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If you must lurk.. Trigger Warnings: Abuse, Neglect, Needless & Blood, Eating Disorder(s), Pain & Disability, Medication & overdosing .... I think that is it.
Eight weeks ago is when it all started.. Well this round of chaos that is. Eight weeks ago I entered a program, meant to help low income and first gen students get into college. I was rather excited for it all, I get to be away from home, meet new people, and get to do some fun things. The first few days there were normal. I was of course upset by not being allowed to have my medication on me nor my glucose monitor, but there is not much I can do about that. Kids at this place have overdosed in the dorms before, now I see why they did that.
They did not treat us like kids or humans, they treated us like animals. We woke up everyday at around 6-7am. If you were quick at getting up you could be at breakfast before 7:30 and still get up at 7am. I got up at around 6:20am. Four sinks in the bathroom, two showers, and 3 toilets. It was bound to be crazy, and I was not waiting in line. If you got to breakfast early enough you would have first grabs at the food… they sometimes ran out of food. At breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner we did meal checks. Grain, Fruit, Veggie, Dairy, and Meat. Those were the five things they looked for. However it was not that fair or easy. Not all meats counted, not all fruit and veggies counted, not all grains counted. Meals checks were hard… I was judged for what I ate a lot.
That is when my ED and restrictive eating started to come back into play. It always looked like I had a lot, but in reality I just had fruits, grains, and veggies. I always got in trouble for not having meat or milk.. I hate them so I do not eat them that often. My meal checker would make comments, roll her eyes, and laugh. It all sank in. I started to take less food, track the calories I was eating, and make sure I had the serving since or under it. No more or less than 500 calories each meal. There were only three meals a day and well if you wanted a snack, you best have some in your dorm room. Some kids got clever and snuck food out of the dinning hall back into their dorms. We were not technically supposed to take food and drink from the dining hall but you did what you had to do.
Water and any time of liquid was another thing in those living conditions. There was one clean filtered water fountain down stairs on the first floor. And very few in the buildings where classes were in, no water bottle filling station in the class buildings. After 10:15 if you wanted water you were screwed basically. We were not allowed off our floors past 10:15, and after 10:45 we could not leave our dorms and overhead lights needed to be off. Sure that would be enough time to do things, but we did not get back to our dorms until 9:15-9:20pm. An hour to shower for everyone on each floor. Four showers, two on each side of the hallway. If you were disparate and needed water you would get it from downstairs.. But that water was horrible. It was warm, gross.
The water was warmer than our showers were. Freezing cold showers everyday in immense heat. It was stabbing freezing cold pain that would shock your body. It was like dumping ice onto your head. They said it was because they shut the warm water off in that dorm hall, all the other dorm halls had warm water we did not. If you were one of the lucky ones that did not get a freezing cold shower it would be so hot that you would come out looking like a lobster. The water was hot to the point it would burn you. There was never a nice shower there.
Lunch was our longest meal of the day, an hour long. It was a long line everyday, I mean at the peak there were around 100 kids just from our group there. By the time lunch came kids were starving, they would run out of food again. We would all want water or other drinks they had to offer. As everyone was wanting to pass meal checks and everything else, eating became unhealthy for everyone. That is when the problems started.
Cold showers, dehydration, lack of nutrients, lack of proper rest and care… Well you can guess what happened next. Kids going into the second and third week became ill, extremely ill. Some were sent to hospital in an ambulance because of this. Others would be bed ridden sick and instead of allowing them to rest they were given one day and sent back to class. I remember one girl just lying on the ground wrapped up in a blanket so ill. One night we were going out to a state park and they were going to make kids who were ill go as they did not have staff to stay with them. They never asked any staff to stay back. A staff member seeing how bad a kid looked said she would stay back. We lived like this for four weeks.
By the fifth week is when things became insane. In hopes to get more to join the program they let the new scholars get away with anything. So much crying, screaming, yelling, running around, talking back, etc. If we had pulled any of that the month before, it would have been a Class C if not Class B. They just let them tell them to *** off… So many broken rules. We got study outs and if we had three it would be a Class C. They broke bounds, an automatic Class B and suspension. All they got was a slap on the wrist. They plotted to sneak out of the dorms, tried sneaking people into the dorms, and anything else you could try. The staff just let them. All while we had to suffer in silence.
The worst part for me is the amount of stuff they were spraying. I had a staff member who was really good and I cried in her arms. Why? Because I had such a bad migraine. The smells were horrid, it was so strong. My head hurts almost everyday, some days I layed in bed and could barely move. It was very fun.
The final week, week 6. We went to DC. It was a cool trip, I cannot deny that. However, what the staff pulled off was not cool. The first day we went to see over 18 monuments. It was a hard day for all of us, we got very little time to sit down, only three meals, and very little access to water. DC was hot that week, and being from a state where it is 90 degrees it was very hard for us. I understood the struggle. I spent many hours outside and I was hurting so bad from this trip.
One thing I do not talk a lot about is being chronically ill. It is not a part of me I am proud of and one that brings a lot of shame. However, heat and I do not mix for these reasons. It was also a lot of movement with no time to sit down. As I get more ill I struggle to be active for longer periods of time without sitting down. My body simply does not have the muscle strength to support that need anymore. My ankles were swollen really bad during that trip. We had also been on a bus for 13 hours the day before, we had maybe stopped for a total of 2 hours during the whole trip down to DC. It was not a fun bus ride.
The hotel was wild. Some people wanted to go swimming. There were maybe 40 of us, and maybe only 10-15 wanted to go. We had enough time and staff willing to do so, but the director said no, because she said so. My favorite thing was the Smithusims, a bunch of museums we could go and see. The last day instead of going to the zoo like we had been told to do, they brought us to the African Americans Museum. No problem. Besides that fact no one wanted to go there, not because of what it was about because the day before people got to go to places instead of them and they had been given around 2 and a half hours for three museums. (four if you were like me and went to the Holocaust Museum) They gave us three hours for this one museum. In my opinion it was the smallest one of them all and we were able to make it through most of it. Another problem was it was a very strict place, we were technically not supposed to leave the staff, but we still did.
Everyone was a bit upset by this, it was not a fair trade in are opinion. Are tour guide was horrible. He planned the trip based on what he wants to do and his interests. He failed to understand what teens would like to do. They brought us to a mall and gave us less then one hour to be in said mall and never brought us back. He would not stop talking, sure it's his job, but he can give us a break too. He told us that if he gets a certain amount of steps then he gets a bonus and I thought that was true based on how much he would make us do. Needless to say, by the end of this trip people were so sick. Coughing and hurting. It was not a good sight to see. Finally we made it back home after being stuck on a bus for 15 hours. The staff truly failed us these 6 weeks.
Some other things that I did mention also happened. I was wrongfully given a Class C. It happened as I was put in Learning Group D. We figured out that there were four levels of learning groups. They had a handful of AP students, maybe 5-6 in the whole program. To even it out we had been broken up into these learning groups to help make it more “fair” it was only harmful to us. My learning group called themselves the “dumb learning group” and things like that. When I was telling a staff member that, they told another staff member. I still remember the words “I did not realize how many staff you had talked to.” I had only talked to my on floor staff, the Assistant Director, and him willingly. I did what they told me to do, that was it. “Unfomrautaly, you will be getting a Class C.” That was it, he put my math work in front of my face and left me by myself to do it. I had not even known what I did in those moments to get a Class C, other than speak up and advocate for my needs. When I asked, he quickly took it back. It was so unfair, and one that really hurts. Two bridge students got Class B’s right before the trip for some dumb things. They should have been allowed to come on the trip, they were both very good students. Another thing that had happened was they would take car keys so we could not run away as students had done that in the past as well. One kid told the director to *** off and he was not giving her the keys, so they gave him a Class A and expelled him from the program.
When I came back home, there was lots to be done, however I was so tired and could not bear to do a normal life. I was worried about how much weight I had gained and the upcoming school year. I had also not been feeling well. That is when other things started to happen. Of course I finally pulled my *** together and went to field hockey, which sucked. We will get to that in a bit. It also meant going to the doctors. I have very good doctors, but this time it meant more tests. They checked my reflexives again they had not approved, but only got worse. I hate seeing when that happens. They wanted to do some blood work, how fun. By now getting poked by a needle is something I am very used to, every few months I get blood drawn now. The first few tests came back today, something(s) were low so they will be running more tests. Yay.
On the first morning being home, I was told my dad has cancer. He will have surgery right before I go back to school, how delightful. My mom is in joy with all of this, she thinks he is finally getting karam, for being an ***. They argue all the time about this, their bad life habits and hate for each other caused this, of course. Nothing they can do now will change it, so why fight about it? Cancer sucks, it truly does. I still remember watching my meme die of cancer. I was 14 at the time, I was numb and that was it. I did not cry when she died, it was not until almost a year later that I did cry. I know the worst will come for this school year, I am not dumb and I know this is going to happen for a long time.
As the school year approaches so does my stress and anxiety for the year to come. It will not be an easy one. We are down to 13 staff members, late last week I found out we lost our head of math. She was an amazing teacher but could no longer handle the nonsense at my school, if i would leave that school I would too. It was hard to see 16 people leave. Some of them were the best teachers that school had, some I could care less for. Each one of our parents is a staff member down right now, each department runs by 6 staff members. My schedule got changed because of this. I was meant to be looping with my math teacher from last year, now I do not even have a math teacher for math. That really sucked to see, knowing that I could prove to her I can do better than what I did last year. I had so much happen at once that I just stopped trying.
Sports are horrid, it always comes with a lot of bullying, and so doesn’t theatre and speech and band. Nothing I do anymore comes with happiness, just hate from others. It is funny because no matter how I change myself I will never be good enough for them. I get called gay for not dating or doing performing arts, amongst other things. The overall rude comments I face just hurts. My coaches do not do anything about it as they make the same comments about other schools and coaches, a real good example. And they wonder why their girls are out of the field yelling at refs and swearing. I have braces I can wear, however I do not wear them. They mock me for them and tell me I am faking and just want attention. Once a kid had taken my crutches when I had hurt my knee badly. They mocked me around the classroom and the teacher did nothing to stop it. My knee hurt and I tried walking without crutches. It was too painful and my doctors made me use them. That season as I played lacrosse my coach whilst I was driving a lane on the field said “She is too slow why can’t she understand that.” from the sideline. My heart was shattered. I didn't mean to be slow, I was still coming back from not being able to do anything for 6 months. This year I was a starter and running faster and stronger, she was not the coach though. She came to some games and did not even want to speak to me, I was now playing full games as a midfielder.
Being ill and playing sports is not a good mix however. While I was at practice I had become extremely dizzy and almost passed out. However that same day was just a bad day, I had cried for three hours, which for me is rather dangerous, and had not eaten all day. It was only an hour of practice. We did not do much but my body hurt so bad afterwards and stayed like that for a few days even with my medication to manage pain. I know I do not have much time left to play sports, that is why I am planning on this being my last year. I will only be 17 when I retire from sports.
Retiring at 17 does mean one thing, graduating early. My school is out of science classes to offer, or well anything that is at a high enough level and will benefit me. No matter what for my senior year they would need to send me to another school or to a college so I could get some sort of education. To be able to get away from that program and sports graduating early is the best option for me to do now. It is stressful to say the least. I will need to defend my reasoning to my admin at school and guidance counselor and hope they approve of it.
