My declare

After my resignation, there were a couple of half-hearted attempts to recover me. No doubt Toronto staff had bigger fish to fry. I would have been pretty low on their list of priorities.

I did receive a call from a former Toronto colleague who'd gone on to Flag or LA asking what had happened. "Come on, Sue, I know you. You're not suppressive! Surely you can go back into the Org and work this out. I suspect you were just mishandled." I assured him I hadn't been, and that everything had been done according to policy. The irony was lost on him.

When he persisted, I finally said, "Rick, the fact is that I have some basic disgreements that just aren't going to get sorted out."

"Like what?"

"Like KSW."

He couldn't get off the phone fast enough.

My declare arrived in the mail a month or so later. The first thing I noticed was my name. It was misspelled - both my first name and my last name. No surprise there: Scientologists are notorious for not being able to get these things right. Still, it was disappointing.

Then I read the allegations. It's been 27 years, so I don't remember the details, but some were fabricated, some were true but done by others, and the balance were things I was frankly proud of and didn't regret for an instant.

I raged briefly at the inaccuracies and injustice of it, and went outside to walk it off.

And as I walked, a thought occurred to me: Scientologists in good standing can't associate with suppressives because it can cause them to become PTS and lose any gains they'd made in Scientology. (Don't know if I got that right, but that was my understanding at the time. And if I got it wrong, don't tell me and spoil my joy!) That meant that even OTs, cause over life, couldn't risk talking to me, a mere Clear, for fear of what I might do to them.  Now, that's power!

Since then, I've never thought of my declare without smiling. I was done with them - and they were done with me!