Last—and most—I wished to go on loving all of those I loved. The Zendiks had pushed me from their ring to serve the revolution. But what if human ties were sacred and the world we yearned for hung on human ties? I would not snip links to family and friends for the prize of rejoining the ring.
But these epiphanies weren’t enough. The threads I spun and pulled across my portal to the Farm formed a barrier no stronger than the hundred strands of fishing line I’d once snapped in one thrust.
I needed a weft for my warp, if it was to hold.
When Leah appeared at my door at 9:00 p.m. on December 1, she looked smaller and more vulnerable than the power seller I remembered. Her broad smile and warm hug held none of the judgment I’d half-expected.
I’d believed, since I’d left the Farm, that Leah’s success on the street signified a faith far stronger than mine. So I’d been shocked, in April 2005, to see she’d vanished from the People section of the Zendik website. Surely, I told myself, she’d left on better terms than I had and would return before long; probably if I found her she’d shrink from the taint of my failure. But in mid-November, desperate to share my struggle with a peer, I tracked her down and made contact. It so happened she’d already scheduled a stopover in New York, on her way from San Francisco to Paris. Was she heading overseas, as I had, to mow down a fantasy? I didn’t ask. We agreed to meet, not mentioning Zendik.
She wore a purple velour–lined jean jacket just like the one she’d spent hours adorning with free-form embroidery, in the van on the road. Her stitching spilled down the sleeves and around the collar, in shimmering whorls of turquoise, rose, magenta, gold.
After greeting my mother, Leah trailed me down the stairs to the street. It was a warm night for late fall. We’d talk while walking.
As we climbed the slope to the park, my voice asked about Leah’s travel plans while my heart pounded with fear of knowing and yearning to know—would she return?
“Yes” would shove me toward trying again and warn me not to blaspheme. “Maybe” would gain me a partner in confusion.
And “no”? Did I dare hope she’d say no?
A block up Twelfth Street, yearning won out.
“Leah, I have to ask: Do you think you’ll go back?”
She stopped and turned to face me, the weight of the question pinning her to the pavement. “Can I be completely honest?”
My heart pounded harder. Maybe she, too, had fallen into thought crime.
“Of course! I wouldn’t want anything else.”
Her eyes sparked. Her spine straightened. In the glow of an overhead street lamp, the whorls on her jacket gleamed like dragon scales.
“I am never going back,” she said.
My heart slammed against my breastbone. “Really?”
“Really. Helen, we went through hell. We’re not bad people ’cause we couldn’t make it there—it’s one fucked-up place.”
Thumpthumpthump.
“Wow. You know, I just recently realized I might not go back. Which was weird, because I thought I was finally ready; I’d worked out all these fantasies. But I didn’t wanna make that phone call. I don’t now. The thing is, though, some part of me still feels like I’m fucked if I stay out.”
Leah turned and started up the block again. “When I left, I felt like shit. Like I’d fucked up the one thing that mattered. It wrecked me to think this was it.”
I nodded. I knew the feeling.
“And then my dad sent me this book about cults. I was like, ‘Whatever—the Farm’s not a cult. People just say that ’cause they can’t take the truth.’ But I was curious, so I read it. And the way the guy describes cults—it gave me goose bumps. There was all this stuff that sounded so familiar.”
“Yeah? Like what?”
“You know how Arol used to build us up and knock us down? One week you’re her favorite; the next you’re shit, you shouldn’t even be a Zendik? Classic cult-leader crap. Keeps people off-balance.”
“Okay.” So Arol had wanted me anxious.
“That’s the basic way a cult works. It’s all about fear. You let people know they could be toast at any moment—and convince them they’ll die, or at best have shit lives, ‘out there’—and who’s gonna fight you? They’re all too scared.”
I smiled. A fifty-pound sack slid from my shoulders, a fifty-pound disk from my chest. A thrill of lightness filled me. I’d been hauling both for years.
But what about mating? Surely Arol had accrued true wisdom, in that regard. Hadn’t she and Swan formed the only lasting unions on the Farm?
“Did you notice,” Leah asked, “how Arol and Swan never had to talk about their sex lives? Never got accused of being ‘in a bubble’ with their boyfriends?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Well, guess what? Maybe it’s not so hard to get close to someone when you know you won’t get slammed for it. How long do you think their relationships would have lasted if they’d taken the same shit we took?”
I pictured the Eye of Sauron table, in the dining hall in North Carolina; I imagined someone squinting at Arol and Prophet, then pouncing: “What’s up with those two? They sleep together every night. They never bring themselves up. Seems like they need a break. Or maybe they should get an apartment.” In the days after my breakthrough with Leah, I gloried in the gift of the world as it was. Yes, it brimmed with war, filth, glitz, lies—smothering warmth and beauty much of the time. But it was vast. And I was in it. Reminders of this—a dank gust from a subway tunnel, a block of dark chocolate savored while dancing down a crowded street, a goodbye kiss on my mother’s cheek—unleashed waves of gratitude for my miraculous release.
Yet doubt still stabbed me: Was I wrong? Do I have to go back? My new story needed reinforcement. On the afternoon of December 15, I picked up the book Leah had read—Combatting Cult Mind Control, by Steven Hassan—and finished it by midnight.
Hassan starts with his own story: As a college student seeking a purpose purer than money and wondering if he’d ever find true love, he joined a group pledging ascent to a higher plane—the Moonies. For two years, he rose through the ranks, excelling at recruiting and fundraising, and inching closer to the group’s leader, Sun Myung Moon. Seeing Moon as the Messiah, Hassan grew used to lying and manipulating in the name of world saving. He spent long days on the street, leading the Moonie version of Zendik selling trips (the Moonies hawked flowers, candles, candy, and other trifles for “donations”). On one trip—having forgone sleep to meet a sales quota—he dozed at the wheel and crashed the Moonie van into a tractor-trailer. He was rushed to the hospital with a broken leg.
It turned out to be a lucky break.
While he was immobile, his family brought in a team of deprogrammers—former Moonies who helped dissolve his cage from the inside while showing that those who’d left could be happy and whole. Later, grateful for the intervention but preferring a gentler approach, he developed exit counseling, which focused on coaxing the cult member to allow her inner voice to guide her out.
Reading Hassan’s story, I laid my own experience over its contours and found a rough fit: After college, I, too, had been fumbling for something to believe in and stumbling in my quest for love. Zendik had promised elite status and a bump in evolution. Taking Arol as my savior, I’d skewed my moral compass to match hers. I’d exhausted myself hawking merch for the cause. Finally, a painful break had forced me toward escape.