Writing and Fighting

On being invisible

I came to storytelling through my father and my paternal grandad, Jack. They could tell a yarn like no one else I know. I think the Truth 2x2s was attractive to them, with the power it gave to men, because it played to their strengths. They could take a little verse from the Bible and spin it into a yarn for our Meetings each week. They had a captive audience, no one could argue with them as Elders.

The men in my family got to do what they did best inside The Truth: Spin a yarn.

Women in my community didn’t tell stories. They did what they were told. They might push the boundaries occasionally, with a little flourished story during Sunday Morning Testimony, but it was within strict boundaries of what was ‘acceptable’ for a woman.

Women knew not to stretch their wings too wide, not to have too many opinions.

It was the lack of stories and strong women in my life that drove me to start writing as a child. Well, that and the shifting sands of our reality.

I could never pin anything down. Because nothing in The Truth 2x2s is written down, my experiences and reality were dismissed, undermined, shut down every time I spoke. So, I wrote them down, in a desperate attempt to make them real, to hold them as evidence.

I was writing down my stories and taking photos as early as eight years old – desperate for my reality to be captured somewhere.

I wrote and took photos as evidence. I scribbled and drew in a little pink diary, dutifully writing down all kinds of facts. I took photos, mountains of albums of them. Mostly terrible quality on an old Kodak Sport camera. Sometimes my mother would confiscate the camera, as punishment for not being ‘good enough’. There are sadly gaps in my photo diaries. Getting film processed was also costly, so there is that.

In my young mind I needed to capture facts and keep the details concretely written down. I wanted to be able to come back to them, to make sense of a world where my reality was constantly undermined – where I was told what I was feeling was wrong or misunderstood.

I was given silent treatment, often for things I didn’t understand. So, I wrote it down and photographed it.

Like a mad data scientist, I wrote facts, chronologies, photographed our lives.

I think at its essence, I wrote stories because I wanted to hear” yes, you’re right, that did happen” instead of “The devil is in your spirit for thinking that way”. I wanted to hear that my reality was real.

I grew up in a culture lacking in ownership and accountability. It was a culture where stories and experiences which didn’t fit our narrative and religious view were cut off, shut down, shunned and ignored. It was a culture where nothing was written down or recorded and could (and still is) undermined and questioned by Workers and Elders. It was a patriarchal, controlling culture were a girl with questions and thoughts was shut down and silenced.

I’m writing all of that in past tense, aware its very much still the case – this problem is in current tense too. Ours is a culture without written records, with no accountability. Still.

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I always felt invisible.

I didn’t, and still don’t, see cult survivor stories like mine told - stories that are honest about the loss and grief of leaving a family, community, home, faith.

I don’t hear enough of our stories told - of how you can be harmed over and over again and there are so few happy endings.

We need these stories to be told, and for audiences to honour them, to hold our stories and believe us.

We need to NOT be invisible, even when our stories are messy and imperfect.

Writing and taking photos was my way of making my existence concrete, a way for my smart mouth to have an outlet.

I believe now that to shut down and silence a kid like I was, a creative, critical thinking and curious child – you create a monster.

I’m a monster who remembers, and a monster with records. That’s why my words and work elicit backlash. All those photos and stories, they’re an evidence trail, they’re receipts.

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I was about eight years old the first time I thought ‘I have to remember this, one day I’ll need these details’. I’d just seen an adult male relative get into a car with a much younger girl – a girl around my own age.

There was no one to tell about what I’d seen. Even if there had been, I didn’t have vocabulary to explain it. So, I wrote it down and I remembered her.

I remembered her dark long hair, her name, her age. I remembered the weather; I remembered what I was wearing. I believed that one day I’d be able to use what I knew.

I did that repeatedly, my whole childhood – writing down and remembering the things I didn’t know how to tell anyone. Not that there was anyone to tell anyway, everyone was too busy with God.

I write carefully here in telling this – because I hold on to the hope that the evidence I hold, and the girls (now women) it relates to, will one day be able to use what I know to get justice for them and for me.

In my essays I’ll tell you what I safely can, without jeopardising the safety of victims, without compromising evidence I hope one day can bring justice to abused people.

I hope one day my stories can bring me justice too. As an observer I am also a victim– while some of these men didn’t abuse me, as a bystander child, I had to learn from and observe their behaviour. I had to keep their secrets, because I didn’t have a vocabulary to tell those stories to anyone except a little pink diary. Thats called secondary trauma.

There were countless inappropriate interactions I observed, countless experiences of seeing 2x2 men in inappropriate interactions with younger girls and teenage ‘women’.

I tried to have a radar for inappropriate men. I was hypervigilant, something I became to try to ensure my own safety and that of my siblings.

I watched my siblings and cousins like a hawk, always concerned they’d be conned into situations which were unsafe. I was like a hen, always clucking around working out where my siblings were, ensuring they were cared for, accounted for. I was controlling, always watching, always trying to protect. I’ve had to have parenting classes to learn how not to be controlling and coercive with my own child.

If I had to admit to a weakness, it’s overprotecting and over-loving. I know I’m a lioness.

My diary entries from the time are written in desperation, a kind of pleading to be recognised and seen.

My diaries are filled with a kid wondering if she exists or is invisible – because that’s what happens when the adults around you skirt around the difficult stuff and pretend it isn’t there – it diminishes your feelings and essentially gaslights you into believing that issues are ‘all in your head’.

I wrote with curiosity about other kids lives – wondering if they also cared for siblings, ironed dresses and made lunches. I wrote of wondering how their home lives differed to mine – because I knew that my home and community was vastly different to other kids, I just didn’t know how because I never saw behind their doors.

I wrote of wanting to listen to pop music, watch TV and movies, so I could participate in conversations with kids at school.

I consoled myself in that little diary with ‘at least I’m going to Heaven, and they aren’t’ for the times I was teased and ostracised by kids at school for my lack of knowledge about pop culture.

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I find my sister in the girls’ toilets, sitting by the basins crying. Between sobs she tells me that Anna, the daughter of the local politican, who is popular, considered pretty and very smart, has been picking on her because she’s running the long-distance athletics competition, in her long school dress.

The girls in our 2x2 community all wear long dresses. Our school dresses have longer sleeves and longer hem lines than the rest of the school kids. We wear our dresses even on Fridays when other kids wear a sports uniform. We don’t have trousers or shorts for Fridays – girls from 2x2s don’t wear what is considered ‘men’s clothing’. Trousers are immodest on girls.

All the girls in my family love sport. Several of us are NSW District and Regional champions in various athletics events at both primary and secondary school– We win competitions, all while wearing a dress. I even represent the region at NSW State swimming, in what can be best described as a lycra mini-wetsuit. Very modest.

As my sister sobs, I catch a glimpse of myself in the tiny bathroom mirror. My face is red, my eyes huge. I’m angry.

‘That ANNA, leave her with me’ I hiss ‘She’s pretty and clever but she isn’t very nice. She’s Worldly and people like her don’t go to heaven’.

I grab my sister, wipe her eyes on the bottom of my school dress. Straighten her out, send her back out to play.

I storm out of the girl’s bathroom, across the playground to where I’ve spotted Anna and her gal-pals playing tiggy.

I march up to her, grab her by the collar of her fancy store bought school uniform (did I mention mum makes all our clothes?), I shove my pointer finger in her face and I declare ‘You tease my sister again Anna, and I’ll put more than my finger into your face’.

I turn around, march back the library. I leave a speechless Anna in my wake. I curl up with a book, throw myself into reading fiction, go to another world where the Anna’s don’t exist.

Anna is not the only girl-fight I get into over the course of my childhood. I fight some girls in bathrooms when I overhear them picking on my stepbrothers, I fight a bunch of girls in the corner of the library when they get jealous of my friendships with the boys they’re swooning after (I always prefer the friendship of boys…rainbow flag alert anyone?) I even fight Uncle Squeaky at the public pool one day, when he thinks I’m laughing too loudly at him. He and I wrestle and exchange soft blows, as he tries to make me behave myself.

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I fight still.

I’ve always been a fighter……a creator and a writer.