“I am not sure if I was one of the lucky ones, it was my own parents who woke me at 4 am and demanded I get in the car.
(Many of my peers were removed from their homes by large men in black suits. I would meet these men later when I was transported from one program to the next. They let you know that if you try to run, they will physically restrain you. They put you in the backseat of an unmarked vehicle, equipped with child locks, and they take you away, no questions asked, no questions answered.)
I cried and pleaded with my mother; she wore a camouflage skirt. “I will do whatever you want me to do! Please don’t leave me here. How long will I be here?”
I do not remember if they responded at all. They were coached by the school to ignore me. I would fight, the experts said. I would plead for my freedom, for their love.
“Remain steadfast,” they were advised. “The child is a problem, remember. A manipulator, and we’ll take good care of her.”
It was perhaps my third day. What little focus was put on academic studies was pitiful, but here I found myself in a math class, 15 or fewer students, and there were some rowdy teenagers. Maybe they whispered to each other, maybe they laughed a little too loud, but within minutes the teacher left the room unexpectedly, and there came in a small, red-faced man. He screamed at us to form a line. He laughed about how much he enjoyed group punishment. He marched us out into the wet mountain rain, and he barked at us to drop, face to the cement. I began to cry.
He mocked me, “Wahhh wahhh! poor little baby.”
Some of the students laughed and were encouraged to do so because cruelty and shame were the names of this game. I would spend over two years living in such an environment, one of suspicion, absurdity, peers pitted against peers, staff enjoying their license to play with us in whatever way they deemed fit.
Sometimes that meant crawling through puddles of red muddy clay to reach the soggy bread and cheese sandwich that was all we were permitted to eat; often depending on the whims of those who watched over us like birds of prey. We reached the sandwich and then we were timed, 30 seconds to chew, and swallow. If this task was not completed, the food was to be spit onto the ground. I did not want to know what would happen if I did not comply.
I was afraid, every day. The staff ate hot meals in front of us. Sometimes throwing pieces of meat in the dirt, ground with their boots, and then thrown to us, like dogs. Sometimes it meant that we spent hours in group therapy, provoked, shamed, denied autonomy, stripped to the core of our personalities, for they would build us into a new, more palatable form.
I was regularly strip-searched, drug tested, belittled, humiliated by staff who, it would be later discovered, were grossly unqualified to work with children with behavior troubles, or even children without. Or even, anyone. Those who stayed to work in this place must have gleaned some pleasure from our predicament. You could not ignore what was happening there. It was palpable.
We, the children, had problems that were created often through no fault of our own. Through dysfunctional families, and a short lifetime of adversity. I went from one environment of abuse to another. They profited greatly from those who had money and could not control themselves, much less their children. They profited greatly from our suffering.
Phone calls were monitored. If we hinted towards anything but being content with our beautiful mountain views, kind counselors, and our personal transformation from bad to good, we would be harshly punished. I learned how to speak the language. I wanted to suffer as little as possible.
The male staff regularly made me uncomfortable, eyeing my adolescent body, mouthing things to me, touching me, hugging me, breathing on me, aware that no one would ever believe a thing that I said.
Punishments included loss of privilege to speak, loss of privilege to sleep in a bed – we lay on the floor of that dorm hallway, under those fluorescent lights, blinding, oppressive. There were countless punitive abuses. We often dug ditches, free labor in the name of reform.
The hallway was covered in blood when one of my peers got her hands on a razor blade and took to her arms. A sweet release, for some, from a painful reality. A roommate cut my leg in the night while I slept. She watched me, waited until my breath slowed, shallow. I woke with a clean cut, the blood crusted in tiny drops on my thigh. I was punished for cutting myself. There I went again, lying, manipulating.
Some of those children who needed inpatient mental healthcare were placed into this community, with no safety concerns. I had no voice, it was removed and shut away in the cabin we were often isolated in. Alone. Always inner loneliness, that I would carry with me for the rest of my life. I recall crying myself to sleep, and in the morning, within seconds after opening my eyes, my body grew tense, I shook, and shook, I put my feet on the ground, my legs shivering, my whole self, denied a home. I could not protect myself.
“Help me,” I begged to no one every single day, “help me.”
The stories go on and on, the memories often sharp and immediate. The emotion, the fear, it lives inside of me, even now. I have nightmares twenty years later. I am there. The feeling that only that institution could produce in me, and sometimes my children are with me. They are sunny, full of joy, innocent, trusting, and I have to protect them from these wolves. I must get them out, I have to get them out. Help me.
The math teacher pulled me aside a few days later, whispered gently that she was really very sorry for the other day. She patted me on the shoulder and smiled, her teeth, shards of granite.
‘You can go sit back down now.’”
-Brooke