Welcome back Castle. Good to see your rotating facial features.
CEDU IS a cult.
that you didn't know it stood for Charles E. Deitrich University is revealing the same way I finally discovered that when I DID finally run away from that hellhole, I should not have tried to go home. Three thousand miles? I should not have tried to get to Spokane. What I should have done is go to the first attorney office that I could waltz into...wouldn't he have been disbarred for not looking into a runaway's complaints? Ah hindsight.
I wish I had figured that out at 14 and not at REDACTED. If only I hadn't been so sure I could trust the police or my own parents.
Castle your post somewhere earlier today made me wince about not even telling your parents anything because it may break their heart- I'm having a dilemma in my writing as per needing to include them, to inform them, and to blame them. It's crisis causing, gut- wrenching, and ulcer squeezing to continue to not be sure if this experience should be told truthfully. Shouldn't it though? I am such a dog for making them re-live these years again. How did you get strong again? These holidays, and these pages I'm working on are making me come unglued. My folks and I will never see things peaceful as long as this is still in my present. I know that, and yet, I'm still here. There.
But not to deviate from your intresting quest to find out the most culti of the crew. CEDU should be considered for the Most honorable mention after Synanon. I think of them like the Sutherlands. You might be familiar with Donald from so many roles. But we all know who Jack Baur is. CEDU.
I would definitely not want to be in your position. When you write, it's going to go out into the public sphere, so your parents will most likely read it There's the dilemma of whether or not you want them to, and if so, should you edit your piece to account for them as part of your audience? Let me just say that I am glad I'm not writing a book about RMA.
I agree, that if you are going to write about this, you have an obligation to be as truthful as possible. A parent might read it who is considering sending their child away. It's too bad (in some ways) that you did not complete the program, because I think that written accounts of the later propheets and the I & Me and Summit would knock people on their asses. I mean, look at how non CEDU people reacted to your detailed account of the truth propheet, and that was the "softest" propheet by far. It only got worse from then on, as you know.
Obviously, I am glad that you didn't have to go through all of the propheets and workshops, but I sure wish someone with as good a memory as yours had, so they could at least tell you about it, and then you could put it in your book.
Maybe this is part of why you are having such a hard time. Your memories of the place are clear, while mine have mostly dissolved away into the ether. Forgetfulness is bliss.
When I was younger, I remember having a rather heated conversation with my mom about RMA. I had just started to come to terms with how fucked up the place was, and I tried to explain to my mom that it was an awful place to send someone, but I couldn't get the words out of my mouth to tell her the kinds of things that happened there. It was so complex and involved. Where would I even start? The conversation ended with her saying "What were we supposed to do?" and me probably saying something along the lines of "Well, it was a fucked up place." and just shrugging my shoulders.
As for blame, I'm willing to give my parents a mulligan on this. Remember that this industry exists to make money, and produce pretty, shiny brochures with happy, smiling faces on them, to con the shit out of nervous parents by promising treatment (by unqualified staff) for valid conditions such as bipolar and depression, and on the other side of it, by warning that typical teenage rebelliousness is pathological. They got suckered. They didn't do it because they wanted to hurt me, or because they hated me, they were just seriously freaked out and incredibly ignorant.
As for why they were one of those parents who believed in solving our problems by sending me elsewhere... well... I think it's a bourgeois thing. I was in a children's home before that. And even before that, my parents were constantly on the precipice of trying to find some place that could handle me. I think it's part of their class' philosophy on childrearing. Pay for a "professional" to handle the job.
I think that the new ad slogan for behavior mod places should be "Is your teenager acting like a teenager? Send them to us."
So.. if CEDU wins second place in the culty awards, do we get anything? Trophy? (::trophy:: ) Ribbon? Tote bag? An I-survived-the-second-cultiest-school-in-the-country-and-all-I-got-was-this-lousy-t-shirt shirt?
Or will we just have to write that with a sharpie pen on our old "Soar Like an Eagle" shirts?
***wonders if anyone still has theirs***