends are what remained.
