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Written in 1990... I'd just gotten out of the adolescent psychiatric ward, and been sent to the wilderness survival institute.
The stories I wrote there originated a few of the characters you'll see today. They also featured Annie, who would later give birth to Shawn Farrell, the first character you see in issue one. But back then Annie was sixteen, like me.
I wrote something yesterday that haunted me... because I had written it before, for a different girl, another girl who felt trapped and helpless.
This is what we do when we are stumbling for catharsis. We try to see from the outside. We do to our characters what has been done to us. Alanna's abuser speaks in my abuser's voice. Annie and, in yesterday's snippet, Alanna...
I remember this. I remember the shot and my mind falling apart. Now I can identify this as a post-ictal state - post-seizure state. Now I've read that, in patients with epilepsy, psychotropic medication triggers seizures. Keeps you in this state when you're on it.
They routinely shot the lot of us up with antipsychotics when we "acted out". Thorazine and Haldol. I remember trying to mind-over-matter it; I remember screaming because I couldn't fight.
I wrote this when I was sixteen. It sucks. I am just showing you an echo.
Annie saw the needle in the nurse's hand and began to cry. "Heidi, no! I'm calm now, I really am. I don't need it, I'm calm..." She tried to break free, but couldn't. She started to tremble as Heidi pulled down her shorts and injected the Haldol. "Please, you don't know what it does to me. You don't know what you're doing, Heidi! Please..."
I didn't realize yesterday that I was rewriting. I didn't realize til today that I had written this before.
Yesterday.
“Let go of me, you fucking dogs. Let go! Daniel, no, Daniel, don’t…”
Daniel stroked her hair. “You need to calm down, Alanna.”
“Don’t you fucking tell me what to do. You are nothing.”
Daniel nodded, and a Hound edged Alanna’s pants down. She screamed again, renewing her struggles, but they held her in place long enough for Daniel to inject…something… just below her hip. “Take her to her room,” he instructed the Hounds. Alanna was weeping bitterly as they escorted her from the room. Barely fighting anymore.
I subconsciously visit upon her what was visited on me. Because I still don't understand. I don't understand how my parents could put me in that place and know what happened there and left me there. The people who were supposed to protect me left me. Bad things happened to me, and they knew, and they made me stay, and there was no reason other than that they couldn't handle me. That they wouldn't listen.
Peeling back layers. I didn't know that this was still there.
The second most important thing in my life is writing.
The most important thing in my life is my daughter. I love her. And I will always, always listen to her. And I will protect her. And I will not abandon her.
Oh, god, I didn't know all of this was still here.
This must be why I keep writing Alanna. She's the girl no one protects. Her father put her in this place where no one loves her. Where people hurt her on purpose. Her other behaviors... Alanna is me at age sixteen. But she's me at age sixteen forever.
I want to understand, but I don't know if I can.
I will never let this happen to my daughter. I never let a day go by without telling her that I love her. Hugging her. There was none of that when I was growing up. I give her that. I hug her and I listen.
Bad things happened, and people knew that they were happening, and no one helped. I kept screaming, and no one helped.
Gods. That's who Alanna is.
The stories I wrote there originated a few of the characters you'll see today. They also featured Annie, who would later give birth to Shawn Farrell, the first character you see in issue one. But back then Annie was sixteen, like me.
I wrote something yesterday that haunted me... because I had written it before, for a different girl, another girl who felt trapped and helpless.
This is what we do when we are stumbling for catharsis. We try to see from the outside. We do to our characters what has been done to us. Alanna's abuser speaks in my abuser's voice. Annie and, in yesterday's snippet, Alanna...
I remember this. I remember the shot and my mind falling apart. Now I can identify this as a post-ictal state - post-seizure state. Now I've read that, in patients with epilepsy, psychotropic medication triggers seizures. Keeps you in this state when you're on it.
They routinely shot the lot of us up with antipsychotics when we "acted out". Thorazine and Haldol. I remember trying to mind-over-matter it; I remember screaming because I couldn't fight.
I wrote this when I was sixteen. It sucks. I am just showing you an echo.
Annie saw the needle in the nurse's hand and began to cry. "Heidi, no! I'm calm now, I really am. I don't need it, I'm calm..." She tried to break free, but couldn't. She started to tremble as Heidi pulled down her shorts and injected the Haldol. "Please, you don't know what it does to me. You don't know what you're doing, Heidi! Please..."
I didn't realize yesterday that I was rewriting. I didn't realize til today that I had written this before.
Yesterday.
“Let go of me, you fucking dogs. Let go! Daniel, no, Daniel, don’t…”
Daniel stroked her hair. “You need to calm down, Alanna.”
“Don’t you fucking tell me what to do. You are nothing.”
Daniel nodded, and a Hound edged Alanna’s pants down. She screamed again, renewing her struggles, but they held her in place long enough for Daniel to inject…something… just below her hip. “Take her to her room,” he instructed the Hounds. Alanna was weeping bitterly as they escorted her from the room. Barely fighting anymore.
I subconsciously visit upon her what was visited on me. Because I still don't understand. I don't understand how my parents could put me in that place and know what happened there and left me there. The people who were supposed to protect me left me. Bad things happened to me, and they knew, and they made me stay, and there was no reason other than that they couldn't handle me. That they wouldn't listen.
Peeling back layers. I didn't know that this was still there.
The second most important thing in my life is writing.
The most important thing in my life is my daughter. I love her. And I will always, always listen to her. And I will protect her. And I will not abandon her.
Oh, god, I didn't know all of this was still here.
This must be why I keep writing Alanna. She's the girl no one protects. Her father put her in this place where no one loves her. Where people hurt her on purpose. Her other behaviors... Alanna is me at age sixteen. But she's me at age sixteen forever.
I want to understand, but I don't know if I can.
I will never let this happen to my daughter. I never let a day go by without telling her that I love her. Hugging her. There was none of that when I was growing up. I give her that. I hug her and I listen.
Bad things happened, and people knew that they were happening, and no one helped. I kept screaming, and no one helped.
Gods. That's who Alanna is.
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I'm glad that you were able to hold tightly to Self, and come through it with the inner you still intact. You are strong.
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All I can say is I cried... I cried for you and for me. And for everyone else who's ever been hidden away for the sake of making things easier.
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I'm sorry. I'm sorry that your parents weren't there, I'm sorry that you had to go through that, and I'm sorry I know.
*hugs*
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Personally, writing has helped me to understand quite a bit.
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I don't know why I always read stuff like this -- you write stuff like this -- right when I'm feeling the most vulnerable. (That's not a bad thing at all.)
Whoa. Deja vous.
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I am in mind of my mother informing me that my father had never cursed at me or hit me...
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It's amazing how we re-write things in our heads.
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Thank you for helping me get a little closer to being able to put it in to words. It's something I also experienced, but my mind just can't wrap around the event, can't understand *why* it hurt so much. Just wants to pretend that everything is okay, and that nothing really happened.
It lifts my heart a bit to know, though, that you'll be there for your daughter. That you'll protect her. That you'll listen.
Sometimes it feels like too few people understand the importance of just listening.
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protecting myself
But, I knew then that I could not and would not ever put myself into a cage.
Reading Alanna's story, reminded me of those days. When I look at my daughter, who has been through her own emotional ups and downs, I wonder if we put our kids into institutes because they need help or because we don't want to deal with helping them ourselves.
I'm inclined to believe it's the latter. I helped my daughter get through her rough time. I don't know that I did the best that could have been done, but I *do* believe that she would have died in there in a cage, just like I would have. Maybe not physically "died" as in brain death... but spiritual death is pretty much the same thing?
I'm glad you are here with us and sharing hurtful things... you have no idea how many you are helping.
Thanks.
Re: protecting myself
Speaking as a clueless outsider (i.e. someone who's never had to go through it, either as the child or as the parent), I suspect there's a mixture of those who do it for one reason, and those who do it for the other.
If I had been a "troubled" child (in a sense that anyone other than me actually noticed), and some "expert" had recommended I should go away for a while, I'm sure my mother would have *wanted* to look after me herself, but could also easily have been persuaded I would be better off being "looked after by the professionals". And if she got any inkling of horror stories happening to me, she would have been worried sick, but easily bamboozled into believing that what was happening was "better than the alternative". She was not a self-confident woman, and very trusting of medical authority (until her last few years of bitter experience).
My Dad, meanwhile, might have gone along with the idea out of sheer terror of having to deal with the situation himself. As it is, having us kids around for 20 years was a situation he endured simply because it was what Mum wanted. (He gets on much better with us now we're adults, of course, but we'll never exactly be close.)
Re: protecting myself
In my case, I was up against my friends who only wanted what was in my best interests. But, locking myself away... well, to be honest, if they really thought I was a threat to myself, then I figure they would not have quit trying.
As for my daughter, I got her someone to talk to and made sure she knew that I was there for her. But, I don't know what I would have done if she had been in much worse shape. I hope I would have considered other options.
Re: protecting myself
One of my favorite quotes:
"The tiniest story in your life can deeply affect another. You cannot know the effect your story might have."
--SARK
Re: protecting myself
and hope to someday collect some of those hugs in person.
Re: protecting myself
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*hug*
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Thank you both for your insights. As long as I can remember, I've been depressed. Everyone's memory of my childhood is that I was a happy little girl who woke up every morning saying "Good morning, Sunshine!" This gives me hope that I can "peel the onion" far enough to reveal the core, happy me.
Despite the work I've done in therapy and recovery, I suspect that there's something I just don't remember or something I'm severely minimizing that's keeping me blocked. I thought maybe hypnosis would be the only way to get at it. Now I see that there may be another way.
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