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i wanna tell you what it's like to be a teenage mental patient to have your every movement your every uttered word scrutinized then to be accused of paranoia when you point this out in order to get out you have to lie it's torture and after enough pain you learn what do to you learn the way they want you to act you walk the walk, and talk the talk and smile and take your meds and speak of goal-set-ting grad-u-ating and job get-ting you can always tell the new admits wild-eyed and still high on crack, coke, speed or in a dazed stupor after a botched suicide attempt after a self-mutilation gone too far gauzy white bandages encircling fragile wounded wrists i saw a hefty 14-year old gangsta girl so engulfed with anger and indignation at her incarceration it took two grown women and men to subdue her in such cases they hold you down and tranquilize you like an animal like the unreachable wounded animal they consider you to be cause so-called crazy kids aren't allowed to be kids are forced to be patients you are drugged under-educated over-therapized psychiatrized and victimized this is all for your own good cause you are sick something gone wrong with your brain we'll fix it with meds and institutional bard and forced aa meetings we'll treat you goddamnit whether you want it or not it's not life on the streets, or being a poor immigrant kid it's not daddy's touching it's not mommy's drinking your brain is broken and we'll fix it with drugs we'll fix it all with drugs the newest drugs the legal drugs just don't get caught with the ones that make you feel good they're not allowed in here oak grove institute was a mad warehouse for troublesome kids of all sorts jason was 10 and had tourette's syndrome jack was a cross-dressing nirvana fan andy hit his mother marie was developmentally disabled kizzie and lil brazy were hood rats angie was a beautiful black gothic girl sue idolized michael jackson "obsessively sarah-lynn had satan worshipers for parents sue and sarah-lynn loved one another for which they were put on 20 bart-restriction and me let's just say i was a depressed severely-emotionally-disturbed borderline-personality-disordered medium-to-high suicide risk i wore too much eye-liner and fishnet stockings skipped school sometimes and was almost editor-in-chief of my high school paper before they locked me up i remember us crazy girls wild with boredom and rage scraping anarchy symbols into our skin with an eraser the only weapon we possessed watching scab turn into scar growing bitter and old inside watching the days go by i remember sneaking clove cigarettes on the roof with jack sucking down those cigarettes as fast as we could pausing for awkward kisses praying to god that we don't get caught cause you ain't allowed to love no one in there yeah, they look down on that in there we were released, all of us, one by one sentences determined by 1) our insurance policies and 2) our acting abilities sent back to the places and the people the lives we were trapped in that fucked us up in the first place cause we live in a quick-fix patch-it-up world and there were no easy solutions for the kids we were there are no easy solutions for the thousands of kids still behind locked doors in the back wards and that's what it's like to be a teenage mental patient by leah ida harris |
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