Leaving is lonely
It’s not just the loss of close-knit community and identity, although that certainly plays a role. It’s also the feeling that no one understands what I experienced and why it has been so hard even years later.
I suppose it’s asking a lot to find someone who was raised evangelical, got very involved in a controlling YRR baptist church for several years as a young adult, and then slowly left but didn’t leave religion entirely. (I’m Catholic…ish now, lots of mixed feelings and discomfort there). I rarely feel understood by anyone. Either they don’t understand what I was raised in, or they don’t understand why I left, or they don’t understand why it was hard for me to leave. Even in therapy, I have never found a therapist who really seemed to understand where I was coming from and why I couldn’t disentangle myself. My current therapist is better than most but she still doesn’t have any idea the sorts of things I was being told, and I can tell she doesn’t understand how I believed some of those things at the time.
It’s just a really isolating feeling. I probably got too used to having people around me who all thought the same and acted the same. If I did too, I felt okay. Now I don’t think or act the same as anyone I personally know, and it feels terrifyingly lonely.