On Finishing My Memoir
Tender Loving Care: Escaping One of the Most Violent Cults in the World
On Finishing My Memoir
This is the third time I have finished my memoir. Well, maybe the tenth time. But this time it is finished. I can feel it in my heart.
Escaping evokes running down a road in the dark of night. Yes, some people escaped Synanon that way. One guy rode away on a motorcycle until he ran out of gas and then called Synanon to tell them where they could pick up their motorcycle.
My escape was from Synanon’s psychological grip.
I didn’t grow up wanting to be a writer, but there was a story in me that had to be told. The story first tingled me a few years after I left Synanon—way back in the early 80s. I wanted to talk about the remarkable community I lived in during my 20s. I read Bill Olin’s book, “Escape from Utopia,” and told myself, Well, he already told my story. So, I put it aside.
Bill’s story wasn’t mine. My story still needed to be told.
I started by interviewing over a dozen ex-Synanonites, planning to weave my story with theirs. Then, after sharing our stories, one guy asked me, “Now you believe it was a cult?” We were discussing the batshit crazy times of 1976 when he came to Synanon to get off drugs and I had just moved my six-month-old baby into the Synanon School. I had shaved my head by then.
“Maybe it became a cult, but it wasn’t when I moved in.”
Or was it?
This was forty years after I left and I still hadn’t admitted I lived in a cult!
No one willingly joins a cult. It sneaks up on you. Maybe the leader grabs your idealism, your loneliness, or your anger. And maybe, like me, you lose yourself.
My story is one of idealism, love, betrayal, and self-forgiveness. That’s how I know I’m done. I forgave myself.