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Messages - NOT12NOW

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61
The Seed Discussion Forum / Running Away
« on: November 22, 2005, 08:53:00 AM »
I thought about running away but never did it, Saw to many kids hauled back to the front I guess, and really how long can a twelve year old hide out in a friends attic.

This was, what I thought was my best plan.  The Cleveland seed had this long catacomb of rooms that must have been bedrooms when it was an orphanage.  As far as I had seen these rooms were only used for intake interviews so I thought it would probably be vacant; a twisting hallway that took up a whole wing of the building with little rooms on each side.   I thought if I asked to go to the bathroom then snuck down to that hallway I could hide in one of the last little rooms.  I figured when they discovered I was gone they would look outside not inside and I'd just wait it out till they gave up then I'd sneak out the side door when they had stopped the search.  I thought that by hiding in one of the last rooms I would even be pretty safe if they searched those rooms cause certainly they would be looking less closely by the last few rooms and I could hide behind the door.

I always wondered about the kids who had run away.  How they did it and what they did when they got away?how they got caught but of course kids who had run away never talked about it and I knew better than to ask.

So I am asking now.  Those of you who did run away, how did you do it, where did you go, and what happened in the end?

 Those of you who didn't still must sometimes have imagined it, what was your plan?

62
The Seed Discussion Forum / Out of Wak and others
« on: November 22, 2005, 08:26:00 AM »
What strikes me is that all the seed sayings/diagnoses were circular--Your heads out of wak, because you think your shit don't stink, because you got into your head, because you don't care about anyone but yourself, because your heads out of wak.

They just came up with a lot of ways to say not complying but I, as a young seedling, believed each catch phrase described a distinctly different mistake.  They were the tools I had to keep myself in line so they didn't toss me back in line so I tried to understand and use them everyday.  I am sure at the time I could have plausibly defined each of these saying as distinctly different from each other.  Now it's clear, to me that they basically all meant the same thing with just subtle shadings to make us feel guilty about different parts of ourselves, for instance Sexy Sadie degraded or sexual feelings while getting into your head debased the power of our minds. I can't believe I honesty tried to use this dribble.  I actually thought they were tools to self-improvement.

Cleveland, I don't remember the phrase going bananas.  When was that used? If you expressed a worry about outside things (family, school) or confusion about seed doctrines? In what situation would they say you were going bananas instead of say, getting into your head?

63
The Seed Discussion Forum / especially for Marshall, Greg,
« on: November 21, 2005, 02:03:00 PM »
Dear John,
The first time I noticed that a staff member was on this site (you) I was really excited. I read your post and all the posts that follow carefully.  When I was done I added my own thoughts.  

The other day I logged on and saw a new thread started by john underwood again, and again many posts in response followed it.  I started to read the thread but was surprised to find it didn?t engage me.   You just say the same shit over and over.  Have you read anything anyone has written here?  

I guess I just don?t care anymore if anyone on the staff ever ?gets it.?  I don?t have to care. I survived your abuse.  The long list of dead doesn?t scare me anymore.   I know what it means to be a seed success, after all I used to be one, and quite honestly I?d rather be dead than still be a seed drone.

I care about understanding what happened to me so I can be free of it.  I care about the other brave people sorting it out on this site.  I care about stopping other programs that grew out of the seed so no other scared twelve-year-old goes through what I did.  I long to apologize to my newcomer. And I don?t need you to do any of those things.  

The only reason for you to accept the fact that you damaging some scared kids is to heal yourself.  
Good luck finding you heart.

64
The Seed Discussion Forum / Explain straight to me
« on: November 20, 2005, 08:43:00 AM »
Antigen I am sorry it has taken me so long to respond to your post.  Your answers and links were very helpful to me.  I understand how straight worked much more clearly now.  Actually I wrote a long email the day I read your entry but lost it somewhere in cyberspace and haven?t had the heart to re-write it till now.

Clearly, growing up with the seed helped you to survive straight; unfortunately you probably end up slapped into straight because the seed was so fungal in your family.

I wonder, from what you wrote, if part of the reason straight became more physically abusive then the seed (at least the seed I experienced) was because the straightlings were more encouraged to make other kids do things.  Make newcomers motivate; you even mentioned a stage where you were intended to serve as an extension to the staff.
 If you take a lot of freaked out kids and give them permission to blow off steam on other kids.  Someone is going to get hurt.   I was mean to my newcomer, because I was trying to prove myself through her progress but deeper down because I was angry and yelling at her was an approved way to express that anger.     If I had been encouraged to be physical I am sure I would have hit, pulled hair and pushed her while I yelled at her.

We used to hear about Straight.  Art and sometimes staff would talk about these arrogant seed parents who thought they knew how to help kids and were starting a program using some seed ideas they didn?t understand.    Did seed parents actually start straight?  The ways the program changed seems to have accommodated them more so it seems likely to me. You could put your kid away longer, it sounds like kids had less days off in the program even towards the end and they had parent meetings, which I am pretty sure the Cleveland seed never had.  

My parents were almost as irritated by having a seedling daughter as they were by having a delinquent daughter.    I embarrassed them by refusing to talk to a girl at church who burst into tears.  I would only wear polyester pants.  I was a tyrant about following the rules.  ?I can?t say your not home to the caller on the phone because I must be honest at all times,? or ?Mom you can?t run out to get milk and leave me home alone.?  My mother was always complaining about how seedlings riding in her car would hush each other for saying anything that happened in group, in front of her?anonymity.  ?Why shouldn?t I be able to hear?? She?d say, ?I am straight.?  

How were people restrained at Straight?  Was being, sat on, considered a restraining method?  Who did it kids, staff or both?  Was it just one person or many?

Did they say love you all the time.  Did you sing jiggle bells?

65
The Seed Discussion Forum / Out of Wak and others
« on: November 19, 2005, 06:53:00 PM »
I remember there were a lot of different terms we used for being fucked up and they all had slightly different meanings, like head out of wak -- the mistake of thinking you were doing so well that you started slipping toward drugginess. Example, I am so together I can listen to this old tie music and not be influenced (two days later; death, prison, or a mental institution and it's all because you listened to Dream Weaver.)
I remember getting in your head--basically just thinking, but I can't remember what the others ones were.  
Anyone else remember more of these labels and what they were supposed to mean.

66
The Seed Discussion Forum / Day 18 - Moral Inventory - 8/15/75 (Open Meeting)
« on: November 18, 2005, 12:26:00 PM »
Oh my god, I never thought of that, duh.  My parents were probably reading my moral inventories all the time.

When I was at my oldcomer's, they read it and turned it into a little rap right there on the bed but I assumed once I got home nobody read them.

67
The Seed Discussion Forum / Did staff ever tell you something wasn't worng when it was?
« on: November 18, 2005, 12:09:00 PM »
I was a bed wetter until I was like 15.  During my intake they asked if I wet the bed but I was twelve, I wasn't going to say, I wet the bed and for some crazy reason parents didn't tell them.  First night the only thing I cared about was not wetting the bed; of course I wet the bed.  My old comers were freaked. I think they just didn't know what they should do with me. Do you yell at a newcomer for wetting her bed?  Their mother was however pissed--really pissed.

I told my old comers it just happened some nights but after a few weeks of it happening most nights and coming home to my mattress balanced above a fan blowing on the stain.   Robin kept me behind after rap.  She sat me in the back row with her next to me as all the other seedlings filed out. When it was a room of empty chairs she started talking.   She told me that they had called my parents and knew my bed wetting wasn't a physical problem.   They knew I was wetting the bed cause I was a druggy and lazy.  She contributed stories from her own past how when she was too lazy to get up to get up at night.

So basically they told me I could stop if I wanted to that I was just being defiant and lazy.  Oddly enough I managed to stay dry every night till I got sent home.

Later in the program, I would talk about it as a tool I used to recognize if my head was getting out of wak. If my head was getting out of wak I wet my bed I said it was,? my unconscious telling me to come down on myself.? (before the group did.)

68
The Seed Discussion Forum / Day 18 - Moral Inventory - 8/15/75 (Open Meeting)
« on: November 17, 2005, 09:10:00 AM »
Quote
"I wrote a MI... once.... It was about how I would not comply the next day and how I was proud of not compling the day I wrote it.


like I said, Hero.

69
The Seed Discussion Forum / Day 18 - Moral Inventory - 8/15/75 (Open Meeting)
« on: November 17, 2005, 09:07:00 AM »
yeah you got to keep them as a diary of your early days, in facta as seedlings,we treasured them.  I think it was one of the last things I trashed. I wish I had it now.
I can't imagine having ust refused to write.  You all were so much more creative then me.  You guys are my heros.

70
The Seed Discussion Forum / Explain straight to me
« on: November 17, 2005, 08:57:00 AM »
Ooops that was me

71
The Seed Discussion Forum / Why did cleveland branch close?
« on: November 15, 2005, 10:27:00 AM »
Quote
But, that last day we met in a room I had never been in before. In the mornings we usually met in a room with windows looking out the back of the property. The chairs faced across the open meeting chairs in the typical "Seed" way. And in the afternoon we would move downstairs to another rap room, no open meeting chairs.  This day we met in room with no chairs and everyone sat on the ground.


I have a theory about that.  I think when They took us out of the regular rap room into one of the many basement rooms (and  in the nine month or so I was there I never saw all of these rooms)it was to make us feel under attack by the outside.  Basement rooms, few windows, group huddled together on the floor.  They were using setting to exagerate the illusion that the world was against us.  
I remember one time eggs were thrown into the courtyard just outside the upstairs rap room and we were immediately led downstairs to finish the rap  They were just eggs for god sake.

72
The Seed Discussion Forum / Talent In Cleveland
« on: November 15, 2005, 10:10:00 AM »
Greg it didn't seem to me that being picked to be in the talent show got me anything but out of group.  I was no star seedling!  Maybe I was on the good seedling list that week but I didn't know it.

It's hard to imagine that this was just a repeat of Florida talent shows cause, after it was over, Art did not approve.  Unless it wasn't art at all just parents complaining about kids dressing up as druggies.Sitll the day after the show it had all been good fun.  Two days after it was never to be spoken of again and soon after that Scott(the most playful staff member at the time) was gone.  I got the feeling all the staff had been reprimanded for creating the event.

No there was no turkey.  We did it at open meeting.

Which reminds me did you florida folks have the christmas dinner at the seed tradition/fiasco where they made you eat more than you wanted.  I remember being told stories for months before hand about seedlings asking for just a little of something and the staff member filling their whole plate with whatever food they had been requested to serve a small portion of.  They protrayed it as a sort of holiday jovialiy, stuffing everyone to the bursting point--Ho,Ho,HO.  It was considered vain to eat less than they heaped on your plate, "what are you trying to keep your girlish figure," as they heaped more mash potatoes on your plate then anyone should eat in one sitting.
That was fun!  At least we didn't have a heavy rap that day.

73
The Seed Discussion Forum / THE WRITING WAS ON THE WALL
« on: November 15, 2005, 09:44:00 AM »
My first few days were filled with fantasies of escaping but it was clear I couldn't get away, I had no where to go and it wasn't long till I saw kids who had run, caught--right back in group.
 In addition I had fantasies about my parents accepting and loving me again.  Really, I would stare out the window fantasizing about busting through the screen and running away forever followed by fantasizing that my parents were in the courtyard outside the window arms exstended to me like I was a toddler taking her first steps.  So I guess, despite what I saw, I had hopes, at first, that the program would make everything ok in my family again.  But after a couple weeks it didn't matter anymore cause the system won, it didn't take long to overpower a desperate young girl.   After that I was so busy looking for signs of fucked-up-ness in myself that my awareness that the program was fucked was disabled.  Any time anything happened in group which brought that to my attention I turning it around on myself asap--they weren't fucked up I was fucked up for thinking that and if I didn't stop I would be caught, screamed at or even started over.
All in all, given my powerless position at the time I think my unconscious did me a big favor by giving in enough to get through as fast as possible.

74
The Seed Discussion Forum / Explain straight to me
« on: November 15, 2005, 08:48:00 AM »
I can see how straight grew out of the seed but it also seems, from what I've read, to have differed.  I want to understand those differences.
What were the stages of the program?
How long were people in the program?
How often were kids started over?
How common was physical abuse commited visibly in group?
Did you have raps?  
What were the rules?
Did they claim to be able to read your minds?
What does day zero mean?
What were monday and friday home days?

inquiring and empathetic ex-seedling

75
Straight, Inc. and Derivatives / Day Zero
« on: November 14, 2005, 07:37:00 PM »
That sounds like something I would have had a nightmare about when I was in the seed.
Did your parents take you out because they were concerned you were not being taken care of; the program wasn't working, you got a message to them in a bottle--or something else?  After six months of being a first day newcomer you were just done?

You never gave in?

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