It's when you start to build your wall, and finally take a stand when they want to really mindfuck you hard and tear down what you built. I never went on a hunger strike but I did try a medication strike. The day started like any other. We went and sat in this small building and did school which was just sitting there all day. I mostly spent my time staring at my book with unfocused eyes just daydreaming. There was a fire extinguisher in the room and I had always planned on using that one day to spray someone. I was on a bunch of medications and was always tired and I put my head down and felt like shit. The staff told me to put my head up and I quipped something like, fuck you I am going to kill you and your family. I mean yeah, it was a fucked up thing to say, I am not justifying it it's just the way it went down. So anyways, he came over and grabbed me and pulled me outside and was like wtf man, take that back! I was just like whatever man, and didnt answer and he called in another staff and they said I better apologize or I would go to isolation. So I said I was kidding and they sent me to isolation anyways. So I was pretty pissed or whatever up there knowing it would be three days minimum. So I decided I would try to use my medication against them and force their hand and get taken to the hospital. Now that I think back, I should have just kept pretending I was taking them, and let myself get really sick, and then sprung the truth on them when it was too late. But since it was my first time using my body as a protest I was upfront and said fuck you, Im not taking my pills. Nothing really happened the first day. Dont think they knew the significance of it, as there was no psychiatrist present ever. But the next day the family rep came up to isolation which never happened and thats when the manipulation started. At first she plays nice, saying that she would let me out if I took it. But then I brought up the fact they said if I apologized I wouldn't have to go to iso, and she says there are no acceptions to cat 5's. We do the back and forth but I wasn't budging on the fake caring routine.
She left for the whole afternoon and came back later in the early evening. She was standing above me while I sat in this little iso room and she started explaining how I had no choice in taking it. She said if I didnt take it that I would be taken to the hospital and handcuffed to the bed, given an IV and they would ween me off of the meds over the course of a week. Then they would bring me back to iso and they said they would make it much worse. I still wasn't budging but the manipulation was really getting thick and the environment was getting pretty crazy emotionally. The walls were definitely starting to crack. Then she brings in the big guns. She says that she was just on the phone with my father. When I was sitting in an iso room in the middle of nowhere, to hear that someone else has contact with a person who can end it all.. its intense, at least it was for me. I was so excited, anxious, angry.. I just wanted to talk to him and tell him what was going on. But she was the gatekeeper and used this as a tool of manipulation and evil. So then she actually sits down on the ground with me and holds me in between her legs on the ground and strokes my hair and stuff and holds the pill in her hand and holds my hands open and puts in my hand. She starts saying how my dad sounded really sad and was crying that I was doing so bad, and he was dissapointed I couldn't work the program. This was actually taking place the day before thanksgiving, and she said that my dad told her that he will always remember that day as the year I ruined thanksgiving. She brought out the sledgehammers at that point and broke my walls down. She knew the one thing she could manipulate me with was the fact I didnt like to let down my dad. So I started crying in her arms and she was holding me and stuff and stroking my head and rocking and pleading with me to take the pills... and after a couple day stand, I took the pills.
I had only been at the program a couple months and this was my first real big stand against it, before that I was just a drone who never caused too much trouble. But after that I was in and out of iso all the time for other shit. They also took me off of the strong meds I was on so I couldnt do that again. They brought in a nurse practioner and they took me off of xanax in like a week, when I got home my doctor said that was crazy and could of been dangerous.. oops! I found out later that family rep had sex with kids while working there, which makes the memory all the more creepy. :roll:
They are master manipulators. But seriously, teenagers are pretty naive at the forces that adults can use against them. A twisted letter from a parent, it's stronger than any man on earth. It can take down the strongest man you've seen if it contains the right words in a certain order. It's fucked up shit.
