On 2003-11-15 09:39:00, Anonymous wrote:
"Why don't you just be thankful that someone tried to correct your awful behavior at Elan and recognize that they were only trying to help you?"
Because, in most cases, there wasn't any awful behavior to begin with. Just an inability to deal in an effective way with unreasonable, emotionally neglectful and/or abusive control freak adults in our lives. The Program has never been about helping young people better deal with life's challenges. The Program is all about breaking people's will and self esteem and making them willing to suck it up and believe it's all their fault.
The method is extremely effective, too! Not the least bit therapeutic, but very effective. I'll give you an example.
I'm trying to remember the Elan lingo for this. I think it was just "image". In straight, any aspect of our personalities that Staff decided was bad and needed to be washed out of us was called a "druggie image" or a "druggie tie". This could be anything from clothing to your hair to books to a certain very expensive Les Paul guitar that one friend of mine lost to the black hole of "druggie ties".
Not long after I got there, a staffer stood me up and informed me that my name was a tie to my druggie image. So they were going to call me by my given name, instead. Now, no one but strangers had ever called me by my given name. As far back as I can remember, I've always been Ginger to my family, friends, teachers, doctors... that was my name. But I went along with that and just kept my mouth shut on the gut instinct to not ask for any favors or take candy from strangers. It was my little secret and a constant reminder to me in the privacy of my own mind of just how full of shit the whole Program was.
Around 10 years later, though, I took over a house for my dad when he wanted to get out into the country for his retirement. He left a few things laying around, some old books and some papers and nick-nacks that he'd just missed while packing up. One of those little items that I found was a piece of construction paper art that I'd done in Kindergarten. I remembered making it, too. It had been one of my best pieces and I was deeply touched to find that my dad had held onto it for all those years. He never struck me as the sentimental type, ya' know? More of a hard assed WWII vet.
I actually cried tears of joy when I flipped it over and saw, in my own early handwriting, "GINGER". Not "VIRGINIA". See, intellectually, I knew all along that I was right, that I wasn't lying to myself, that they had just been trying to fuck with my mind and that they'd guessed wrong on that one. But emotionally, I still needed PROOF.
Even though it was years later and even though I'd never fully bought into the Program beyond trying my best to avoid an ass kicking till I could either split sucessfully, graduate or come of age, I still needed to see hard evidence that my memory was correct and they had been wrong.
Kid, if/when you discover that remaining in good standing with Elan requires you to choose between something true and valuable about yourself and rejecting it as an image, per Elan, don't lose your grip.
History gives us a kind of chart, and we dare not surrender even a small rushlight in the darkness. The hasty reformer who does not remember the past will find himself condemned to repeat it.
--John Buchan
