After Living Two Different Lives

Culture shock and adjustment after coming home from a lock down behavior modification facility when i was 17 years old

　　Ms. Connie was busy barking orders at another girl, so I decided to take my chance of sneaking away from her side and slid into one of the empty homerooms. I layed on the hard, itchy carpet and closed my eyes to get some of the sleep I'd lost from abusing meth and other prescription amphetamines two weeks prior to arriving at this facility. After I refused to get up, two male staff entered the room I was in as Ms. Connie cleared the hallways for no one to hear what might happen. My heart beat out of control from fear, but I showed no emotion. The two male staff picked me up by my arms and legs, my nose just a few inches from the ground as I was carried by my hands and feet to a room no bigger than a handicap bathroom stall. The floor was hard and cold like the blank, peached-colored walls, the room silent and still from isolation from the rest of the world. Sitting in the middle of this room, I inched myself toward one of the walls, ignoring the staff questioning me. As fast as I could, I threw my forehead against the wall over and over, harder and harder hearing the echoing thud of my own skull being bashed into the wall, blanking in and out of conscientiousness.

　　 Waking up about ten seconds later, my cheek pressed against the cold floor, my head pounding with pain and blood, my arms being held up behind me by one of the supervisors; "Are you going to stop?" He bellowed. I screeched an undefeated 'no' at him and began beating my head into the floor as fast, and as many times I could until I was taken down, again, restrained tighter, and the beastly, gasping sobs finally pored out of me from defeat, fear and humiliation.

　　This day happened almost two years ago. I often tell this memory with a bit of laughter by habit of trying to ignore and wash over the pain and reality of being physically controlled to save me from myself, being only sixteen years old. I have been back home in California from that facility for about four and a half months now. After sixteen months of being there in Utah, I graduated. There are usually about 75 girls and 100 boys at the program, and every two months, maybe three graduate. Not many do from failure to be and act how you are told to. After finally adjusting and finding my place at the program facility, I was sent back home and basically had to start all over again. I've realized that I still search to be controlled, to be told what to do and how to do it, and that I've succeeded in nothing until someone says 'good job'. I've developed an obsessive-compulsive personality with very high standards of myself. What I know in this, again, new world of mine, is discomfort and alienation from my peers.

  The past two years of my life have been a struggle of adjusting and trying to find comfort somewhere after living two extremely different lives of a juvenile drug addict and a succeeding student at a lockdown behavior modification facility. One of the girls I graduated from Cross Creek Programs with, Avery, said "I really don't feel comfortable with my life right now. I don't have any friends and I'm not in a public setting. I'm comfortable in my sobriety and that living and how my past has gotten me here, but as in current circumstance right now I'm not very comfortable with my life." Most things I don't find any comfort in because they do not fit in either category of my drug life, or my programmed life. Going to the movies might seem like a very casual thing to do these days, yet as I sit in the movie theaters, uncomfortable and on edge, I wait and prepare for something to happen from the lingering tendency to think I am still under 24/7 surveillance. And then feeling a mixture of relief, confusion and embarrassment as I leave the movie theater realizing I'm paranoid over nothing. I find myself often going through my contacts in my cell phone and deleting almost everyone, getting obsessed with the idea that talking to anyone from the past at all will cause me to relapse. And then the next day finding their numbers again and saving them to my phone because I feel so lonely. 

　　I began to grow accustomed to the nazi-like rules and extreme structures at the program. I grew in this environment; I settled, succeeded, and took in the lifestyle of what seems like jail. And I ended up loving it- it was what I knew. The facility I went to was Cross Creek Programs in LaVerkin, Utah, about a two hour drive north of Las Vegas, but from bad reputation changed the name to Youth Foundation Success Academy. Girls and boys were there between the ages of twelve and eighteen and were put there for any destructive reasons. "Our students usually have a history of behavior problems including defiance, school troubles, drug or alcohol issues and anger-management difficulties, disrespectful to parents and authority figures with entitlement mentality. Although we are not a drug rehab, we have been successful working with students who had begun experimenting and/or have these dependencies" says the homepage of Youth Foundation website.

　　Youth Foundation resembles more of a high class jail with the white, closed in gates, blank, tan-colored walls, narrow hallways, surveillance cameras in the corners, and mattresses so thin and used to the point where you feel the wood from underneath when laying down. Especially on the top bunk. But this 'jail' had therapy and much more love. That love is being hugged when we cry for our families, and being told that we are worth it and to never give up- being loved when we didn't love ourselves. After I tried to beat myself unconscious and was taken down, that supervisor let me up and asked me if I wanted a hug, which I took. To me, that was out of love. One of the staff there, Ms. Shelley, usually brought me to the side when we were on leisure in our homeroom and would braid my hair for me and tell me what good I was doing in the facility, which was the most rewarding thing in the world for me. She wasn't even allowed to do anyone's hair according to the rules. Love and support to succeed surrounded everyone.

　　 I had a therapist, a psychiatrist when I was on medication, a psychologist, family representative and group therapy five times a week. I was in Group C, which had the toughest therapist, Ron June. I remember one of the girls who was there for about two years was about to graduate, and Ron June believed she was acting 'checked-out' of the program. In other words, she was thinking about home too much and it showed. He put her in a yellow T-shirt, which represents being brand new to the program and being a risk, and said she was to start her program over again. The rest of the girls and I could only look down as we listened to her cry and curl up in a ball on the ground in the corner of her room. If you are not new and put in yellow, your existence is not to be acknowledged, you cannot be looked at, so no one could comfort her. In the end it turned out to be a test to see if she would handle this downfall with class a style. But it was situations like these that the undying fear that I will be punished if I do not do something correctly was born. When I don't do something the right way, I am able to contain myself, but the anxiety and worry and mind chatter do not stop stirring up the storm that's inside me.

　　"The hardest thing to adjust to being home is not having strength of schedule and  rules like in the program, like having the freedom to do different things is hard to adjust to" says Avery. I find it very soothing to make to-do lists. Finding an order of things I must accomplish and having an agenda reminds me of structure from the program, so I make lists often to ease my anxiety. But I usually panic if by the end of the day I do not finish everything on my to-do list from the unsettling fear of being punished and being given consequences, even though that doesn't exist in my life anymore.

　　There is the stereotypical label of being 'brainwashed' when returning home from rehab, programs, jail and the military because of such diverse perceptions from society and having a completely different perspective of things than before. For some people this might be for the better, for others it may be very invading and create permanent damage. From an interview with Vietnam veteran, Spencer Oland: "I am proud to have been a Marine and I never have to feel that I have not done duty to my country. Many men have avoided their duty and have lived to regret it. However, I do have PTSD (an anxiety disorder caused by my extended mental stress) and that has caused much distress for me over the years." When Spencer was asked what if he had to do it all over again, his response was, "I certainly would, even with my injuries! I could not even IMAGINE not serving my country."

　　What problem does one face with joy? If you had a complicated situation happening, do you go through it with joy? For most people this is not true. The reason I am able to be sober and live my life now with self-respect and love is because I was put in an environment that I hated, and I needed to take the time to work through it or I would not survive. I do believe that not many teenagers and young adults in my high-class town have experienced situations where if they did not succeed, then they failed. In sports, maybe this is true. But only during the game, not in every moment.

　　I do not connect with the peers around me. I am able to maintain at-the-surface small talk with other people, but that is about as far as I can get. Last summer, I auditioned and joined a musical theatre broadway showcase for people between the ages of thirteen and twenty-four. I loved the music and dancing and being told what to do, but I made no friends. Actually, I didn't even have a desire to make any friends. I recall listening to girls in the bathroom talk about how they need a bigger purse, and this shade of lipstick is too bright. As the theatre group and I were sitting on stage, one girl turned to me and only spoke about how a boy looks, but his legs are too skinny, and he might be gay because he complimented her on her bag and... I zoned out. I could not relate whatsoever. Just a few months before this conversation I was in a car for the first time again, I was so overly excited to go to the bathroom whenever I wanted. I saw my brother for the first time in two years and there was no hatred. I was thrilled to wear sandals, watch T.V., and sit in grass. Going to the grocery store for the first time was overwhelming because of so many people around, and no one was watching me. It was compelling with so many advertisements, casual conversations that were not therapeutic, and not one person looked alert and orderly fashioned. I had no interest in what this girl thought about how a boys legs looked. I had talked to a boy for the first time in over a year just a few weeks ago.

　　Maybe I am being too skeptical, and I am not giving people much of a chance to get to know them better. But I search for results, not processes. I learned that. At the facility, I had arrived when I reached the high levels (highest privileges and trust) and got to graduate and go home. My journey was finally over. But it didn't make sense to me why I was facing issues after I had arrived. I didn't understand why I had to start over, and that was the most hurtful of all my realizations. "You don't know what you have until it's gone" is a quote I feel many victims of being sent away (including myself) have experienced abundantly: missing the innocence of our childhood when living in our own destructive world, then missing our families, home and freedom when we were sent away, and then missing the structure, protection, stability and supporting friends the program gave us. "The people there are there to support you, like they don't try to push you down. They give you that hope you need when you don't have any" says Megan Stout in her testimonial to Youth Foundation. I believe in the saying that it is always darkest before dawn

I am writing this essay to shine light on the bleak past that myself and many other teenagers have experienced in these facilities and coming home from them. Although I will speak for myself, I assume others might agree that a majority of society does not want to see or hear what isn't pretty; or that it is popular to scoff at what is unusual or different. I sense from my surrounding peers that my past is not pretty. A fellow classmate of mine at my junior college noted the first paragraph of this essay made her feel uncomfortable and I shrunk at that fact feeling as though I am strange and make her uncomfortable. I do not wish to make people uneasy, so I keep hope that who reads this essay will remain warm, welcoming and selfless when encountering someone who may have once lived as a juvenile delinquent or anyone else whose past is filled with dangerous battles, because your past does not define who you are. But at least for me, my past is still a part of my life. And I hope for all of me to be welcomed, not just what is happy and pretty. I feel welcomed is to also feel comfortable. My purpose in writing this essay is to welcome the dark truth, and in that I can finally feel comfortable. 

Reviews

[bob, small b. aka invs]

first of all, welcome to the cafe here. i hope you find it a comfortable place where you can express yourself.
your story is hard to relate to. not many have to go through what you have. for that reason, i think it's good that you have written it down and shared it. i hope it also helped put things in perspective for yourself. i know that i often can't resolve things till i've written about them.
i sincerely hope that your life is better now and you've come to a place where the strength and structure you need can be found within yourself. you've come through a lot. be strong but don't be afraid to seek help if you need it.

[Eagle Cruagh]

Interesting , to say the least.
Most of us (readers) have never experienced the
problems, or the writing that you have committed to,
therefore it is a little difficult to review.
You do write well and it is most interesting.
Thank you,
---- Eagle Cruagh