Please, you must not misunderstand me; I am not at all undermining how shady things were at CEDU programs during that time, and I know what I am saying sounds paradoxical... What I was trying to get at is that from a trustworthy source told me, he was pretty much brand new; he had only been at RMA for a couple of weeks before he committed suicide, and there's two ways you can look at this: it did so much damage in so little time, or conversely, the small amount of time he was there shows that it may have not necessarily had anything to do with the school, but rather how broken he already was, and that it ultimately had more to do with himself; the 1994 article from the Spokesman-Review concerning the event is archived on the internet (http://www.teenliberty.org/RMA.htm) and it states that he had apparently been taking medication for bipolar disorder, which from firsthand experience I can say these kinds of medicines only made me feel worse. The worst part about this story is, according to the article, he was found by another student... I want to be adamant about that I have the utmost respect and sensitivity towards these kind of people who were in so much pain that they couldn't take it anymore, and their story ended in tragedy. What I am trying to say is that from what I have heard, amongst the people who were cruel to him, he found people who genuinely cared about him and were true friends, something that this person had not been accustomed to before he went to the school.
Again, I want to be firm about the fact that my intention was to voice my respect for this poor kid's memory in the midst of all the people who missed the point and did not take it seriously. I'm more for what you believe than you could ever imagine, so I am asking with compassion, love and mercy that you do not misconstrue my message.
Oh, I don't think anyone here would misconstrue your heartfelt
intentions. And if they did, they're probably grappling with some sociopathic propensities that, imo, are best left ignored. Although I might diverge a bit from your overall analysis of the worth and meaning of the experientials you went through at BCA, that's hardly all that important, is it? After all, these are
your experiences and
your thoughts and I'm just interjecting my two cents, relative to my take on things, in part heavily colored by *my* experiences (at a different program), and which you can take or leave, as you wish...
Fwiw, I've followed your posts with interest, though I haven't responded 'till this here thread. You have a real gift with descriptives. The image of the bent pipe in the distance, seen through the unadorned naked window, was a metaphorical
homage to this kid that few could have evoked so eloquently and so earnestly. It was haunting, even for someone who wasn't there.
In closing, here's an excerpt from a recent
post by someone who went to CEDU Running Springs, who survived two suicide attempts, and who is still trying to parse his/her time in program:
It has left me in a weird type of limbo that I don't understand and longing for experiences that don't exist in the real world and probably shouldn't have existed at CEDU either. As sick as this may sound, I probably would have been content to stay at CEDU forever and put up with the soul-crushing techniques employed there in order to experience that strange sense of closeness with other human beings that comes after the peculiar, induced, emotional discharges that occur in raps and propheets.[/list]