None of us will ever completely recover what was lost because of them.
Damn, dude, that sounds so......hopeless. I mean, of course, on a certain level, it's true, we spent time there at a critical formative period in our lives, and we can't get the time back, I know that, but what you're saying here, I dunno, but to me it just seems kind of
resigned to being to some degree or other, incapacitated, or maybe to being something less than complete. I like to think that it would be possible to completely heal from the Straight mindfuck, or at least cope with it to where it doesn't cause anger, anxiety, depression, or whatever.
I do agree that we are not to blame for what happened to us, it was done to us by
them. It was not our fault, it was not right, it was not ethical, moral, or in any way warranted or justified. It did not save your life, even if you think you did have a drug problem and needed some sort of help.
"I just" don't like the idea that those fuckers WON, on any level, by inflicting any permanent damage to my psyche. Maybe that's what really bothers me, admitting that damage inflicted on me when I was a teenager has somehow hindered me since then. You know, the whole 'road not taken' thing, but in our case, it wasn't by choice, we were SUBJECTED to shit that has been documented as being capable of causing real, measurable changes in those it is used on. We, as unprepared, ignorant adolescents, admittedly with varying degrees of conflict with parents, teachers, or other authority figures, were subjected to techniques that have caused damage to trained, forewarned military personnel. We didn't really stand a chance in hell of walking away from that place unaffected. Maybe if we had gotten out in time, but most of us here were there for at least a few months, some for years.
People just don't know or decide to remain ignorant.. Some don't know because they've never heard much about it and some just don't care to hear about it or whatever. The mindfuckery wasn't as much a part of their lives as it was part of ours, so their interest (for lack of better word) in it probably isn't as keen as ours is..
Well, yeah, they've got their own shit going on, and a lot of them I'm sure don't believe that things could have been as bad as they were. Not here, in America. It's one of those things that if you weren't there you wouldn't understand, completely. Even if they comprehend on an intellectual level, they lack the experience, the understanding of the day to day existence in that hell-hole. The smells, the sounds, the heat, the tension, and the anger/fear/guilt/shame whatever negative emotion you can think of, energy that swirled around the group, like a shark, looking for meat and driven to frenzy by the slightest smell of blood trickling from the wounds inflicted earlier in the day.....do you rmember that weird frenzy, that fucked up, almost like a predatory beast, energy that would go through the group at times? That cold, sinking clamminess that would dawn when certain staff walked into the room, that dark chill that somone was in for it.....and then to see the reflexive, almost convulsive swirl of hostility, circling the room, growing, feeding on the pain and hate and fear and anger of every one of us?
That is what people who weren't there don't get. We have seen what a group of human beings can be capable of doing to one of their number, and we just saw the tip of the iceberg.....I'm not saying it was comparable to seeing your family gassed at Auschwitz or seeing your best friend's guts splattered across the ground in front of you in some jungle halfway around the world in a war you didn't start and know nothing about, or doing some of the shit a Special Forces vet I know told me he did during the first Gulf War, some of this shit, I don't know if you "come back from". I hope what we went through wasn't irrevocable.
At any rate, we know what it was like, we were there. It happened to
us I guess that's pretty much why we all talk to each other...
Yeah, I think you are right about that.
