I read your piece while sitting on the couch this morning, before I was ready to shower and start the day. My eight year old son was playing a baseball video game but the right side of his body was pushed up against the left side of mine as if he just couldn’t get close enough to me.
I spent a little time in several institutions as a teen. My first was at 12. Itwas the early 1990s. My experiences were very much mixed. Some parts of my story I’ve gone over in my head a million times. But while reading your experience I remembered one I guess I had forgotten. Isolation, freezing cold, being forgotten, abandoned, screaming and crying out of fear and loneliness, all I needed was someone to comfort me. I knew I was on camera but no matter what I did nobody came. I felt like I would die and I had nothing to protect me. Nothing to distract me. I don’t know if im making this next part up or if I’m remembering something I tried to forget : I started taking my clothes off, hoping would get the attention of the staff, so someone would come save me. It must have worked because I remember a male staff member coming to check on me. He gave me a blanket but I needed someone to stay with me I was so scared and so c cold. He tossed me a blanket but showed no concern that I had been sobbing and screaming and pacing for hours.
That’s all I remember. Oh, and there were windows on ever side of that tiny room. But nobody looked in. And when I think of my precious son, just three and a half years younger than I was when that was my reality…. I just can’t believe I would have been treated like that if anybody had loved me like I love him.Sorry this comment is a mess. Thank you for reminding me of that incident, I bet it is very relevant to my abandonment fears that I’ve been working so hard on.
