Member-only story
The Authentic Eclectic
A Frozen Winter’s Battle For Renewal and Redemption
In the end, who won?
This is the sixth in a series about reintegrating into the world from a cult. You can find the first chapter here.
It’s 1996 in Salt Lake City.
Winter is reluctant to loosen its grip. Early this morning, snow dusted the young blooms but is now dissolving into memory. My heart mirrors this battle, with spring’s light and renewal mostly dominant even as winter’s desolation stalks my every move.
An eagle observing my progress from its aerie would see me walk three steps forward, stumble one back, three forward, one back. I hope it’s enough.
I’m back in this world just six months, an instant compared to years spent in a perpetual ice age, a few miles from civilization but worlds away from humanity.
Most days are good now, but bad days are treacherous. Bad days threaten to retract me to that icy world or at least to its frozen mindset that once made sense to me but no longer does.
Once, it was all I knew. I came of age in that tundra.
