It has been almost a year since I discovered this site. It has been about a year since I found that other people were as affected by the CEDU system. I found I was not alone. I went to my parents to chat with them about the recent discoveries and validation of the wierdness of the program. (god forbid I would use the term abuse)
They don't want to talk about it. They believe it was a mistake sending me there but that ends their responsibilty. They don't want to talk about all the doubts and confusion that were borne there. They can't admit that those years still touch me daily and reminders are plentiful in both sleeping and waking hours. It's a fight with them when I try to relate some of the finer points of damage inflicted on my self image. It's a fight when I mention that I still struggle with aspects of that time. Does someone have parents who have enough love for me too? I still want it, I still need it to thrive and feel positive, and they do still fail to give me shelter from the storm inside myself.
That is one thing I can never forgive about the program. IT DESTROYED MY CONFIDENCE. Oh, in the short term I thought I was a god. I mean, I was...I did the summit and graduated...why five years later did all seem so distant and faded. A prisoner who is released into the custody of a mental hospital would understand: THEY WERE BIG ISSUES, and they were not dealt with appropiately. Yes, it's over. It's been over since the schools were sold for the first time, and no other kids will go through as intense a program should they find themselves unlucky enough to be "sent away". And yet...the damage has been done. And the hurts are back toward the surface. Rehashing this RMA experience in therapy and conversation has only magnified what a BIG FUCKING DEAL IT WAS! Get out of my head DOUG, VICKI, STEVE, RANDY, CAROLINE, BRUCE, DAN, CARMEN, and the rest. Your yelling and faux love was POISON. I hope your new careers leave you as impotent in the workforce as you left many of us socially.
I have noticed a trend in regards to the posting on Fornits- in regards to Cedu people. It seems that people come and lurk around for a while reading the past post, seeing what has been said about the staff they were close with. Then they'll see something that makes them post.
Then they'll do a little more research on their own, come to one conclusion or another- namely "these people are a bunch of geniuses and why did I have to go through all that shit, and actually I don't remember anything but if it was a cult..."
curiosity killed the cult in this case, because if you look at the CEDU threads and see the personal progression, and the progression that lead to the slaying of CEDU, you'll well see that most of the time people come here read for a while, post some, find an old friend or two, and move on, healed a bit after bringing it back into their lives themselves by searching it all out on the world wide web.
There was a cutural shift going on a few years ago, and the TBS industry is still on the back boiler. Another critical information mass shift is due, be patient, if nothing else...sadly,
it's only a matter of time until another child dies in one of these places.