I should add, it's not necessarily that I'm in their sights, save that I show up to pick up my family from the meeting or something. But I suppose from the inside looking out, it probably looks like the equivalent of a student who quits school but keeps showing up on the front steps. Kind of pitiful, in other words. Ripe for the picking.
But I'm sure it was just a minor thing, probably nothing more than it's-a-new-service-year-so-we-gotta-check. I don't feel any desire to go back, but of course there are always what I refer to as Borg subroutines that get triggered by specific events. I suppose I feel the pangs of regret about not handling all of this rationally and tossing every chance to get them all out of my life for good. But I replay it all ten times and the same thing always happens, with minor variations at most. I just wasn't ready to walk away. I wasn't strong enough to hold to my own moral code and stand up for myself. But the fact is, it wasn't going to be bloodless no matter what I did. Had I just moved out of my folks' house, they would've tried to hunt me down and I'd have had to deal with the stress of that, and the woman I loved would've called that same fateful night, and everything would've happened exactly as it did anyway.
I guess it boils down to the fact that it's very tiring emotionally--and well, I might dare say spiritually--to deal with this sort of pressure. But trading it for a different sort? No thanks.
I'll manage. I guess I shouldn't have vented about this one, it's not like they knocked on my door or something. They probably won't bother me again, at least not for a long while. If there's a third encounter, then I'll be concerned. I was kind of hoping that last elder was going to give me a Do Not Call form to fill out, ha. Ah, well. But probably it's over now. At least until some significant emotional event happens in my life or something. Other than exiting a cult, I mean...
--sd-7
