i tried to take my friend into a rap today

[Anonymous]

so my group of friends have this thing called tribe.  its an online posting site where we all talk online a lot.  its fun.  

crystal has been my friend since i got out of cedu 15 years ago, and has been the one i was the most close to in all that time.  now i am realizing that in all that time i wasnt all that close to her either since i didnt ever trust her enough to talk to her about my own feelings, esp if she had hurt them.

today she hurt my feelings.  i am working with trying to deal with reality and escape into a dream world.  it was all i could do to post on tribe about how she had hurt me.  i was really angry at her, and scared that she would not treat me with care, that she would hurt me again, if i talked to her alone.  so i wanted everyone to see so that i wouldn't be alone.

this really hurt her a lot, she didn't like that i had tried to tell everyone all at once like that without even talking to her.  as she told me that i realized that that impulse to tell everyone instead of just her, that i learned that that was a safe way to confront people at cedu.  even though i got that yelling at people wasn't a good idea, i didnt realize that i still had the impulse to want to gang up on her, because it was safer for me that way.

anyway it was an eye opener so i figured i would share it with you all since of all people you may actually understand what it is like to feel an unfamiliar urge, wanting to do something that you don't feel lines up with who you feel you are...  acting out and realizing later, o wait, that wasnt me, that was rudy fucking benz's voice coming out of my mouth, sorry!  did i vomit on you?  i am so sorry.....  

but we talked about it, me and my friend, i havent told her this part yet because i felt too scared at the time to admit but, but telling you maybe it will make it easier to tell her.  

thanks for listening.

[try another castle]

Yeah, I put on my "rap hat" several times with my then-boyfriend. (This was in 94) I'd totally berate him, because he would piss me off so much. And I didn't really realize that I was talking program, even though I wasn't using the lingo.

[blownawaytheidahoway]

It seems that you have some really good friends. It's hard to remember to know that a little thing is a little thing, everything always becomes over-inspecteed and therefore magnified. I am still a believer with what Stina said" Generally nothing good does come from leaving my house" that's true and very sad.
I wanted to respond mostly to this though:
     "anyway it was an eye opener so i figured i would share it with you all since of all people you may actually understand what it is like to feel an unfamiliar urge, wanting to do something that you don't feel lines up with who you feel you are...  acting out and realizing later, o wait, that wasnt me, that was rudy fucking benz's voice coming out of my mouth, sorry!  did i vomit on you?  i am so sorry"

There was more than within five years after leaving Idaho that I thought an  environment that I was in was safe for "rap" activity. I began by reminding everyone that we were in an "especially safe" place and asked if I could be honest. NATURALLY everyone said Yes. Their mistake.
I made an enemy out of every person in the room and looked like an insane person to my friends that were also there. My instincts were right in some ways, but the execution, well, I didn't even think about another option, that was THE WAY to do what I did.

Also, we are pissed, people. We carry anger and bank our hurt in a way that is NOT normal, and has been trained, somewhat. We're a little skewed from most people BECAUSE of these self introspection, identifying, anger, honesty,  friendship, and frustration levels with everyone else- issues, that's CEDU in my opinion. It's surely a factor, and here I always try to please everyone, but Alia, those people mostly won't understand the intricacies of your feelings in relationships to others as much as we will.
They really can't totally if they've not been there done that.
Maybe a really good film, play, book, or movie, can help, but I already know that without MUSIC in my book, I can't capture everything, it's impossible as it is describing it to someone who has never been there.

If they can't hear the screaming from simultaneous  raps, and the yelling over the music in the propheets and the creepy creepy John Lennon from the workshops how can you tell them about writing your own epitaph, taking care of your feelings under duress twice a week, and walking in forty feet of snow with a sixty pound framepack on fucking snowshoes?... How could you expect anyone ELSE to really understand all that?

We are a tribe.  What kind of tribe will we be?  

so my group of friends have this thing called tribe.  its an online posting site where we all talk online a lot.  its fun.  
.....  

but we talked about it, me and my friend, i havent told her this part yet because i felt too scared at the time to admit but, but telling you maybe it will make it easier to tell her.  

thanks for listening.

Why not invite Crystal to the forum, alia?

[Anonymous]

thats a good idea.  i think i will post a link here on our site.  but she has a lot of her own life to deal with.  but maybe she'll post, who knows

idaho, can i call you idaho?  you are idaho in my head...  i would really like to make a movie of cedu.  i have been trying to write a book, inspired by you really in many ways, but i dont want to write a book anymore.  i want to write a movie.  i dont know how to write movies any more than i know how to write books, so i figure i have to learn anyway, may as well learn to make movies cause that is something i have truly always wanted to do.

i feel like the only people that should make a movie about cedu / rma etc should be people that actually attended.  it would be theraputic maybe for us to get in role and get that shit out of our systems in a way where we are faking it.  and we can scream about how fucked up cedu is, instead of how fucked up we are, and play out those experiences again but this time we are in control and then make ass loads of money off it and tell the story to people as it really was so people will know better.

thats what i have been daydreaming about.

[blownawaytheidahoway]

understood.
write me an email, i want to send you my numbah!
-idaho nee blown

[dishdutyfugitive]

Yes a movie is in order. It has to been done correctly though.

Possible Titles

"One flew over the Rap Box"

....

[Anonymous]

We don't need financing, backing, or complicated equipment to create a You Tube recreation of a rap or propheet exercise!!! Think about it!

[Anonymous]

uTube is a good idea....

the title i see in my head is "RAPS"  all in big thick red letters like a stamp, like fucking cops, but RAPS...

i've been thinking about the movie.  i think it would be better to do it not like a chronological story, told about what it was like to go there, but rather from our persepctive, 15 fucking years later and still dealing with it, using flash backs and retrospect so that the larger picture of what they were doing there comes accross.

i want to draw the parallels between what happened to all of us in there, and what is happening to the whole country with toruture, and wars, extraordinary rendition, slave making corporations, cruelty in business...

in my mind, cedu existed for one reason and one reason only, it made money.  if that had been a free service, and no one's pockets were getting stuffed through it, it would have been stopped, but the people getting rich off of it protected it, like, if the 'community' of running springs had to pay for that place, instead of getting kick backs from it, they would have checked it out and shut it down immediately.

anyway, i think the movie would be great using a lot of flash backs.  i was also thinking of a documentary style movie where we film our process of remembering, and then when we get a cohesive memory trying to act it out, so that it flashes from movie style representation to story telling.

lots of ideas, lots of possibilities, and yet i still have to remember that the most important thing is still to be able to get out of bed and be me, and not go back to pretending this never happened to me.  this is so fucking painful.  thanks again all for being here.

[dishdutyfugitive]

that's exactly what I'm thinking.

[dniceo7]

I think that movie would be amazing haha, I would love to see the finished product, though I hate thinking about raps so much that I'd never want to be apart of the process. not that anyone was asking...

I'm in my last semester of school and one of the classes we take as biz majors is 'service leadership', where the meat of the curriculum is working with a major non-profit to tackle some of their most pressing business problems, whether it be corporate sponsorship or international growth or whatever. but a lot of the class is spent in the classroom trying to "discover our authentic selves" and "create self awareness" and what not. my point is that a lot of the discussions seem to be rap-oriented...we sit in circles, we're encouraged to be "open" (open body position anyone?), we're encouraged to call people out on things that may hinder them as they enter the business world...

my point is, my classmates all seem to think this is an incredible class and are loving the feedback they are getting as they prepare to begin careers. I, however, think the class is a nightmare. the discussions are so closely related to raps (without the yelling and dirt lists of course, but still...) that I become physically overcome with anxiety as we dig deeper into the class. I shut off, am afraid to say anything to anyone, avoid making eye contact so as not to be "indicted", and take every opportunity to skip the class that I can. (I used the recent so cal wildfires as an excuse to miss it 3 times). this is far from who I am...I am normally very outgoing and have skipped maybe 4 classes total in my entire college career before this class. I had thought I had moved past the flashbacks and memories and overall lingering effects of CEDU, but this class has shown me that that is clearly not the case.

bottom line is, raps fucked me in the head pretty badly and I am right there with anyone else that is filled with dread when faced with anything that resembles a rap.

[dishdutyfugitive]

dnice

Yo, you should raise your hand immediately. Tell them you're a 'rap' vet. You've taken massive schrapnel on your CEDU tour. You've seen comrades fall, whole platoons wiped out. You've faced the enemy (in their cushy staff chairs) and have seen the light. War is hell.


You have honorable discharge exemption status dammit. Let them know it. They'll love it. It'll get a laugh and they'll respect your request for no feedback.

I've been in a couple situations like yours, felt scared for a moment but then decided the plan described above was good and went with it. It worked really well.

[Anonymous]

yeah.  honestly, it after thinking it over i was like, fuck, i dont want to fake a rap... that would suck.  

it would have to be actors if it was going to be a film. but i would be willing to teach them.  it would be cathardic for me.  i can see how it would not be cathartic for other people, but for me it would be an act of reclaiming.

but thats how i tick, not how everyone ticks.

my dad got honored tonight at the weingart center associations annual fundraiser.  they are a los angeles homeless shelter type thing.   i probably would have been better off if my dad sent me there when i was 14.  

there are a lot of mixed feelings for me cause the doctors say no more than a year he could possibly live.

but it seems like he's gonna live longer.  i talked to him about cedu.  i told him i wanted him to acknowledge that it was a mistake.  he said he guessed that if it turned out to be such a bad place it must have been a mistake and he was sorry.  

i feel the irony that he would not have been able to say that had he not known that he had no more than a year to live.  but i still feel it is an honest choice and i accept his apology.  but my mother is going through it, really hearing my dark side, the one i have been soo blind and deaf to, that i am trying to figure out how to reintigrate into my concious mind so it can learn a thing or two about the real world....

the world where people do fall in love all the time, and care for eachother, and look out for eachother, it happens every day, we just miss it over and over, i missed it over and over because i was so stuck on my insides trying to keep things under wraps enough so that i could function.  hiding.  hiding. my father and his two siblinbs hid their alcoholism from their alcoholic parents and from their spouses and from their children as best they could their whole lives.  

i hid the scars from cedu.  every last one of them.  i never wanted a single glimpse of it to show, and i saw myself as very ugly.  i think i am starting to see where that ugliness in the mirror that i hide from myself comes from.  from all this pain that i didnt think it was fair that it should effect me, so i just closed my eyes to it.

anyway, thats enough for tonight.  i hope this doesnt bore you all, i really enjoy it, but i understand if people overlook it cause its so long.  i dont usually read long posts myself....  thanks all, gnight

[blownawaytheidahoway]

Yeah, for me just seeing a circle of chairs is enough. When I went to a therapist and he sat across from me diad style, it was enough to remind me it made me uncomfortable.
What's worse still is like I aluded to in another post. In order to survive any rap like setting like the class that Dnice described, I go on the offence first. Get honest with one person with a 10% indictment and ain't no one gonna say shit to you ever again.

No, seriously, you're post illuminates one of the more obvious fallouts from the described confrontational style therapy (which RMA DID include in the brocure) called RAPS, is issues stemming from boundary issues. Every one who went through even a few raps would be impacted by "off base" OR "in touch" criticism done under the CEDU model. It harms. It hurts. It changes kids, and that was the part that seemed to matter. The fear instilled in the parts of us that SHOULD have been learning to communicate with our peers the way the rest of society generally does-  is lacking somewhat in us. That part has been wounded, sorry- traumitized. Some messages take a long time to rewrite. It's awareness and extra awareness that will be our sword in this battle. They created it without articulation and intellect. Because CEDU ignored these formidable tools and saw us as two and three year rubes, it will continue to come back and bite them on the ass as long as there is breath in the lungs for one more indictment- against CEDU.

[dishdutyfugitive]

Alia

All of that hits home.

[stina]

Yes a movie is in order. It has to been done correctly though.

Possible Titles

"One flew over the Rap Box"

....

I still think putting Big Brother cameras all over campus would be great. Or maybe just on the surface, that might drive a lot of us to storm the campus and start riots. But I guarantee America would be glued to their TVs.