Haldol

[shadesong]

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.

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