u/kafstel

I was a naive blabbermouth and stood on my morals. when I saw abuse happen, I always pointed it out to others and tried to help. I'm autistic and I didn't realize I was always painting a massive target on myself until i left. I'm dealing with the aftermath of that, and always carrying that massive target. I wonder if it gets better. I've rejected hiding, and I'm open about leaving. but the levels of "I'm in trouble" feelings and shame in everything can be suffocating. I've been treated like a disruptive psychopathic manipulator for half of my life, and had it hammered into my head that the group should be my utmost priority, and I should never be myself, look out for myself, or my well being. I committed the ultimate sin of never believing any of it, pointing out everything, disagreeing, always sharing my true beliefs and feelings. I'm told every day by health professionals and loved ones, that those are my best traits and things I should be proudest of. But i feel crushed under the weight of the target every minute of every day. The shunning and smearing is almost nothing compared to the feelings I inflict on myself. The logical part of my brain is screaming to be glad that I'm out, that I did the right thing, but it's drowned out by the narrative version of myself.

I was a part of an extremely large and sort of nebulous internet cult that functions around desensitizing people to worse and worse pornography involving children, telling you to never speak to or trust anyone who says otherwise, going to the lengths of cutting ties, harassing and ostracizing anyone who disagrees. I joined as a teenager, allegations and police after being assaulted by an adult boyfriend isolated me. none of my friends wanted to deal with the trauma that came with it, and I was in a very deep hole. I moved away from family and lived in isolation during the pandemic.

I was introduced to it by maybe the most dangerous people I met in it for 9 years. They groomed me, met up, encouraged me to get addicted to more and more extreme drugs, self harm and hurt myself, telling me i'm a horrible person if i didnt agree all the time, flipping to being very loving. I tried to kill myself during all of it, and survived by pure luck, but I was severely disabled afterwards. I eventually found out these people were doing this to a lot of kids and animals, there were multiple allegations, one of them may have been convicted. I stayed despite this, I guess because I had nothing else. on a surface level, it seemed fine. I believe in artistic expression or freedom to explore kinks or trauma. it extended to real life, where most people I met became my only real life friends and connections.

It was immediately after escaping the first people, I noticed everyone treated me differently or weirdly. I always had this feeling like I was shunned or treated like some crazy/bad unreliable person, but all I ever recall doing to possibly get that kind of treatment was saying I wanted to avoid the aforementioned people, or that I didn't condone real life abuse. It was 8 years later, I became more involved especially in finances, moderating chats/sites, meeting the most influential people. It sort of felt like I was trusted again for being on good behavior, and really hurting myself a lot to conform. I dated an influential member who was involved in hosting sites, was close friends with everyone involved in higher-up things. It was like a window into the reality of things, hearing about how they deliberately made it difficult to join, otherwise the sites and people would immediately go to jail or be taken down and investigated, but also server load, and the idea of scarcity. They went to extreme lengths financially to keep sites up because every image hosting service and server hosting service rejected them. Eventually they were being hosted somewhere in germany or europe to avoid laws. They run on donations because they're in serious financial trouble, sounded like debt.

It was when I realized everyone I had met for that entire 8 year period was close friends with the first people. my partner said he knew them and they were good people, suddenly being uncharacteristically cruel saying he can never speak to me again, I'm a mentally ill disruptive abusive person for telling him what happened to me, I had this feeling like I need to leave ASAP. I deleted every account, socials, changed passwords and emails, started looking into local police, left with the feeling I would have some kind of problem down the line with smearing/stalking/doxxing/legal threats.

A few months later, since I mentioned to friends about seeing police about something that happened, they've all cut me off entirely and treat me like some empty husk or garbage they abandoned on the street. Some of my family became involved in it too, and they've become sort of NC with me. Eventually one of them began speaking to me again, but she said me leaving would cause such a rift in our relationship, she's having a hard time speaking to me or looking at me. It honestly feels so much worse with the dirt they have on me, I drew a lot of art to cope with things that happened to me that can and have been used as leverage to keep me there.

I'm really struggling with the "I'm a bad person for leaving or saying anything" feelings despite them going against all logic or reality. It was really hammered into my brain for years that I can never do anything for myself or my own wellbeing, I feel like I'm in trouble all the time for even speaking to people or existing. the few people who believe me get into semantics whether it's actually a cult, and say they're more worried about delusions or insanity.