Echoes of Scientology: A Journey Through Childhood, Faith, and Family
The Early Years
Some of my earliest memories revolve around Scientology. I remember the musty smell of old papers and the handwritten scribbles on manila folders. I spent hours playing in the narrow spaces between tall filing cabinets in the church’s storeroom.
Religions are interesting things for a young, developing mind. As a child born into Scientology, I understood (or more accurately: misunderstood) one of the cult's core teachings, known as "havingness", in a child-like and literal manner. In Scientology, "havingness" is a complex concept related to one's ability to own, possess, and be responsible for things in their environment. But to my young mind, the idea I believed was that a person could have anything they wanted, provided they had the ability to believe they could have it, whatever "it" was.
This poses significant problems for a child raised in poverty. Why couldn't I afford that new toy, go on the school field trip, eat something other than oatmeal, or have a house to live in? What was wrong with me? I really wanted these things. I could imagine having them, and yet I didn't. It's my fault I am suffering. It's my fault I got my school uniform for Christmas and not that bike I dreamed of riding. Maybe when I turn five, I'll be big enough to have the things I need.
Shame creeps in like a cold draft. Subtle at first, until it chills you to the bone in the middle of the night. Being poor isn't shameful, but being poor because of your inability to believe you can have money is, especially when you try with all your might to believe that you can.
The Custody Battle and Family Dynamics
As I grew older, the complexities of my family life began to overshadow even the strange teachings of Scientology. My mother, a woman of single minded determination, became the central figure in my world. She was a true believer in Scientology, finding comfort from her own childhood abuse in the doctrines and teachings.
"Your father is a terrible man," she would tell us, her voice a mix of fear and disgust. "He's a sex addict, a philanderer, interested in sex with everyone - women, men, children, even your stepsister. I will keep you safe. Safely away from him. Safe with only me.” These words, repeated often, became a mantra of sorts, shaping my understanding of the world and my place in it. How much of what she said was true is impossible to know.
One weekend, during the custody battle my parents were waging, my sister and I ran away. This man, my dad, was fighting to keep me. What a monster, or so my mom told me. We fled to a friend's house and called mom. She told us what to do, what to say, and how to tell the story to the court so that we'd be able to live with her again.
Later that night, my father arrived at the friend's house where we were hiding. He was mad. We had run away and disobeyed him, or perhaps my mother's carefully timed phone call asking him where we were didn't go the same way she told us it did. I wonder sometimes, who was the man I called dad? Was he the monster my mother painted him to be, or was he, like all of us, a complex human being struggling with his own demons?
Within a few years of moving in with mom, I lost contact with my dad. It just sort of fizzled out. If we refused his calls, acted just the right amount of horrified when mom told us about how he had invited one of her friends to a BDSM sex party, she could hold us closer and we'd feel safe. Safe from him, the man who was so bad, so dangerous, so…what did mom call him?
A Mind that was Sick
The transition out of Scientology was not a clean break, but a slow, painful unraveling. At 14, several years after being kicked out of Scientology for some transgression against rules that were made up along the way simply to manipulate and control, a local Christian church began bringing us groceries.
This act of kindness stood in stark contrast to the transactional nature of relationships within Scientology, where everything came with a price tag - spiritual or financial. I remember looking through the bags of food and finding a few packets of biscuits. I sobbed. How dare these people I didn't know bring us something nice? Where was the gruel? Where was the oatmeal?
This moment marked a turning point, not just in our financial situation, but in my understanding of the world. It was the first time I realized that there might be goodness outside the confines of the belief system I had been raised in. It was also the beginning of a long, difficult journey of untangling the web of beliefs and fears that Scientology and dysfunctional parents had woven through my young mind.
Confronting the Past
As I grew older and moved away from both Scientology and my mother's influence, my relationship with my father remained a complex, unresolved issue. He had a stroke when I was in college. Mom lived in another city six hours away. She'd left when I was 16; she'd left me. So I went to see dad, to say goodbye, alone.
Mom's influence was still a central part of me. She reminded me not to tell anyone at the hospital who I was - she said that they'd make me pay for his funeral. Even in my most painful and fearful moments, her concerns were financial. I still feel the resentment bubbling when I wonder why my mother couldn’t see the hurt and fear I was experiencing. You promised to keep me safe?
I walked into the general ward of the hospital, 100 beds crammed into a dark room, each occupied by someone sick or dying. I remember spotting my father's body the moment I walked in. He was a tangle of bones, emaciated and hung with tubes and bags. He wasn't conscious; he didn't know I was there, and he didn't get to see the hard, stiff expression I contorted my face into. He didn't see the terrified 17-year-old boy underneath, either.
A few years later, days before I was due to leave the country and likely not return, I met my dad. I wasn't prepared to look into his slumped face, to see how that stroke and the smaller ones that followed wrecked his body. But I was harder by then, tougher, more numb. I told him I was leaving, that I had already said goodbye to him in that hospital bed. And I left.
The Final Chapter
He died six years later, just a few months after I had settled in California. I was riding the train back to my overpriced apartment paid for by my tech salary, mindlessly scrolling Facebook. I clicked on my spam messages; I’d never done that before. The message at the top of the list was from the day before. A woman called Winsome, which means lighthearted, had messaged to say that my father had died; to tell me that he had died alone, afraid, and without love. She said that I was a monster for ignoring him as he died, that I could have saved him by helping him get the life-saving blood transfusion he needed. The long list of earlier messages from her, all unread in that same spam folder, read more or less the same.
“Good riddance,” my mom said when I told her that my father had died. I didn’t know what to feel then, and I don’t know now, a decade later. I cried into my pillow, careful not to wake my sleeping wife laying next to me that night. Confused, sad, and alone. I wondered if he felt the same way when he’d felt his last breath.
Dad, I am sorry for the ways our lives intertwined and unwound. I don’t know who you were, and I never gave you the chance to know who I became. I did the best I could to survive in a world for which I wasn’t prepared. You failed in your role as my dad, and you did the best you could. I forgive you, and I forgive the boy who fought so hard to please the mother he believed was his only hope for surviving, too.
The Aftermath: Confronting Mental Health
My name is Justin Lock and I suffer from mental illness. I have complex post-traumatic-stress-disorder (cPTSD), which is a fancy way of saying that I experienced a lot of shit throughout my life. None of it serious enough to be profoundly traumatic, so there isn’t a specific thing that is causing my disease. Rather, and as my therapist tells me, I have a million small traumas that I experienced, mostly as a child, that slowly molded my brain to work differently.
The treatment is years long therapy to rewire my brain, just to give me the chance to examine and decide if my instinctive reactions to stressful experiences are appropriate for the situation. Spoiler, they aren’t, and they are also the very same instincts that I used to survive, in some cases literally, traumatic events in my life.
Navigating the Professional World
I recently started looking for a job after a year of sabbatical. Looking for a job is an interesting thing, and when I say interesting I mean soul destroying. I’m sick, my brain doesn’t work just right, and job hunting has been a high-stress situation. Every application feels make or break, if I don’t get the job I won’t be able to afford food tomorrow; my fridge is probably overfull right now, see the problem here?
Besides the crazy, am I even qualified to do anything after spending a year away from the working world? I built a COVID test, well I didn’t build it, I was the leader of the teams that did. We were good, we built it in 6 weeks; the test, the lab and full automation. Oh, and an EUA before anyone else in the world. But I was just the cheerleader, who needs a cheerleader? It broke me, that test.
The Struggle for Understanding
I wrote about my first suicidal ideation experience, it happened while I was working on the COVID test. I wrote a blog and published it to my network, it spread like wildfire around my old employer. People I hardly knew at the company reached out and praised the strength and courage it took to talk openly about my experience. But, my former boss didn’t reach out, neither did the executives at the company. I worked for them, they said that they’d prioritize our mental health, that they cared about us as employees. Did I do something wrong, am I too sick to be worthy of their help?
Finding Hope in Unexpected Places
I’ve found a crutch, though. It’s called AI. My depression often manifests as an inability to do things. Making breakfast is a victory, and actually finishing a piece of writing, doing some consulting work or getting a business idea onto paper feel like miracles. AI feels like I’ve surrounded myself in a company of experts that work at my pace when I can, and also when I can’t. Don’t get me wrong, the company is disorganized and unfocused, but we will get there.
Perhaps the narrative that I am not good enough for the working world is wrong. Perhaps people like me, people that don’t want to trade time for money because it makes us sick, can build a new way of living in abundance that doesn’t cost us our lives?
Reflection and Moving Forward
As I look back on my journey — from the confused child in Scientology to the adult grappling with mental health issues — I realize how far I’ve come. The shame I felt as a child for not being able to manifest what I needed has transformed into a deeper understanding of the complexities of mental health and trauma.
My experiences with my father, while painful, have taught me about the importance of forgiveness — not just for others, but for myself. I’ve learned to forgive the child who did what he needed to survive, and the adult who is still learning to navigate a world that often misunderstands mental illness.
The journey hasn’t been easy. From the musty smell of Scientology’s filing cabinets to the modern offices where I led teams developing groundbreaking medical tests — each step has been a challenge. But each step has also been a lesson.
Now, as I explore new ways of working and living with the help of AI, I’m beginning to see a glimmer of hope. Maybe there’s a way to exist in this world that doesn’t require me to conform to standards that make me sick. Maybe there’s a way to use my experiences — all of them, from Scientology to mental illness — to create something new and meaningful.
I don’t have all the answers. I’m still struggling, still learning, still healing. But I’m also still here, still trying. And maybe, just maybe, that’s enough for now.
