Midsommar
トーク情報- penjikin
penjikin I grew up in a cult as a child, so the part where he spoke about the break down of family bonds really hit me hard. My family was very close, but our closeness was always contextualized in the group, and used against us often. Because we were loyal to our family, if just one of us still believed, the rest of us were under control- we weren't going to leave anyone behind. It's hard enough to leave a cult as an adult, and an individual. As a child, though, my doubts meant nothing. As long as the leaders had my parents convinced, they had me too. One other interesting thing about being a child in a cult that I remembered is how competitive it was. Maybe that was just in my unique situation, but I remember very clearly that all us kids were subtly pitted against each other. We were expected to perform loyalty and spiritual experiences, and our performances were compared. If you ranked the kids by how well they towed the line, my sister came in first, all the other kids somewhere between, and me in dead last. I can't tell you how many times she and I were held up against each other. She was perfect, I was the problem child. So any time something went wrong- something broke, someone got hurt while playing, etc- it was my fault, no question. We left when I was eleven, when my parent's doubts finally both lined up and became to much to justify. It took a long time after that for them to get more perspective on how I was treated in particular. It's been almost 20 years and we're still all dealing with the aftermath. I can't help but be galled by how much of an impact the first third of my life had on the latter two. I am happy to report my family is still close, and we've verbally forgiven they ways we hurt each other during that time, particularly my sister and I. I doubt I'll ever not have trust issues or stop being disgusted whenever people talk about loyalty, though.