flip flop, guilt & excuses

… originally posted 11/7/2011

I cannot begin to tell you how long this particular post has sat

unpublished …

how many times I have written, and rewritten it only to find it wordy, whiny, or irrelevant …
how many times I have scrapped the pages and pages of recorded memories and feelings, just to return to writing them down again months later …

I can tell you it was the primary reason for my starting this blog.
and I can tell you all the reasons why I have never hit PUBLISH.

I think maybe that’s where I’ll start with this … all the excuses that I have used/ to keep me from putting it out there.

the biggest excuse? guilt.

guilt because I know that my sharing this could bring up feelings for my parents.
guilt because I know that they defend their decision to put me in rehab because they had no where else to go.
guilt because they were lost and this rehab took me in when no one else believed I had a problem.

so to them … I am sorry if this hurts you, or if it makes me seem ungrateful, or if it causes you any pain or discomfort or anger.  I don’t blame anyone for “putting” me there, or even for what happened there. I don’t even blame the staff or the other clients for the things that happened.  I take full responsibility for the things I did that led up to my admission, and even most of the things that made my stay longer than it needed to be (there are a few exceptions that were totally out of my hands).  I hope you see that I don’t do this to hurt or attack you.  I do this for me.  because 20 years later I am coming to terms with the the fact that not only was I mistreated, but I contributed in the mistreatment of others.

I tell myself I need to be over this.

I was admitted into “program” when I was 14 years old.  I finally worked my way out of the rehab almost 3 years later.
I was a kid and that was over 20 years ago … I am now a grown woman, with a husband, and children, and a house and a car!   who the hell holds onto baggage for that long?

I flip flopped on my support  of the “program”.

I went in a scrawny little girl who cut, ditched school, ran away, fought with her parents, and foolishly thought she could end her misery with a handful of over the counter pain killers, and I came out a stronger, more mature, aware young woman.

or did I?

I see now that I was emotionally stunted despite the emphasis placed on emotion.  I was completely out of touch with reality and was fed (and fed others with) irrational fears regarding drugs and alcohol, and even the natural “chain of command” (employee -> boss -> boss’ boss or child -> parent, etc).

I was a strong supporter of the questionable tactics used there.  I deemed them all necessary and menial in the grand scheme of things.  I had no shame for the things I said to get clients to realize they were headed down a path of self destruction, and I twisted the truth in order for them to see “the big picture”.  after all, it’s what had been done to me, and I was okay … right?

and one excuse I use, and actually laugh at putting into words, is I worry what others will think.

if you did any sort of research on this particular rehab, you’d see that this is a humorously regressive statement.  one that would have my ass back in a blue chair in a heart beat (and has put me there in some of the most vivid nightmares of my life).  the idea behind their reasons for addiction is, you use them to squash feelings … feelings of shame, feelings of loneliness, and basically a general feeling of not otherwise being accepted.  there is more to it, of course, but I’ll leave it at that for now.

and the last excuse is one I am still struggling with.  that time of my life is so complicated it is difficult to put it all into words.

I mean, I can come up with thousands and thousands of words describing incident by incident what happened while I was there.  the things that were said, the actions taken, the ideas behind the process … it’s such a huge jumbled mess that makes no sense to anyone except to the people that were there.  when I have tried to explain to my closest friends what happened in those blue chairs, they look at me like I’ve lost my mind.  they ask me how it is possible that a place like that could exist with all the people so eager to punish child abusers? how could they legally keep me out of school? how could they get away with client based restraints and cult-like beliefs? and the biggest one, “how come you didn’t tell?”

how do you make someone understand that things I never believed to be acceptable became the norm?  that the things that repulsed me most about that place in my first two weeks of being there, became totally acceptable by the time I left?

brainwashed? seems so dramatic, but maybe
stockholm syndrome?  maybe
the need to survive?  definitely
weakness? in many ways

regardless of the excuses, I think it’s time for me to explore this part of my life and put it out there.  maybe someone will see it and be able to help me file it away.  but even if it goes unnoticed, I’m hoping to find some sense of peace in all of it.