I think most of us feel just about on the edge of some kind of breakdown. Our minds are misbehaving, overthinking/over-worrying/over-planning, fritzing out our short-term memories, keeping us awake at night and scattered during our waking hours.
Our bodies are the front lines of a disease we all face daily, whether we’re grieving lost loved ones, helping others, recovering from it or protecting ourselves from it, and the worrying and lack of sleep don’t do our immune systems any good, either. Weird new headaches and muscle pain has struck a lot of us lately, along with the irritation of chronic conditions.
Emotionally most of us are pretty much close to losing it, either lashing out in anger or sobs or closing off into a safe cocoon of Netflix and carbs.
There’s no way through it but through it, nothing to do but recognize how insanely strange and difficult everything has become, not that it wasn’t already pretty fucking complicated to begin with. And yes, the end of election season — whatever that end looks like this shitshow of a cycle — may help, but the holidays are quickly approaching, and the already low- or high-grade tension around family gatherings is ratcheting up a few dozen notches now that COVID is also in the mix, in addition to a range of worries from intense financial hardship to loss of job/business to balancing work/family/school/everything else. The inevitable cancellation of traditional holiday celebrations requires one more tired-behind-the-eyes shrug of numb acceptance, just one more reminder of how our lives are being held hostage to forces far outside our control.
Given all of this, small distractions and time spent away from our immediate worries are some of the best micro-scale actions we can take for ourselves at any given moment. Whether that’s putting on headphones with ocean waves and sitting in the bathroom for 20 minutes alone, taking a walk, doing 10 jumping jacks, watching football for an excuse to rage-scream, cooking our favorite greasy comfort food, reading a book that engages us, making art or crafts, connecting with friends in safe and manageable ways, binging seven hours of K drama or just making sure we draw clear lines between work hours and time off, we have to prioritize the no-brainer, doable activities that ease our minds even just a little bit.
Lately my partner and I have been intensely distracted by the NXIVM scandal, initially drawn in by HBO’s documentary series “The Vow,” followed by Starz’s “Seduced: Inside the NXIVM Cult,” and continuing through the mind-blowing karmic victory of criminal ringleader Keith Raniere’s sentencing last week. He received 120 years in prison, in spite of the millions of dollars and endless manipulations and lies he continued to try to leverage on his own behalf, right up to the end.
For me, this is beyond just a buzzword “sex cult scandal” in the news, or even a complex human drama unfolding each week.
The fact that this man is in jail for the rest of his life for the crimes he committed — psychological, physical and financial — against thousands of people, has given me hope. It’s more than just vindication for those who suffered at his greedy fat hands, it’s vindication for all of us who found ourselves in abusive relationships with those determined to use us and do us harm. Such violations by people we choose to trust, to allow into our intimacy and affections, are so deeply damaging that many of us may never fully recover. That doesn’t mean we won’t go on to live full, satisfying lives, if nothing else to prove how much better off we are without abusers draining us in every way possible for their own benefit. But we do it scarred. We are intrinsically changed by the abuse, by the depth of the betrayal we experienced from someone we idolized, adored, loved, trusted, believed in.
It’s been fascinating to have the opportunity to draw parallels between my experiences with a toxic ex-boyfriend and seeing what the ESP/DOS recruits experienced at the hands of Raniere, who EJ Dickson in Rolling Stone beautifully described as “a fleshy-cheeked, nebbishy, middle-aged guy with a seemingly endless supply of crewneck sweaters.” I strongly identify with Mark Vicente and his wife, Bonnie Piesse, as well as Sarah Edmondson and husband Anthony Ames, as they describe their platonic infatuations — not only with Raniere, but with the ideas and values he peddled and the means he used to indoctrinate new recruits. These four victims of Raniere and his co-conspirators (Nancy and Lauren Salzman, Clare Bronfman and Allison Mack, among others) were taken advantage of morally, personally, financially and professionally, unwittingly aiding in building, legitimizing and glorifying a scam “self-help” business empire. That they weren’t direct victims of his sexual assault doesn’t in any way lessen the betrayal they experienced, or their trauma as they woke up to the truth.
We are intrinsically changed by the abuse, by the depth of the betrayal we experienced from someone we idolized, adored, loved, trusted, believed in.
It’s a strange thing, waking up. I was with my toxic ex-boyfriend for two and a half years, escaping much the way Piesse describes in the first episode of “The Vow,” feeling more and more sure that something wasn’t right, even if there was no way to vocalize it, change it or even fully buy into it. Something in me just drove me to get out of the relationship, after so many months of feeling crazy and besieged and exhausted and continually anxious and upset. Only once I’d shaken myself free, which took an embarrassingly long time, and began to read, reflect and research what had happened to me, did I start to see the truth of it all, the pictures forming out of lines just like the cover of Highlights magazine. Once you see the monkey and the banana and the lizard, you can’t un-see them.
Once you see the psychopath actively and purposefully causing the abuse, you can’t un-see him, either.
This is what initially hooked me about “The Vow,” and everything after just continued to reinforce that sense of identification with the people involved. I understand what it feels like to be ashamed and humiliated and furious with yourself. To have others judging how you could ever possibly have been so stupid as to get involved with what was such an obviously dangerous and unhealthy situation. (I’ve seen some vitriolic comments about the whistle-blowers being idiots, or more culpable than they admit. Speaking from experience, no one could judge us more harshly than we’ve judged ourselves.) I know what it means to be gaslighted, emotionally abused, duped, targeted, enmeshed and slowly conditioned with all of these techniques and more. My own sociopathic “Vanguard,” as Raniere styled himself, was a failed local musician with a low-paying job, two children with two ex-wives and a history of drug use and theft, who lived with his parents at nearly 40. But that’s not the way he spun it. And I was gullible enough to believe him.
Now, of course, I see the full, stark truth of him. But when I met him, when the seduction began, I was quickly infatuated by the image he projected, by intense love-bombing and a targeted attack on my vulnerabilities. I wasn’t chosen because I was weak, I was chosen because I was strong, independent, capable and yet also open to manipulation, and that’s what malignant narcissists seek from their sources. If you look at the people Raniere drew into his inner circle, overall they’re a smart, savvy, talented, attractive bunch. They could have done anything successfully, but they didn’t necessarily believe that. They weren’t chosen for their weakness, though he was more than willing to use their weaknesses and doubts to his advantage. They were chosen for their strengths and potential to further his goals.
It’s validating every time I see parallels to my own story, because it reminds me that I’m not alone in falling for the wrong person, the wrong cause, in ignoring my own instincts, in closing my eyes to what was really going on, in blindly, desperately and obliviously throwing myself down a black rabbit hole of fear and shame and anxiety. It was ignorance, and naivete, and a belief that everyone deserved a second chance.
“We didn’t join a cult,” Vincente declares, in one poignant scene. “Nobody joins a cult. Nobody. They join a good thing. And then they realize they were fucked.” I felt a tingling in my neck as I watched this. Because, as others have said before me, nobody enters into an abusive relationship, either. You start dating someone who seems like a good person and put all of yourself into making it work. And then suddenly you realize you’ve been involved with a psychopath, and it’s horrifying, but you can’t undo it or go back and honor those dozens of red flags. I understand that the tools used against me were powerful ones, that my toxic ex is the one responsible. But it was still my choice. That I chose this, however innocently, never stops hurting on some level, even as I acknowledge how much stronger, wiser and warier I am now.
Two words that represent years of pain and struggle, conflict and doubt, humiliation and self-reproach. “Not anymore.”
At one point toward the end of “The Vow,” Piesse and Vicente are in a café sharing their story with several strangers, who listen with what looks like polite skepticism. “You’re very trusting people,” observes one of the café customers. “Not anymore,” Piesse and Vicente both say evenly. Two words that represent years of pain and struggle, conflict and doubt, humiliation and self-reproach. “Not anymore.”
One of the most powerful parts of watching this unfold with my partner has been the ability to talk contextually about what I went through, using this story. I’ve always shared openly about it, but when I point to that conversation and explain how I still feel shame and anger that I let myself be duped, that I trusted when I shouldn’t have trusted and the profound effect it had on me, it creates new avenues of empathy and understanding. I can tie my own experiences with the experiences of this larger group, how my toxic ex was also a highly unimpressive con man who was able to manipulate me into making choices that I knew on some level were a bad idea, but overruled myself to do what he wanted. It’s been a new point of connection between us, another step in my own continuing recovery.
In this time of chaos and uncertainty and strain, this has been a valuable distraction from my other worries, as well as giving me personal validation, clarity and hope. Now is a time when the books we read, the articles we share, the things we can choose to give our attention to outside of work/school/demands are more important than ever. It doesn’t matter what it is, if it helps us feel even slightly more centered, more in control, less battered by the events of the world and daily life, for as long as it takes to get through it.
And no matter how dark or scary or lonely it feels, none of us are alone in this. That in itself gives me hope.
Stumbling Toward Truth 