Sixteen years ago, at age 15, I woke up to find two strangers next to the bed. They proceeded to search me and my purse. I looked over and saw that my mom was there crying. At first, I thought I was being arrested for truancy. I told them I was on my period, and they refused to let me take care of it. By the time we arrived at the airport, there was blood all over my pants. They told me that we were going to Montana to a boarding school for three months. At the time, three months seemed like forever. Little did I know that my stay would end up being 18 months.
I arrived at Spring Creek Lodge Academy later that day after sundown. It was in the middle of the woods. They did my intake paperwork and brought me to a room in a large cabin. When we walked in, there were ten bunk beds lining the room and about 20 girls in matching outfits. They stared at me and started pointing and asking questions. The staff took me into the bathroom and had me undress and shower. I was up all night, and the next day I was taken to a bizarre seminar where I was ridiculed, humiliated, and had to share devastating information about my previous traumas to a large room full of people that I did not know.
There were strict rules in place at this facility, which included no looking through the windows, no looking at the boys, no talking in line, no talking in the classroom, no talking in the ‘Hungry Horse’ (aka the cafeteria), no talking in a group and no talking anytime we were ‘on silence.’ Some of the other rules consisted of eating 50% of each meal no matter the circumstances and no intentional burping or farting. Consequences included deducting points that made our stay longer, ‘Worksheets’ and Intervention. Worksheets was a lavender room with cubicle pods where you would sit in silence and complete school work all day. If you broke the rules, you were sent to intervention, which consisted of solitary confinement.
Eighteen months later, I was set to graduate after multiple traumatizing experiences, including student suicides and punishments that led to hospitalizations. During my graduation phase, aka ‘trail,’ we were forced to shovel snow, walk at night in the snow blind folded for what seemed like forever, and participate in a sweat lodge that became extremely hot, especially for the kids with asthma and heart conditions. Before the sweatlodge, they blindfolded us and forced us to chug obscene amounts of ice water, telling us we were going to swim in the frozen lake and that we needed to drop our core body temperature. Still blindfolded, we were asked to change into shorts and tank tops, not knowing who was watching us. After we were dressed, they told us not to move because there was a cliff in front of us. I started backing up and felt a hand grab me. After taking off my blindfold, I realized that the cliff was actually behind us.
When I finally got home, I battled with extreme social anxiety and agoraphobia. I ended up homeless and heavily addicted to heroin. I have since then gotten my life together somewhat but not to any extent of a normal person. I still battle with severe trust issues, insomnia, social anxiety, OCPD, CPTSD, and many other mental health issues.