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Messages - NOT12NOW

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91
The Seed Discussion Forum / Talent In Cleveland
« on: October 20, 2005, 07:18:00 PM »
August of 76 marked some sort of anniversary for the Cleveland seed.   So one day the staff started throwing around ideas for a talent show to celebrate the event; it was one of their more spontaneous moments.

We came up with bunch of acts making fun of druggies.  I remember a group of guys singing fifties tunes, cigs rolled up in their sleeves, called the Grease, or something like that.  The planning of this event took up a whole rap.  I actually remember it as fun.  It was like the "before I came to the seed" part of the rap with a sense of humor.  Terry chose me to be in the tough chick girl group.  Including me was a joke was a joke in itself.   I wore a sign that said trainee.  

The rehearsal process was the happiest time I spent in the program. We lip-synced Teen Angel and Leader of The Pack.   Terry choreographed dance routines that we practiced in the basement or the unbelievably wide hall upstairs. Most importantly I spent less time sitting in raps.  It was great, go in, sit down, put up your hand but for just a little while till Terry or someone else calls you out for rehearsal.
Art came up to watch the show. we wore costumes that included jeans (don't know where we got that contraband.)   We rubbed dirt on the jeans and t-shirts, I think, someone might have had a leather jacket, we teased up each others hair and put on lots of black eye liner.   Waited for our entrance in the parking lot behind the gym-open meeting hall everyone was getting into character, talking trash, giving each other evil looks, pretending to threaten each other and all of a sudden I got scared like I was hanging with these girls on the street?I actually felt truly freaked for a moment. They were, after all, the oldest girls with the toughest pasts and I was the youngest.
The performance however was way fun.  We got a big laugh every time we revved our motorcycles-- butts facing the audience.   The rest of the show had me laughing all night.  I think Suzy did her squishy face, ?Can I come to your birthday party.? routine

Riding home that night, I found that my parents were horrified.  My mother said,? you looked just like your old druggy self up there."   My father said,? I don't want to see you looking like a druggy." They were clearly-- not pleased!
Still the seed seemed to think it had been funny.  We were laughing about it during lunch for days after, photos were passed around.  

The next big event was Christmas.  This time when the staff brought up the subject of planning a show for open meeting they each repeated the hope that it would be something really classy, " Something Art would enjoy."  The tone during the planning of that show was subdued; drastically different from the blowing off steam, tone I so enjoyed during the planning of the Anniversary talent show.  When anyone stood up with an idea for a silly act staff seemed shocked that any seedling would suggest such a crude thing when they themselves had tossed out ideas just as silly and crude a mere three months earlier.  

The Christmas show was mainly a live nativity acted out by seedlings while a staff member read the story.  I also, remember that, this show, my parents liked.  On the way home my parents kept talking about how amazing and wonderful it was to see the girl playing Mary looking so pure now in comparison to the hardened look she had when she was a newcomer.  "It was like a miracle," my mother said,? you?d never have known it was the same girl.?

It makes me wonder if parents complained about the earlier show.    The seed was, after all, in the business of making parents happy.

92
The Seed Discussion Forum / were you a virgin
« on: October 20, 2005, 11:33:00 AM »
No one had to trick or drag me into the seed because Suzy and Scott did my intake
God she was cute, square face, bright.  She was the first woman told about things.  What I was doing with boys. How I ended up running away.  She was the first adult to greet me with out distance.  She seemed to understand what I was going through.  She was someone I wanted to emulate.  She gave me a cigarette.  

Later she yelled at me that I was ?so full of shit,? she couldn?t believe they were trying to help me.  I think she was also the one who pointed out during my ?come down,? that I didn?t even inhale my cigarettes (You?d think, maybe, if I didn?t inhale tobacco I didn?t have a drug problem?)  
The things I remember fondly about all staff will always be coupled with the pain they caused me. I don?t know if she was getting off on the chair and the girl.   I remember her shaking her leg a lot but wasn?t I clued in to what was ?sexual? yet.  Maybe she just developed a tick, after all she did go through the seed too, she could always have been started over right? I developed a habit of rubbing the tops of my thighs really fast in-group. Maybe it was an anxiety-fueled tick, or maybe it was to stay alert.   Also remember doing weird things with my spine to amuse myself during raps and there was the lip smackers phase for a while.   Chicks were passing requests to borrow each other?s tubes--It came in different flavors.  The staff stepped in and snipped those exchanges from the aisle.
 
God those raps were dull.

93
The Seed Discussion Forum / Why did cleveland branch close?
« on: October 19, 2005, 07:36:00 PM »
What happened that the program shut down and left town virtually over night?  I had graduated by then but I knew someone who had just gotten home when they closed.  They called him at home and graduated him over the phone the night they left town.  I also knew a graduate who had been in the day before, he said there had been no sign that they were planning on leaving.  
All I remember was a newspaper article one morning questioning their credentials.  They were gone before it hit the stands.

94
The Seed Discussion Forum / How did you tell your children, spouse about the Seed?
« on: October 19, 2005, 07:24:00 PM »
For years I just told people I had been in a drug rehab when I was 12.  
As I aged, and got farther away from the threat of being thrown back in, I realized that the seed was weird and started to tell stories about it, mostly for entertainment value.  I recognized that some of the things we did and believed there were off the chart, but I still bought the, Iwouldhavebeendeadinainsanasilumorprison, soft shoe.  It wasn?t until I was 25 and telling a friend about myself before the seed that I started to think about it more deeply.    I was saying, ?I was so weak there was nothing to me.?    She disagreed saying, ? any eleven year old girl who manages to keep a bunch of high school boys from having intercourse with her while she is stoned or drunk is not weak.?  I corrected her saying,?Oh, I was never stoned or drunk,? and would have just gone on talking from there but she stopped, stunned.  ?I always assumed from what you said that you were drug addicted back then,? she said.  She was so shocked that I began to wonder.  Thus I began considering the possibility that I may have been, among other things, miss diagnosed.  I guess all those years I was telling people Rasputin tales about the seed they assumed I was shooting up between my toes at 11.

My guy got it every step of the way with me. I told him pretty soon after we got together with out any fear that he would be freaked out.  He?s a peach.

That?s a good point about boot camp.  You know when it?s over. Even after I graduated it wasn?t safe for me to say anything negative about the seed or displease my parents until the seed left town.  Still, when I was in college, and there was a period of disagreement between us I became fearful that they where going to lock me up in a mental institution.  I thought at the time that it was a strange fear, but later it made sense.

On a related note I used to have this problem where I felt compelled to tell everyone everything, not specifically about the seed but a sort of full life confessional; it was particularly rough on people I had just met at parties.   My close friendships all had a tendency to be very intense, HONEST, processing-- then they would explode.  Until I was in my late twenties my friendships usually ended like breakups.  I had to learn to retain my autonomy socially.  I had to learn that not all problems could be solved with honest confrontation.  Some of this is my personality, I still enjoy saying things just over the line and I have a different sense of what is private than many people but I used to feel it was the only way to have real relationships, which was, I believe, a compulsion I learned at the seed.


When I explained my seedling past to my pug she tilted her head first to the right then the left and stared at me with her globe brown eyes? still not sure how to interpret that.  But I get the feeling she doesn?t judge me.

95
The Seed Discussion Forum / were you a virgin
« on: October 18, 2005, 12:04:00 PM »
I?ve given up on getting my old name to work and signed on with a new one.  I am now NOT12NOW.

Ok, so it looks like there weren?t as many virgins as I thought.  

As I said on my first post, I was a virgin but I know my parents believed I had had intercourse.  There were three other girls in the program with me that I remember were also virgins.

So now I have another theory.   Once I was back at home, I clearly remember deciding it would be best if I were no longer a virgin and secretly taking care of it myself one night.   It wasn?t a masturbatory thing; it was a task I felt I needed to do.  I think now that I deflowered myself, during the program, because the seed cemented my belief that sex was painful.  I needed to know I could handle the pain of penetration alone before it happened in the future with a partner (Wow, the seed was really making me feel hopeful about my future.)   I did this even though it meant concealing, what seemed at the time to be the most depraved secret from the all-knowing staff.
 Yes, my pre-seed sexual partners were vulturous and if something hadn?t changed I have no doubt one of them would eventually have raped me but I?d also experienced some arousal and a personal drive to experiment.   I was just becoming a sexual being but I had not yet felt the pull to have intercourse.  Unfortunately Chick raps convinced me there was NO pleasure in it.  All the Chick raps gravitated around one idea.  We played games with guys and got what we deserved.  There was no distinction made between consensual sex and rape and no sympathy for anyone?cause, after all, we asked for it.  No one was even very explicit, at a certain point in every story a curtain would drop.  What they deserved was behind it.  I was young; I couldn?t imagine that was behind that curtain.  All I understood for sure was that it hurt.  
 I?ve always said, ?Well if nothing else, going to the seed kept me from getting rapped.? But truth is in terms of my psyche the damage was the same.   If I had been physically raped I might have sought help and maybe some kind counselor, doctor, grown-up would at least have told me it wasn?t my fault and that sex isn?t supposed to hurt.



.Then, after all that horror, we would end the raps by talking about how a relationship in our futures would be ?icing on the cake? cause we were so happy we didn?t need one.  I secretly wondered (in the vaguest way of course) why anyone would want a relationship.  After all, even a really healthy one ?like Art and Shelly?s? involved sex, which sounded about as pleasurable as getting stabbed.

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