If you asked a teenage Dae if someday she’d be the “asshole
staff” that would be working in a residential home like the ones she found
herself living in for most of her adolescent years, I’m almost 99.9999% certain
that her answer would be, “Fuck no, I hate those guys. I’d [insert some
horrible action to myself] before I sold out like that.”
Going on through the years I, again, never considered
residential counseling. It wasn’t even on the radar. Writer, musician, and
medic were the Big Three up until recently. There had been that stint when I
was about 27 when I had kicked around the idea of becoming a Psy.D but that
went through the window when I realized it was “too much” schooling and, at the
time, I couldn’t be bothered to deal with other people whining at me about their
problems. I was still nursing the wounds from the battle (compassion) fatigue
of being an emergency tech and the drama that comes from that. I was still
trying to figure out who I was after investing years into my failed
relationship. I was just still trying to just be.
I never had the chance to just BE when I was growing up or
really ever when I got to thinking about it. As a child, mother dictated
everything. When I lost my shit and found myself locked up in residential homes and
hospitals they dictated even more. Back then it was a different game. They had
restraint protocols in the residential homes that got intense if you got too
intense. The hospitals had a chemical restraint program and if your parent
signed off that it was okay to drug the shit out of you then, guess what, you
were going on a vacation whether you wanted to or not.
The very sad and very frightening reality is that I don’t
remember a lot of my teens because I was either self medicated or I was
medicated against my will. When I wasn’t medicated I was emotionally shut down
so that I didn’t have to think about where I was because I had no idea when or
if I was going home. I had to deal with level systems, begging for rides, no alone time because one always had to be in the milieu during awake hours, asking for permission to
piss, counting out loud when I was in the bathroom just so that they knew I
wasn’t harming myself. I could be barged in on in the shower at any moment just
in case I was taking too long. Shaved legs? Forget it. The bohemian look was
something I just had to deal with. I learned to like it for a time. Shared
rooms with up to three other girls, bunk beds, people stealing your clothes and make
up, sometimes more. People getting in your space after lights out. It was… not
fun. More to the point, it wasn’t fun when you finally got sick of it and broke
and the staff had to hold you down and put you in the “quiet room” where you
sat alone until you were willing to process. If you didn’t process you stayed
there. I spent a lot of time in this room when I found myself at my final
destination of Harbinger House. It was the only way I had any alone time. They got wise to this and soon found that my acting out (swearing at staff) wasn't going to get me alone time and I was forced to go to the next level if I wanted to be alone. Not a recommended course of action...
I lost so much of integral development living in that
environment. Up to the point that I’ve never really been able to understand the
outside world much at all. The coats now say it’s because of the Asperger’s but
I think it’s because I was never socialized properly to begin with. I watch TV
shows about teenagers and I see them going through their rights of passage and
I think, “I never got any of that.” I went from pre-teen to adult. I went beyond
that, I went to adult who was homeless for a time and on tour with a band and I
saw shit that I shouldn’t have. I ran away from everything I had just seen and
I tried to be someone else. I divorced myself from the residential years. I
wanted to live and…. I sure as fuck did.
Now, I’m 33 almost 34 and I’m one of those staff working
with an age range of 19 to 78 year olds who have seen some of the same shit I
have, some who have seen far worse than I could ever imagine. I think about
that every day that I walk into one of the homes and I think back to that young girl that
I was, screaming at the staff, throwing chairs at walls and threatening all
manner of bodily harm. Some days I meet some version of myself in the people
that I help every day, when they’re screaming at me, threatening me, crying for
what some of you would think is no reason, telling me the same story they told
me last week, and, yes, sometimes attacking me (though this is very rare) and I think to myself, “No I
never imagined that I’d be doing this. But I’m glad as hell that I am. Because
sometimes I think I’m the only one who gets them and I’m the only one strong
enough to do this.” Because of my past I love what I do. Every. Damn. Day. I can't see myself doing anything else.
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