Scientology is so shiny!

When I look back at my childhood in Scientology, I see myself as an angry and manipulative. I don’t remember myself as a happy kid.

I have to hope that, in some way, I am misremembering. It couldn’t have been all bad.

I am sure it wasn’t. There were periods where things were ok.

This photo is of my 11th birthday. I wonder if I was just caught at a bad moment or I just wasn’t in any mood to smile.

I remember being frustrated about navigating my young years.

It was unsettling to not only have only one parent, but that parent, who had signed up for the Sea Org, and who had dedicated their life to the goals of the Sea Org, to be essentially absent from my life.

Often I had to figure out how and where to eat. During childhood years, policy about where children were and were not allowed constantly changed.

We were often forgotten when it came to meals.

They simply forgot about some of us. We could not go into the big blue building without a parent. And my parent was gone for months at a time doing Sea Org stuff. I never knew where she was. Sometimes Mexico, Copenhagen, Canada. She was all over.

It was up to me to figure out how and where to eat. I did what I could. But I became a thief to survive. Stealing food. Then later, stealing money.

My mom always came back pissed at me for stealing.

It just made me clam up more. I hated my situation.

Anyway, we always see shiny magazines and glowing success stories about how happy people are from Scientology.

The funny thing is that’s a trap too! Those happy successes are REQUIRED or you will be sent back to do more of whatever auditing or training you were doing. Every single time, you MUST write a “raving” success story.

Raving is right.

Dude, does nobody notice the Emperor is not wearing any clothes at all?

Nope.

I am sure there are plenty of groups with the same thing…. The back story is dark and unfun, but the magazines show shiny happy people.