- Hello. I was a child born in the United States of America
in the year 2004, and I talk of this year in the past tense, as every event
of my life, from birth to death, was as pre-ordained and scripted as any
Hollywood movie.
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- I speak to you from some time, some place, after my death
less than a decade-and-a-half after my birth. One could interpret my posthumous
communication to you as a cautionary tale, a warning of troubled times
that lie ahead for you and your kind, but as I said, these events of the
near-future have already been set. At one time in your short and troubled
history, these events may have been foreseen and perhaps avoided, but no
more. Too many variables, too many immutable cirumstances, would have to
be altered for your fate and mine to appreciably alter. The die has been
cast; the future a moral certainty.
-
- My date of birth was January 1, 2004. I was born to two
homegrown, red-blooded, working class Americans in their mid-20's.
-
- Here was my life, beginning at ages 1-6: my daily life
was a familiar routine. Because both my parents worked, I was taken to
day care in the mornings. My care taker had three kids of her own, two
of whom beat me up (but not too badly) when she wasn't looking. I spent
my days watching cartoons and other "kids' shows" on digital
cable, and in the evening, my parents took me home, where I alternated
between watching movies on my own Home Entertainment system in my bedroom,
and watching Reality TV shows with my parents in the Living Room. (Their
favorite was American Idol.) I had a lot of toys, mostly dolls that talked
and squirted fluids when you squeezed them, but they were so numerous,
I had a hard time distinguishing between them. I didn't really like those
toys, but if anyone (especially my sister Caitlin, who was born two years
after me)lay a finger on them, I became filled with uncontrollable rage,
and hit them. I also had video games that I couldn't really figure out
how to play, and two or three "activity" books, like coloring
and connect the dots, but I didn't know how to read and my parents never
had the time to do them with me, so they lay forgotten in the junk heap
that was my closet.
-
- I generally liked to eat foods that I saw on TV; these
were mostly sweet breakfast cereals that came in bright colors and interesting
shapes. I also liked candies and "play foods" that came in squeezable
bottles and cartons. For dinner, my favorite foods were pizza and MacDonalds,
and also burritos and hot dogs. For snacks, I liked Doritos and spicy flavored
chips, no potatoe chips, though, they didn't have enough flavor. For drinks,
I liked mostly Coke, but my parents wanted me to be healthy, so they also
made me drink fruit-flavored punches and sodas.
-
- In my backyard, I had a play set, swings and monkey bars,
and I also had a tricycle that I liked to ride, and I had SO much fun outdoors,
when I was outside and moving around and the sun was shining, I felt more
awake, more THERE, but I needed a grown up to go out there with me, and
I had a hard time getting my parents to do it. I'd have to beg and beg
and sometimes they'd give in, but just as often they'd just get kind of
mad, so I pretty much gave up on going outside unless they wanted me to.
Also, I felt tired a lot of the time, so it just seemed easier to stay
inside.
-
- Around the time that I was 3 or 4, I started feeling
mad even when no one was playing with my toys. Of course, if asked, I could
not articulate why I felt this way, but for some reason, I felt more alive
when I was yelling and screaming and hitting people. It also felt terrible,
like the worst hurt in the world, but I couldn't seem to help myself. I
mostly just hit Caitlin, but sometimes I'd get so mad that I would hit
mom and dad, and I'd get spanked, and HARD. I also felt sad, REALLY sad,
sometimes, even when I couldn't think of any particular thing that I was
sad about.
-
- At the age of 5, I entered kindergarten, and by the second
day, I felt so scared and agitated and confused that I peed my pants and
my care-taker came and took me back to her place. My teachers were nice
and most of the kids were as frightened as me...but some of them were mean,
and called me "fat" and "ugly," and I knew I was pretty
chubby, even my mom said so sometimes. I felt scared and sad...but also
increasingly MAD, and after a couple of weeks of being literally dragged
to school kicking and screaming and crying, I started hitting the other
kids, especially the ones who were too small to hit me back.
-
- One day shortly after I'd entered the first grade, my
parents drove me to school (an unusual practice for them), and we had a
meeting with the principal and my teacher. I sat and listened and heard
words that were vaguely familiar because I'd heard my parents say them
before: hyperactive, disorder, attention deficit, treatment, and drug.
I heard the last word a lot of times towards the middle and end of the
meeting, and it made me a little scared, because from TV, I associated
the word with something bad. I also heard the word "doctor" more
than once, and I definitely know from my regular "check-ups"
that this was something to be feared.
-
- So one school day, my parents took me to a "doctor's"
office, but this doctor didn't wear a stethoscope or a white robe like
the other doctors I'd seen. This one wore a sweater and his doctor's office
looked kind of like my living room at home. He mostly talked to my parents,
and even talked to me alone for a few minutes, which scared the hell out
of me, but at least he didn't give me any shots or put his hand on my thingy.
When we were all done talking, he wrote something on a piece of paper for
my parents, something he called a "prescription." Then we left,
and as a reward, my parents took me to MacDonald's and bought me a Happy
Meal.
-
- I started taking hard to swallow pills every morning
before school and every evening after school. Of course, like any other
child, I did not have the introspective qualities necessary to connect
my taking of the pills with my mental, emotional, and physical states.
If I did, I surely would have screamed at my parents and my doctors and
everyone else who would listen that the pills were actually making me WORSE.
My accustomed lethargy and anger and sadness and confusion accentuated
by several fold. Sitting in the classroom at school, feeling this heaviness
in my head that made it hard to stay awake and impossible to pay attention,
dealing with the kids who called me names and hit me even harder than I
could hit them, living each day only to go home, where I wasn't really
happy but at least felt safe and comfortable watching TV and playing video
games and eating my favorite foods...the word "despair" was not
in my vocabulary, but it could accurately have been used to describe my
state of being.
-
- Even now, speaking to you from a state of bliss and clarity
where these issues matter not, I cannot recall with any vividness the years
of my life between ages 6-12. The murkiness of my consciousness enveloped
not only my brain, but seeped to my very soul. My life was reduced to the
certain drudgery of a hellish routine from which there was no escape. I
do remember around the age of 7, I began hurting myself to get out of school
and gain sympathy from my parents. I would punch myself in the face to
get a bloody nose or a black eye, and once even broke my hand in my bedroom
with a baseball bat. I would tell my parents that I fell off my bike or
fell out of a tree, and even though I was hardly ever outside, they always
seemed to buy it. They would take me to a doctor's office, an experience
I was actually starting to like, because the people there were nice, it
would get me out of school, and my parents would buy me a treat afterwards.
-
- Through all of this, I continued taking the pills, because
when I got off them, I still seemed to be bad, maybe even a little worse,
and my doctor kept telling my parents that the pills were the right thing.
I took those pills right up until the age of 12, the year of my first suicide
attempt, which ironically was a deliberate overdose of the very pills I'd
been taking for years. After a trip to the emergency room and a good pumping
of my stomach, I was hospitalized for three months on the psychiatric ward
of a nice hospital. At first I hated the hospital with a fervor, but eventually,
I began to like it there so much that I didn't want to leave. I felt safe
and special and loved there, and most of all, I was appreciative to be
away from the hell-hole that was life in school. After my parents' insurance
ran out and they were forced to take me home, I thought of ways to force
them to take me back, hurting myself over and over and eventually trying
suicide again by gashing my wrists with a broken mirror. But this time,
they didn't take me to the nice psychiatric ward I'd enjoyed so much, but
to a big and dark and scary looking fortress called a "state hospital."
-
- I languished in the state hospital from the age of 12-and-a-half
to thirteen. I often thought of physical escape and escape by suicide...but
ultimately, it seemed like too much work. I took my pills which made me
drool and made it impossible to think, I took my pills and watched TV and
tried to do puzzles, I took my pills and played ping pong with other patients.
I guess one day my doctors decided I was "better," because my
parents showed up and took me home.
-
- At the age of 13, I returned to school, this time it
was "middle school," and somehow I knew that not even a plate
of steel armor could protect me from the other kids. I knew I would be
different, I knew I didn't look right and couldn't think right, I knew
life was going to be hell...but to whom could I complain? I could not have
found the words even if someone would listen. I look back in real gratitude
for one thing - I had no longer the strength to even think of harming others,
only an unquenchable desire to harm myself. I endured for as long as I
could; I really believe that. I was not as weak a soul as some might think.
I made it half-way to the end of eigth grade, and one day hanged myself
in my bedroom with my bedsheet. I didn't leave a note, because I didn't
think anyone would be surprised.
-
- Reviewing these events of my sad and oh-so-short life
is not fun, but I feel neither bitterness nor resentment towards the people
who contributed so greatly to my tragic demise. As the die was cast for
me, so it was with them...and so it is for you and yours.
-
- Even now, living in your troubled times when lives such
as mine are not out of the ordinary, you are likely associating terms like
"aberrant" and "freakish" with my story. You cannot
conceive of this day just over the horizon when my story will be neither
extreme nor abnormal, but perfectly commonplace. From my perspective, which
is unclouded by emotional bias and wishful thinking, I can tell you that
you are mistaken. Exactly as I lived, so will a thousand million tortured
souls, until those who are called sick and crazy and criminal will outnumber
those who are called well. Rest assured, as bad as things may seem to you
now, they can and will get worse before they can get better.
-
- So it has always been with this thing you call society,
and so it shall be again. I promise.
-
-
-
- Comment
- From Sonia
- 2-14-4
-
- A Child Of The Year 2004Jeff, this is a powerful piece
and I'm afraid what he has written has already come to pass. A few months
back, the John Walsh show covered suicide and attempted suicide by children.
I will never forget the mother of an 8 year girl who hanged herself in
the closet! This 8 year old also left a note - the only thing disclosed
on the program was that the child loved her mother. (My question was
"had the stepfather molested her and the mother didn't listen"?)
-
- Jeff, we are already paying the price of the evils which
this govt commits in other countries and to its own citizens. We, silent
and dumbed down of this country, metaphysically speaking, are getting our
comeuppance. It's not in bombs - but in 'inconsequential" happenings
-- one not realized by an anti-conceptual society - where all things are
interconnected. We have been systematically poisoned in all things,
as one would eat an elephant -- piece by piece. As we sow, so shall we
reap and we are reaping in abundance! If people would only open their
eyes AND DO SOMETHING, if not for others, at least for themselves and their
offspring!
-
- When our children are targeted -- there goes our future.
- Who says this is not maliciously done?
-
- Sonia
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