Loves CEDU

[shanlea]

To the Anon Who Questions Responsibility:

I can't speak for anyone but myself. CEDU is not responsible for all the problems and challenges that I have had to face in my life; but it is responsible for unethical treatment, dishonesty, emotional abuse, lack of therapeutic expertise, and substandard academic provision.  I also honestly feel that it promotes an insularity that does not begin to prepare you for the real world. I think parents need to be more aware of the facilities they send their children to and not just the pr spin and beautifully printed pamphlets.

[bradensmith]

ok, some of my comments were a little over the top earlier but, some of it was true, I did have some good times at that school, i wont say the best, but I sure do miss a lot of it.

[blownawaytheidahoway]

Ok. If you spend three years waking in a cell, getting meals, intereacting with your incarcerators, and getting out every once in a while some days may not look as bad as others. So under that thought process yeah; I was around kids about my age who were into some of the same things, yeah; sometimes I went whole days without something terrible happening that I had no control over, yeah; occasionally someone would even say something nice. But also, I WAS BRAINWASHED. I allowed it to happen when I realized I wasn't going to be allowed anything remotely similar to the freedom I learned as a runaway before RMA. When that happened it got a little easier. Acceptance. That I had no real choice but to "assimilate".
     Then there are the people who really needed these places in a different kind of way. The people who love it I don't hate. Some people were going to wind up dead, od'd, getting gang banged in front of the camera for a coupla toots o' some ol' shit, some were so scared of people that they needed a crash course in how to communicate SOMETHING to the outside world. But in general: people who went there who didn't need the approaches they got (in my opinion) turned out for the worse getting along out in society later. Long lasting effects of programs' modus operandi cause PTSD, and a whole giant host of "survivor characteristics".
     I think we know what I am talking about however I will open more diatribe on this particular aspect becuase it is important to me to see how other people view the Happiness quotient of the facility they were at.

[mad]

Some of my best memories were made while I was at RMA -- several of my friendships, the Wilderness Challenge, and the I And Me to name a few.

My overall impression of my RMA years is a good one.  I learned that I could have friends and that I could be a good friend, I learned to build a sense of family, I learned that I didn't need to count on my blood relatives to get my emotional needs met, I learned that other people had gone through some really tough shit too, and I learned that many people have moments when they feel utterly alone and cut off.  The skills I learned there I credit with helping me to build the life that I have today, and life now is the best that it ever has been.

RMA was also a very harsh place to grow up and the way I learned to interact with others, and myself, particularly when emotionally vulnerable, was not kind.  There was never any room to slip up or to take small steps in a direction.  I also lost any sense of balance for several years -- things were either good or bad, right or wrong, life or death etc.  While that way of looking at the world served me when I really was at moments of life or death, it failed to help me in continuing to develop as an adult.  I couldn't be patient with myself or anyone else because everything felt like it had immediate consequences ? everything had equal importance and there was a constant push TO DO something.  It was a terrible way to live in many ways and my work in recent years has been about learning to be comfortable with ambivalence and to practice patience.

Best, M

[Antigen]

On 2004-08-23 16:13:00, mad wrote:

I learned that I could have friends and that I could be a good friend,

Did it not bother you that your new friends were required, by institution protocol, to say they were your friends even if they felt quite differently?

Probably 1/4 of the reason why I quit fighting and went ahead and signed myself into the Program was that, at last, at least, I knew I would have an automatic sense of belonging--guaranteed 'friends'. Of the 3 or so I've run into in the past couple of years (2 decades+ after the fact) I only have even as much as email addresses for about 3 or 4 of them, and only count 1 or 2 among my friends.

Karate is a form of martial arts in which people who have had years and years of training can, using only their hands and feet, make  some of the worst movies in the history of the world.
-- Dave Barry

[Anonymous]

On 2004-08-23 16:53:00, Antigen wrote:

"

On 2004-08-23 16:13:00, mad wrote:


I learned that I could have friends and that I could be a good friend,

Did it not bother you that your new friends were required, by institution protocol, to say they were your friends even if they felt quite differently?

"

I never understood that friendships were enforced, or rather there were plenty of folks who I either wasn't friends with or didn't know well enough to consider a friend.

I keep in touch with a few people from my RMA days, but lack of contact doesn't, at least for me, take away from the power of those friendships.  It is the same as  the years since RMA;  I may be close with folks for a few years and then because of growing apart or geographic moves we play a less critial role in each others' lives.

Best, M

[blownawaytheidahoway]

I don't know if I can say that those years were among my favorite. I really tried to take the good with the bad for many years, but to be truthful, I did not often feel what I consider to be real friendships there. A few, but then they were with older brothers that were watching me, and while at the same time making my stay a tiny fraction more bearable, abandoning me for the rest of life? I had few staff friends and the one that I really did have conceeds that I was very misunderstood and that I did have staff who vocally disliked me. I now know that that was their reacting to what they percieved as fearlessness and pride. The people I would like to talk to most about RMA and the whole CEDU enchilada are the people I hope not yet to run into. Almost all the people in my peer group were not cool to me. I was just someone they could beat up on because I was more cerebral. I would become reactive eventually and the heat would be extinguished under their own chair. I resented the cycle. Also, I just didn't really like some of them. But I don't know what they as individuals became. It's not fair to rail on them now, at least not like the staff, but I know that I will have to think a lot about them if I keep corresponding with this crowd.
     I do see that there is certainly a love/hate relationship with these places. That is certainly textbook for someone who is confused about what it all means.

[CEDU IS A CULT]

I just didn't have real friends for the most part at CEDU and it was harder to have real friends after CEDU.  It was like I could never relax and just be myself with "CEDU" friends.  I never was or could be the type of person that "CEDU" considers a "real friend" or that I would want to have as a "real friend."  There are too many things I like to do that CEDU forced its believers to think is wrong.

I mean I remember getting blown away about liking eating pussy when I was like 13 years old.  Shit- nothings changed!  (just kidding- a little humour)

Also, I see nothing wrong with smoking a little herb.

I don't think people have to know every detail about eachother to be the best of friends or lovers.

I like going dirt bike riding and motorcycles as opposed to smooshing, telling cop-outs or crying.  In fact, I have only physically cried tears three times in the last several years as opposed to CEDU's theory of almost daily tears.

I don't believe in their philosophy of what a true man is.

I believe to thine own self be true, and in other words F what anyone else thinks.  

I'm only saying this pretending that CEDU actually had a philosophy that it actually believed in and practiced.

The fact is CEDU was brutally physically, emotionally, sexually abusive.  I mean don't you fucking remember the shit you heard in raps and profeets?

Don't you remember the intense shame and humiliation?

The bead of sweat, the shaky nerves, the paranoia, the first time you heard someone cop-out to the group and it was your turn next?

The brutal way they pushed and pushed and pushed until you fucking broke and became hollow?

You know something, I figured out what Ceduites remind me of-  born-again christians.  That "Jesus loves me" glow people had after profeets.  And that high you had coming out of profeets- it was the same psycho-somatic high born-again christians have.

Some people on this site are basically Born-again Cedus.  Cedu loves you.  Have you accepted Cedu into your heart as your personal lord and saviour?  But for the grace of Cedu.  Is there a parallel between pedophile priests and Cedu staff members?