Bio - 6 in My Bio

The summer of 1981 through the summer of 1984, when I was fifteen to eighteen years old, were the worst years of my childhood. The amount of stress, fear, anxiety, anger, confusion, frustration, and depression I experienced during this period was unbearable. I think that’s why I hurled myself out of a second-story window when I was seventeen in the spring of 1983 at a so-called private school that was run like a boot camp.

In late July 1981, when I was fifteen, my parents drove me to Brattleboro, Vermont. According to them, I was going to a place called the Brattleboro Retreat, which they made sound like a luxury resort. “You’ll come back a whole new person,” my mother said, reminding me that I wasn’t good enough as I was.

The place turned out to be totally shitty. The “retreat” was an adolescent psych ward. It was coed, and each kid had their own room. There were shower rooms, bathrooms, a small area where the nurse dispensed medication, a kitchenette for making tea or air-popped popcorn, a staff station, a sitting area, and a recreation room. There was also an enclosed outdoor porch and, of course, the “quiet room.”

Most of the windows were Plexiglas, but not all. The ones farther from the staff station had regular glass, reserved for better-behaved kids not deemed a threat to themselves. When a person was first admitted, they were usually placed in a room near the staff station. I didn’t move away from that area until towards the end of my sentence. I refer to it as a “sentence” rather than a stay or anything else because that’s exactly how it felt to me. It was like being in jail. I was miserable and felt trapped. My parents later claimed they were misled about the place being “nice,” but any decent parent wouldn’t have left me there for so long with how much I begged to go home. Surely there must have been a way to get me out if they truly wanted to, especially given how miserable I was, which I made clear during visits and phone calls. Perhaps they didn’t have complete control over the situation. I doubt I’ll ever know for sure.

We were allowed to smoke and have as much money as we wanted, but we couldn’t keep the money in our rooms. There was a small store on the ground level where we could buy cigarettes and other items.

As awful as this place was with its structure and control, I hadn’t seen anything yet. That would come the following year but that’s for the next section of this bio.

On my first day in Brattleboro, I asked to borrow and sign out another patient’s razor, which I used to cut myself. I couldn’t direct my emotions at those causing my grief, so I turned inward and took it out on myself as mean as it was to do to the girl to whom the razor belonged.

I spent the first half of my five months there on restriction, which usually meant I wasn’t allowed to smoke. My caseworker, Amy, reduced my cigarette allowance to just six a day. She said it was due to my asthma, but I always believed it was more about control. If I hadn’t had asthma, she’d have found another excuse.

When I was caught smoking more than my allotted amount, I lost my smoking privileges. When I was caught smoking in the rec room, I was restricted from the room. When caught on the porch, I couldn’t go there either. When caught in the bathroom, a staff member had to accompany me but thankfully, she stood outside the stall. When caught in my room, they removed my door and stripped my room bare except for my pillow, blanket, and a box of tampons.

One of the most degrading experiences was when someone informed a staff member that I had a cigarette on me that I wasn’t supposed to have. The staff member quickly grabbed me and forced me to run alongside her into the bathroom for a strip search. Being forced to run like a marionette was utterly humiliating as hell. Why couldn’t she have just asked me to follow her? At least she never found the cigarette I had hidden in my pants pocket. I reached into my pocket, closed my fist around it as I pulled the pocket out, and said, “See? I have nothing on me.”

The staff were determined to control everything. This included trying to change me into someone I wasn’t. Since I was a loner who preferred being in my room, they forced me to interact with others more than I wanted. I was only allowed in my room for one hour a day at which time I typically listened to music.

One day, after reaching the higher levels, Amy told me to tell someone if I started feeling suicidal again because suicidal people shouldn’t have extended privileges. In hindsight, it seems absurd to punish someone for sharing any negative feelings but that’s exactly what they did.

When I resisted their shit, they’d throw me into the padded room, bare except for a mattress. Once, they even put me in a body bag, immobilizing me from the neck down.

Towards the end of my stay, inspired by my experiences, I wrote a song called “My Time Has Come.” Looking back, it seems like a stupid, silly song, but it became my signature song over the years that I was into that sort of thing.

The biggest lesson I learned was that people aren’t always what they seem. Sometimes those who are supposed to be the most stable and knowledgeable are the most ignorant and misguided. I had thought adults knew it all, but often, they were worse than kids.

Overwhelmed with depression from how the retreat was run, I begged my parents to take me home, but my pleas went unanswered. One time I got so upset that I puked my guts out.

In the end, my mother was right. I did come out a whole new person—more bitter, less hopeful, less positive, less trusting. How could my parents have given up on me? How could they let me be treated this way?

I finally returned home in December, shortly after turning sixteen. Things weren’t much better, but at least I was home…for a while.