Along with the desire to tell my story arises the inclination to submerge myself in eternal, sub-aqueous oblivion. Stinging eyes replicate this inclination. Time, after all, heals while preserving its contents.
But the tears aren’t for now. I love this coffee shop and gotta keep up appearances. Plus, I am still shedding the carcass of the idea that crying equals submission. Such is the way of coming into your own power.
I let the memories come. Then I will do my best to keep them coming.
My current accounting of my story starts when I am 15 years old, in the midst of a downward adolescent spiral and institutionalized in a behavioral hospital called Methodist. I never had problems with authority. I wasn’t placed there for violent outbursts. At 15, I had become intensely addicted to cocaine. But ya know, human does as human sees her parents do.
The memories of this addiction do not plague me much anymore. Memories of the root cause, however, I am still working through.
It’s not easy to remember things long suppressed. Though now, the remnants only further press me to accomplish what I set out to do. Even up until a couple of years ago, remembering would bring my entire world down around me in razor-sharp fragments. What has always saved me is a vow of my own deliverance from chaos--a vow that had often protected me from the brunt of nightmarish stress experienced on the reg in those days.
Certain smells will sometimes take me back to the loft above the therapy rooms at Methodist where all the chocolate and prizes for good behavior were kept. Sometimes when I’m walking through an unfamiliar house, I briefly hallucinate rushes of movement as I turn a corner and I remember the little boy that called me by the name of his mother. He reminded me of my little brother (who was also institutionalized at the time). He liked to hold my hand and pretend that I could protect him from everything. I don’t remember his name and that blankets my heart in sadness.
Then I remember sitting on the floor of a foster home with a girl who was getting adopted by her foster mother. This girl didn’t have extended family to fight for her. The foster mother allowed two of her adult sons to crash there while I was there. Thankfully, she was watchful of her sons while they were around me. One tried to come into my room one night; she had me sleep in her room. She kept my door locked and slept on the couch. The other son, a 28 year old, kissed me in the hallway one evening. I was only there for a couple of weeks but I do not like to remember this place. In my memory, it is shrouded in opaque shadow.
For many reasons though, Methodist effects me much differently than the foster home. I found myself there. And in the shelter, too (less formal of a location; not as keen on a strict schedule of round-the-clock distraction). There, I remember dreaming of my future and scribbling stories in the sand. I admired the anthills in the backyard for their harmonious complexities. I read secretly by moonlight long into the cover of night.
I remember the days the sun rays would reach in through the filter of blinds in my window, the days that pushed the tiniest bit of light into diamond shapes and laid them across my comforter. I remember relishing the nighttime. I could take my socks off and feel the coolness of the sheets against my bare feet. Light’s out was time for me to sink back into the pillows of bliss that existed in my head: bliss in other worlds, in stories I’d read, in my future. Luckily I had convinced “the authorities” that the Chronicles of Narnia was a religious volume. Most of the time it was either in my arms or in bed with me, bringing me the comfort that only words of adventure could. Deep in the South, the conservative constitutions of the adults around me did not impose any type of confinement upon my imagination.
Although buried deep was the conviction that I would rise above all the pain, I was, of course, still a child. The levels of grief I experienced were torturous. My soul often felt ripped from it’s scaffolding…burned…thrown to the winds of fate and out of reach. The moments that allowed me to feel my soul were the genuine connections I had around me. A few of them staff members, a few of them inmates-in-arms.
I recall on my 16th birthday one of my favorite staff members gifting me a box of Oreo’s and a People magazine. If my memory serves me correctly, the magazine lasted a couple of hours before every article was read. The Oreo’s, which I divided among a few of my closest captive friends, didn’t last much longer than the magazine. I remember being outside on the day I turned 16 and yeah it sucked, but I was content. I vividly recall letting my gaze focus on the black chain-link fence until I no longer recognized it as a sign of my confinement. It became a decorative totem in my mind; an adornment to this prolonged phase of the juxtaposition of these memories. I dream often of jumping fences established by systems or people attempting to contain me or those I care about.
Methodist was a small complex of red-bricked buildings tucked into the not-so-unpoliced neighborhood of Fillmore in Little Rock, Arkansas. All in all it was a co-ed facility but the buildings were separated by age and gender. At one point, I recall a boy that I had known from my hometown being held in the building next to ours. He had long, blonde hair and rebelled against all things that told him who he should be. The closeness of him brought me comfort. At one point, another girl I had known from my hometown came through. She had taken to smoking tobacco in public malls as an outcry of rebellion to her parents.
Amateur.
The real rebellion is the untold one. The rebellion that lies in secret, in your heart. The rebellion that takes years to fully manifest itself after you turn 18 and begin to shed the components of self-deprecating behavior.
The rebellion of taking back your own life.
I remember rhyming ridiculous flows and drumming on everything with my co-detainees. I remember jumping on the beds in our room and attempting to get high by sniffing hand sanitizer; then laughing even harder when it didn’t work. I remember not getting in trouble for every discretion because most of the Behavioral Instructors were good people who felt sorry for us. They wanted us to have some sort of relief from the confinement.
I remember again dabbling in the art of bulimia in order to achieve an entire day of rest and avoid the 5:30am wake up call. I hated the mornings. The sterility of the place really seeped into your core in the mornings. It was the afternoons and evenings I loved the most. Dinner signaled an entire of day of motion conquered. The afternoons signaled the interim for group therapy settings, in which something entertaining was always happening. Either one of us was throwing such a violent tantrum as to require being taken out into the hallway and stabbed with Thorazine in the buttcheek. Or one of us was making up some elaborate story about a family matter, romantic interest, or egregious act of terrorism we had performed prior to captivity. These were the times I felt most comforted; the times I felt less targeted for my secret plan to prevail despite all of life’s unparalled hardships.
The most gut-wrenching of breakthroughs occured in no place as drastically as they did in the White Room. I do not discuss the confines of this room with any brazen tone. I speak delicately of this room; these times I sat in the corner diagonal to the weighted, barred door. I speak from a space of great paradox. This room allowed the silence to press in so heavily that the influences swimming within my being rose to the surface in support of me.
So at the time of me being the most abandoned I had ever felt, I suddenly was the least alone I would ever be again.
It was in that room that I discovered within myself the incredibly tangible reality of my future.
It was in that room that I learned to make patience my ally.
It was in that room I uncovered resilience in it’s rawest form.
To be continued & thank you for reading, Shasta.
Shasta Moon is a creative hailing from the yonder reaches of Central Arkansas. Currently based out of the Seattle area, she is focused on pursuing a career in music and using her voice as an Animal Rights Activist. This is her introduction to writing publicly about her story.