I was so depressed that even my demons felt apathetic. They were nagging at me to just kill myself already, but they didn’t have any useful ideas of how I might accomplish that. The way I saw it, I had only a few options when it came to a Carlbrook suicide:
Hanging Myself I didn’t know where to find a rope and all I had were J.Crew ribbon belts. That hardly seemed strong enough. Plus, where would I even hang it? We didn’t have doors, after all. Our IKEA shelves wouldn’t be up to the task. The bunk bed would hold my weight, but the logistics there were a little complicated.
Drowning in the Lake It was certainly deep enough. I was pretty sure my swimmer’s instincts were so deeply ingrained in me that they’d kick in, like it or not. Then I’d just be cold, wet, and in trouble.
There’s always hypothermia.
Toothpaste I had free access to the toothpaste of every girl in my sleeping mod and I figured if I swallowed the contents of all the tubes at once, it might do me in. Considering how hard it was for me even to clean up other people’s toothpaste, the chances of me managing to ingest it were slim to none.
Razor Blade This was the obvious choice for a Carlbrook suicide. It was the way Kyle had tried to do it, when he ran into the woods and tried to slit his wrists. But I was even more averse to blood than toothpaste. Once, in elementary school, I got a paper cut and fainted. Actually fainted.
Cleaning Products Cleaning products were another option. The trouble would be in managing to round up enough to make it worthwhile. If I didn’t, I’d end up with a tube down my throat, getting my stomach pumped. Then it would be off to a psych ward for me.
Suffocating with a Pillowcase The problem with this one? It felt a little too much like a workshop exercise.
Ultimately, I didn’t really want to die. I just couldn’t keep on going the way I had been. Every time I thought I’d reached rock bottom, the ground beneath me would sink another foot. I was so exhausted just trying to keep up with all the lies I told to protect myself, always trying to think two moves ahead.
If I use this disclosure now, what will I say next time?
Do I use a real story? Or do I make something up?
Who do I call out to save myself from the hot seat? And who’s about to call me out?
Is all this fighting even worth it?
There was no right move, not really. It was a rigged game. There was no getting ahead at Carlbrook. There was only falling further and further behind.
Chapter 28
GIVEN MY GENERAL mood, I knew there was another program in my future. I spoke in group only when I was asked a direct question, and my response was usually something along the lines of “I don’t care.” I kept to myself as much as I could, and I refused to smoosh during Last Light. I was headed for the glass room one way or another. It was only a matter of time.
I knew my time had come when I checked the request list and found my name right below Maya’s. She’d been on my case since Animus, at first trying to cheer me up and then, when that didn’t work, confronting me on our walks across campus.
“Are you still in a bad mood?”
“I’m fine,” I said. “I don’t understand how you’re in such a good mood.”
“Animus was so powerful.” Maya smiled. “I just really connected to the message, I think.”
“We must have gone through different workshops,” I said. “Because I thought the whole thing was pretty fucking awful. Inhumane, really.”
“I wish you’d stop being so negative about the school. You don’t participate in group anymore. I know it may hurt sometimes, but it’s for your own good.”
I wanted to shake her. How is writing your own obituary good? I knew there was no talking Maya out of her conviction that Carlbrook was helping us, just as there was no convincing me it wasn’t doing the opposite.
“I don’t know, Maya,” I said. “I think we’ll have to agree to disagree.”
As much as these kinds of conversations annoyed me, I never doubted Maya’s intentions. I knew she was at least trying to help me; it wasn’t some cynical attempt to advance herself or kiss up to the staff. Taking it to group, though, was another matter altogether. To make matters worse, Monica happened to be leading the session. The last thing I needed was to be called out in front of my own adviser. Just as I feared, that was exactly how the afternoon played out.
“All right, everyone,” Monica said. “Does anyone with a request want to start things off?”
Maya raised her hand. “Elizabeth, I requested you because I wanted to check in. You’ve been so negative lately that it’s kind of hard to be around you.”
My eyes hardened as I looked at Maya.
“I’m worried about you,” she said.
I bit my lip, starting to seethe. I couldn’t help but feel betrayed.
“Elizabeth, do you have anything to say?” Monica’s hair was in pigtails, which only made her seem even more smug. “Hearing this shouldn’t be a surprise. You can’t think I haven’t noticed the way you’ve been acting.”
“It’s not a surprise,” I said. “I just don’t really care.”
“It seems like you don’t care about anything these days,” Monica said. “You’re in upper school now. You’re supposed to be a role model. Is this really the behavior I can expect from you?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I mean, I feel pretty mad at Maya right now. She could have just talked to me in an appointment.”
“I tried talking to you,” Maya said. “You just shut me down. I saw how much you struggled in Animus, and now you’re trying to blame your own problems all on the school.”
“Is that true, Elizabeth?” Monica said.
“Maybe,” I said. “I just don’t want to be here, okay?”
“Well, no, it isn’t okay. You didn’t even bother trying in Animus and you’ve stopped caring about your emotional work. Is it safe to assume you’ve given up on yourself?”
“I don’t know how to answer that,” I said.
“We need to get to the bottom of this,” Monica said. “I’m putting you on a program. It’s not a punishment. But I think you need some time to reflect.”
Fuck you, Monica. And fuck you, too, Maya. How is this going to do anything but make me hate this place more?
After group, I reported to the glass room with my red binder in hand. My first assignment was to write a list of the things I felt were worth living for. I knew I’d be lying no matter what I said, so I just wrote the first words that popped into my mind. My second assignment was much easier. I was supposed to write down all the reasons I’d chosen death in Animus. Though I couldn’t be completely honest on paper, I had no trouble composing this list in my head.
I chose death because life here is unbearable. I fucking hate every single moment of every single day. My family thinks I’m doing fine because every letter I write them is screened and every phone call is fucking monitored. If I could tell them what was actually going on here, they’d have no choice but to take me home. Since that’s not going to happen, I guess I’ll just keep choosing death whenever I can.
Is this ever going to end?
When SEALs are going through Hell Week and want to quit, they’re told all they have to do is ring a bell three times. As Admiral William McRaven wrote, “Ring the bell and you won’t have to get up early. Ring the bell and you won’t have to do the long runs, the cold swims, or the obstacle course. Ring the bell and you can avoid all this pain.”
If there had been a bell in the program room, I wouldn’t have hesitated to ring it. I felt so hopeless. I didn’t know what Luke or Kristen was doing at that moment, or even where they were, but that didn’t matter. I would have given anything to be right there with either of them, even if it really was at the bottom of a ditch.
The work project for my program was to clean the long concrete path that cut across campus. I began down by the white picket fence and realized I was as close to the exit as I’d ever been, at least by myself. I watched two student government members head down t
he street for a run, one of the perks of being a Pony.
How was it possible that leaving was so easy, yet so hard? I was so confused about who I was and what I wanted. Did I actually want to live? I had no idea. The very idea of graduating felt somehow impossible. I could no longer tell the difference between reality and fantasy, between truth and lies.
Am I really a worthless abuser?
Maybe. But maybe not.
Am I a desperate cum dumpster?
I mean, I’m still a virgin. That I know for sure.
I scrubbed harder and harder, as if the truth would be uncovered if I could just get through enough layers of dirt. I thought about all the times I was called a taker and a bad friend, and I scrubbed. I heard Alan’s voice screaming that my father never loved me, and I scrubbed.
“You’re pathetic. You’re a loser. You just take and take. You ruined your life. You’ll never amount to anything so you might as well give up. You can’t even clean goose shit off the ground, for God’s sake.”
Yes, I can. I’ll get every last speck off this path if it kills me. How do you like that, Alan? You abusive asshole.
“Fuck you!”
I kicked my bucket and water splashed everywhere.
“Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.”
The bucket rolled to a stop in front of the fence. I had actually forgotten where I was for a moment. I looked around and composed myself. Thankfully, I was so far across campus that no one had witnessed my little freak-out. I had to laugh a little as I filled my bucket with soapy water. The chances of no one being around to yell at me or take notes for their group requests were so slight I almost had to feel lucky. I started scrubbing again, more calmly this time, and I felt just a little bit like I had brushed up against freedom.
My project extended to crews, which meant I kept going as the sun went down. It was cold, but that was okay. I worked my way up to the carriage house, a building I hadn’t set foot in since the last time I was strip-searched. There was an energy around that stone house that I couldn’t ignore. It was the same kind of energy I felt when I ran around the graveyard near my house, except this time it was dark and almost sinister. I was sitting alone, but I wasn’t alone at all.
I continued scrubbing, and the sun disappeared completely. The darker it got, the more intensely I felt the disturbance in the energy around the building. I tried to ignore it, focusing on those stubborn stains illuminated by the lights of the carriage house, but that just wasn’t possible. As layers of dirt and time fell away, the energy got stronger, breaking down some invisible barrier.
I thought back to that first afternoon in the carriage house. It occurred to me that before she sat there smiling on the couch, before she extolled the virtues of the school, Beatrice, too, had been strip-searched and degraded.
Like it or not, we all were connected through this place—probably forever. Me, Beatrice, and Maya. Maggie and Kyle. That first class of eight whose portraits hung on the wall. We were part of a long legacy of people held on this property against our will, trapped inside the snow globe where lies and secret horrors could flourish.
Even Polly and Carolina were off at their own versions of Carlbrook. They were stuck in the same web of “emotional growth” and therapeutic manipulation as me. Who knew what they had been forced to do to survive or even if they were surviving at all?
Had Beatrice, Maya, and the Ponies found a better way through? Maybe they had. Maybe the perks of jogging outside and an extra soda from the student store really did make life easier. Maybe being honest, really doing the emotional work, was worth it after all. I didn’t know how they all truly felt inside, but I knew how I felt and it wasn’t sustainable. I had sunk as far down into my depression as I’d ever gone, and what had that gotten me? Another program. My third. Clearly, my way wasn’t working.
Carlbrook felt like a graveyard because it was a graveyard. So many lives had been stolen by this place, but our lives were only being borrowed. I still had a choice. I didn’t have to ring the bell, and I think something was trying to tell me that.
After ten or eleven months of resisting, I finally made a decision that night. I wouldn’t let this place kill me. I had a few more months to go and then I’d be free. My life wouldn’t ever be the same, not at all. But it was still my life—and that meant I still had a chance.
As I read in Man’s Search for Meaning, “He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how.”
Chapter 29
“SEVENTEEN SUCKS A bit because you’re waiting for eighteen. Or maybe I think that because I spent all of that year here.”—Valerie
“Seventeen will probably be better than sixteen because you’re graduating.”—Lina
“I love you to death. One year closer to eighteen.”—Levi
“At least me and you stuck around for each other, huh? No back to the woods or anything. We’ve been through it all together and I love you for it.”—Brittany
“Happy birthday. We’ve had a damn long, hard time together.”—Charlotte
I made it through my program in time for my seventeenth birthday. While it wasn’t a dream birthday, at least it was better than my sixteenth. I actually had friends this time, and I wasn’t on bans with any of them. Charlotte, Lina, and Brittany were able to come. By then we’d worked through any lingering problems and left the past firmly in the past. It was easier that way, and at the end of the day all we had was one another.
I got a special Nelly cake, of course. Confetti with vanilla icing, covered with fondant hearts and seventeen rainbow candles. Maya made me a scrapbook, as much a peace offering as a gift. I’m sure she still thought she had done the right thing by calling me out in group, but she could tell it had upset me. The book was full of pictures of the two of us along with cameos from people like Lina, Brittany, and Levi. She decorated it with glitter and magic markers, and she and my other friends had written notes about how grateful they were to have me as a friend.
It might have been the most thoughtful thing anyone did for me at Carlbrook, and that made my relationship with Maya feel even more complicated. Even so, it would have been the highlight of my birthday if it hadn’t been for Bobby.
At some point I’d developed a crush on a gentle and unassuming guy named Bobby. Becoming closer with him helped fill the vacuum left by Luke. I didn’t get my birthday kiss or anything, but Bobby walked me to class and waited for me at the end of the day.
Our relationship was just as chaste as my flirtation with Luke had been. At Carlbrook, being physical just wasn’t worth the risk. (There were a few hook-up rumors in circulation and they all involved dumpsters, which wasn’t exactly my style.) I still felt strangely connected to Bobby even if we couldn’t so much as hold hands. He was someone I felt comfortable being silent around. Sometimes we’d walk around the lake without saying a single word, and I’d leave feeling like I’d just had a deeply meaningful conversation.
There was just something about him. He was magnetic but still low-key, and that meant I didn’t have to worry about being seen with him. Maybe it was because Bobby flew under the radar and Monica just never noticed. It probably helped that Maya was usually there as well. Sometimes the three of us would sit on one of the benches and watch the geese, talking about life after Carlbrook.
“I can’t wait to just go places,” I said. “Paris or New York. Or the mall.”
“I just want to be back home,” Maya said.
“Yeah,” Bobby agreed. “I miss my family’s place in Mexico mostly. You guys should visit me there.”
“Definitely,” I said. “Maya, can we hang out with Bobby in Mexico?”
“Definitely,” Maya said. “I love the beach. We’ll have so much fun.”
Chapter 30
TENEO WAS THE workshop that scared us the most. If there was even a theme, it got lost in all the rumors about brainwashing and hypnosis. I’d seen countless kids return from Teneo looking exhausted and lifeless, totally blank behind the eyes as if possessed by the Carl
brook devil.
The workshop lasted four days. Four days of sleep deprivation and dehydration, on top of whatever mindfuckery they put us through, was enough to leave me with compromised memories of that workshop. What I can recall of Teneo is a haphazard collection of bits and pieces. Out of four days, I remember maybe four hours. There are brief moments that seem to pop up from the general hazy confusion of those days. I know it happened, and yet I could just as readily believe the whole thing was just a figment of my imagination. Maybe that was due to brainwashing, or exhaustion, or maybe it was my psyche shielding me from more pain than I could handle.
Probably, it was some combination of the three.
I remember a lecture from the first day on the subject of “I vs. ME.”
“I thinks and ME feels,” Alan said over and over.
The point, as far as I could tell, was to drill down on the idea that the thinking mind and the feeling mind are two separate entities. Feeling is true and good, while thinking is false and bad. Feeling belongs to the Little Me, the pure, unscratched marble. Everything bad that happened to our Little Me is due to the thinking I.
“Remember, what ‘I’ tells myself is what’s wrong with ‘ME,’” Alan said.
What?
“What’s I saying to you right now, Elizabeth?” he said. “Is she saying that you’re not good enough?”
No, she’s saying, “Fuck you, Alan.”
“It’s time we fight back,” he said. “Let’s get all that shit that ‘I’ says to Little Me and kick it in the butt.”
It might be worth noting that the “I and ME” theory of consciousness was originally developed by the psychiatrist William James in tandem with his work on hypnosis and dissociation. James just so happened to believe that schizophrenia, a literal split in the mind, can actually be induced with therapeutic work.
So I guess there’s that.
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