32 Years Ago I Was Taken To Fucking Kiddie Jail...For Being A Kid

Yesterday marked an anniversary I had not given thought to in many years. Not to say I’ve not thought about it, I am after all writing a memoir. But I’ve not marked it in my mind on the actual date, that on 11/05/1981 at the age of fifteen, I was taken to juvenile detention for a probation violation that would span enough time to include my “sweet sixteen”.

My violation? I skipped two days of school and was failing, which is no surprise considering I failed through Jr. High. My mother had pulled a scene straight out of Forrest Gump by having an affair with the superintendent of my school district; it was my mother’s infidelity that stamped me passable each year even though I was failing each class, well except choir.  Admittedly that did not go well after slamming our choirs superstar Jill’s (Think Rachel from Glee) head in a locker, breaking her nose. After that I wasn’t allowed to go to any classes and was put on “in school suspension”. I really did prefer the at home kind, it afforded me all sorts of freedom.

Why was on probation? Assault of course! But not for breaking the nose of Barbara Streisand’s mini-me, no this one was for breaking the nose of the girl dumb enough to fuck my boyfriend.  Her name was Shelly, and to this day I rarely meet a Shelly that I don’t want to punch in the cunt. 

*thinks real quick…do I have any Shelly’s on my friends list?*

On the evening of 11/4/1981 my probation officer called to inform me to be out front of my high school in the morning with my toothbrush, I had violated my probation, I was going to jail, and that he was driving me to my arraignment and sentencing. That night is a blur of confrontations and tears but there was nothing for it. The next morning I stood frigid and angry in front of the school alone with my toothbrush and crying at the unfairness of it all. Really, this was a minor infraction of my probation, with my lovely mother at the helm having called attention the violations to my PO. See, she had read that unfortunate (for me) book called “Tough Love”, deciding it meant she was given permission to be a rabid bitch to her child. She took her license to legally abuse seriously, doing to me what she otherwise would have just fantasized about.

My probation officer was a young good looking blond spiteful little man who enjoyed every minute of the long drive to kiddie jail. He lectured me on all points of my being an awful teen who was headed for hell. I shot off a few times that my violations were based upon what my mother had him write into my probation document. He had allowed this in admiration of my mother’s willing to exploit the control that that document bequeathed her, you know, all in the name of "Tough Love". I was so fucking grateful to get away from him and go into court, so much so that it did not enter my mind that I ought to be worried. I was so lost in hostility, fantasying about telling my PO what I really thought of him, that when the judge slammed a full 30 day sentence on me, I started to silently sob. It was like being punished for having shitty parents. And it didn’t stop there.

The day after I was processed and put into my green horizontal stripped tee and itchy green polyester shorts, I was visited by my PO. My stomach churned as I had thought myself free from his torment, but evidently he was just getting started. In hindsight that only an adult can be afforded, there was only one reason why he was there lecturing me further on what an awful piece of shit I was and that I needed to clean up my act before I got into even deeper trouble. But I know now he was there to provoke me, to punish me, or worst of all, to dominate me, where I was imprisoned, had nowhere to go, or the right to leave that small room with its glaring lights, two chairs, a table, a defiant kid, and a sadist adult.

I have no memory of how long it took him to manipulate me through a gambit of emotions ranging from crying to laughing as he prodded me along. Oh how he latched onto this like a hungry dog, deciding this was a sign of an unstable mind. What was to happen to me next seemed like torture at the beginning, but in the end, totally worth it.

It was ordered that I would go through full psychological testing to see just exactly how fucked up I was. At first I fought this pretty hard, but then I started to realize that there was something interesting about the testing, I started to wonder if I could figure out what they were looking for. I really wanted to understand how drawing a house was supposed to give them any insight to my inner workings. I found myself asking the nurses who administered the tests what this and that meant. More than a few times I was answered. There was a sense that this was all for nothing, that I clearly was not insane as my PO flat out said I was, and so I learned a few things about psychology during those few weeks of mind numbing tests.

My inquisitive mind and other intelligence testing led to an unexpected result, one that made even my jaw drop as my probation officer had to inform me, “turns out your gifted”.  Now it’s not like I was told I was dumb, really the opposite, there was always some school principle telling me I am way too smart to act like such a shit. This was clearly not an era that you can say “have you met my mother?” Finding out I was gifted was like being gifted a secret that I had no idea about myself. One that I’ve never taken for granted or allowed my ego to inflate with it. This was something none of them could beat or berate out of me.

So the rest of days were less eventful and led to extreme boredom till my birthday came along. As that date neared I became more depressed and easy to cry. Little did I know a kind man who worked at the jail, who always believed in me would go out of his way to make sure I was treated like a princess, well a princess in jail wearing what we called an “alligator suit”.  He brought in with great fanfare and to the screams and hollers of my fellow inmates, a huge sheet cake for them, and for me, a Barbie cake. You know the kind where the skirt is the cake? I let go of my cutesy tough girl veneer and began to cry quietly as I opened my lame ass tax paid gifts given to me by my jailers.

I’ll never forget the generosity of a man that would during future incarcerations, fight for me in ways NO one else ever did. 

But that's another story....

"Doubt begets all sorts of ill begotten self-destructive doings..."

 The fog that has settled here in the PNW is eking into my mind. Not helped by long delays in getting money settled and a knee injury from earnestly practicing yoga and belly dancing. The cycles of these nonmoving events boggle. I feel a slipping that I know so well and have to let go into, but the hypo-mania was far too short and it did nothing for my disordered eating. I can usually count on mania being a wonderful equalizer when it comes to all my binges. This time I’m left wanting.

When I find myself here, I wonder each time, how am I going to make it? But in the last three years I’ve been feeling the deep sting of aloneness. There is simply no one for me to tether to and ache for it so. It isn’t like I lack awareness of being alone when balanced for a second or the longer standing mania, but obviously depression blatantly reminds.

Mystifyingly, I find me falling for domestication. I left behind the consumer in me, the one that must have fucking Cost Plus snowflakes because seemed styled just for me. I want to gobble them all up and put it in the holiday bins for future usage. I want to cook turkey dinner, pumpkin bread, and lots of soup. But again this is not the new Michelle; this is just the filler that I’m filling me with because I’m empty.

Came to me like a shock that this is THE issue. Yes, there’s a new Michelle but her identity is in flux, in the embryonic empty stage leaving me vulnerable to the influence of doubt. Doubt begets all sorts of ill begotten self-destructive doings, which I already hold expert level like prowess. I don’t need outside pressures to catapult me down this well-known path. The “fuck it” moment becomes so doable on this path, which unfortunately “fuck it” begets “why bother?”  I’ve spoken already of the redundancy of suicidal ideology, but as I feared, the stealthy storm of depression simply follows its path of ‘being’, and I simply am the passenger waiting out the storm.

I wrote this yesterday and paused in its publication because I knew I might regret this pouring out, of what amounts to…self-pity. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but I know that today I am tired of being mired. So I start doing what I can do, what I do have control of despite the arrival of limitations.  Like for instance, I can walk. Oh how it’s going to be a freezing affair, but I had to my chance to walk in the sun, and chose self-pity instead. So this is what I get for not finding a way before this, a bloated gut and a frozen atmosphere.

Keep The Good Days To Use For The Fuckered Days To Come

Allowing the good days to wash all over you even though you may know as I do, they can fleet away just as fast as they rushed in. I find it unwise to deny the pleasure that a good day offers. Fleeting or otherwise, you want to take it in and use it for all that it possesses.  

I am undeniably having one of those “good days”. I think that I can give credit to my yoga and the belly dancing I've found me doing for 3 days now. Amazing it is that breathing and bending can bring such speedy results, which is my preferred way. I’m not known for patience so do have a need for a noticeable alteration as result of the changes I make. And yes, I decided to move my body because I have the energy to do so. Here lies the trick, without the energy I sit lost in the other-worlds awaiting the swing.

For those that sit worrying that these “good days” will pass and so why bother to take in the joy, well I have been there and I can tell you that it does not serve you at all. When young and so unhappy that I felt “the sea of sadness” would never end, I would tighten up in any happiness feeling like it was not “real”, just mania passing by. Again, this did not serve me well at all.

Set to memory how it “feels” to be here, this is for everyone, bipolar or not. I burn incense, light candles, and send love/ healing to those I know are in pain. I watch the cold rain so dark it dims the light in the house as though night time has come at only 11:22 AM. I breathe deep in the beauty making it a solid memory that I can recall later when the darkness internal comes for me. This is a challenge still, but I practice as best I can and there are moments it works quite well.

I hope this will find those in need of knowing they too can contain their bliss for later days when it’s all fuckered up.  Cause shit happens and having tools such as this can make the difference between coping, and falling down hard.