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Dedication
Author's Note
The people and the events mentioned in this book are not fictitious. Some names have been changed because I simply could not remember the person’s actual name. In those cases, I substituted a fictitious name for the person’s real name. Nonetheless, my story is an actual depiction of my life as I remember it from 1971 until 1973 while being a resident at Kinsman Hall and the months leading up to it.
Preface
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What appeared first in my journey at Kinsman Hall was a clear division in the status between all staff members vs. the "non-status" of the residents which gradually revealed all other divisions within the hierarchy: older residents vs. younger residents, the have's and the have not’s. The real McCoys and the wannabes! Senior staff vs. acting staff. All the stories of trips to town, parties with staff members, going to movies, etc. almost made Kinsman Hall seem like two entirely different places. For many, that “other” place just didn’t exist! For many, their whole life centered around the work they did during the day and the free time they enjoyed in the dining room during the evening before being herded off to the dorms for their nightly ritual of sleep. For many, life was only what happened within the confines of Kinsman Hall while others lived and experienced a totally different story. One might not think so, but there even existed a divide amongst crews in the house and within a crew lived a whole divide in itself. Trust me on this, but people on the Construction Crew were regarded and treated differently then people who worked on the Kitchen Crew especially those low-ranking individuals who found the dishpan to be their "niche." People who ran the crews and people who worked on the crews were on opposite ends of the same stick.
I never openly questioned the unfairness of the obvious caste system at "the Hall" or how the “divide” was so nicely incorporated into the whole Kinsman Hall concept. Who were we, the younger residents to question anything? For the most part, I only observed, but went about my business doing things the Kinsman Hall way. And for the most part, I didn’t really care that a select few seemed privy to preferential treatment by staff nor did I care why those select few were the chosen ones while others weren’t. For the most part, I didn’t care that I was never taken into the “inner circle” and allowed to flourish amongst the staff members and older residents. Yes, I saw the "divide” and I saw the hypocrisy in it, but I simply knew my place and knew my place would never be on the other side of that great divide. I just wanted to "do my time" and finish their program. I started the program as a younger resident and finished it basically the same way. But how can that be possible after being there for two years?
My place along with my peers was a place void of anything familiar from the outside world. Tucked safely away and forgotten about or so I felt, I spent my time at Kinsman Hall the product of seeing, doing, but never quite swallowing the proverbial Kool-Aid after swishing it around in my mouth first and spitting it out. That Kool-Aid left a putrid aftertaste in my mind. Being "straight" seemed to have some perverse affect on me. Instead of my senses becoming alive again, they seemed to dull into a world of complacency. I went through the motions of staying alive, but I never seemed to feel that spontaneous high others got from therapy. Was something terribly wrong with me or was everyone else just faking it? In the face of true adversity, when one has no other recourse than to drink the Kool-Aid and resistance seems futile, I learned if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it doesn’t always mean it is a duck! I could still appear to drink the Kool-Aid and still maintain a certain sense of never giving in. That little piece of me I constantly struggled to tightly hold onto as if it were a matter of life and death. And for all I knew, it very well may have been a matter of life and death. At least this Kool-Aid didn’t come laced with cyanide and we all know, what doesn’t kill you, only makes you stronger! Someday this too, would pass and I'd be free again! I could ride it out! I can ride anything out...
As I embarked upon the journey of writing this story I was faced with the greatest divide of all...a story that changes from day to day because of my changing feelings towards it. This dilemma is one that kept this story from being told for such a long time. The great divide – it was everywhere! Kinsman Hall vs. the townspeople. Kinsman Hall vs. the rest of the world. The old vs. the new. Hillsdale vs. Jackman. Males vs. females. Workers vs. authority figures (ramrods, department heads, expeditors and staff members). And yes, the greatest divide of them all: older residents vs. younger residents. It was that divide that kept the wheels of progress and envy well greased. They always say that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, but in the case of Kinsman Hall, I don't know if that's true. So many fences at Kinsman Hall just weren't worth jumping over to get to the other side.
Younger residents eventually became the older residents, but by the time I became an older resident the whole structure of the program had begun to change. By that time, the rise and fall of Kinsman Hall was well on its way. Even when I did reach older resident status that younger resident feeling remained with me. At 2 years in, I still hadn’t had any of those trips to town or experienced any “fun” that seemed legendary and only spoken of in whispers. In the two years I lived at Kinsman Hall, I was never placed in any type of position of authority or responsibility. At 2 years in, my biggest infraction of bending the rules came in the form of staying downstairs after the rest of the house had gone to bed and a few incidences of physical contact here and there. No, I never had wild sex or got high while I was a resident. It wasn't because I didn't want wild sex or didn't want to get high. It was because it was never offered to me. I simply stayed downstairs and tried to feel normal by being rebellious in my own little way and the other times were shortly before I left the program. Being in a relationship, even an unrecognized relationship with a staff member had its advantages. People seemed to look the other way when rules were broken if a staff member was the one breaking them.
One might ask why such a divide was tolerated or how the people, the have’s could function effectively within the system. All I can say looking back is that when you take someone who is clearly unbalanced and remove them from everything familiar to that person, you create in essence a blank slate. If you hammer on that person enough you may be able to bend their will and in some cases, break their will. We all came into Kinsman Hall as equals, but soon thereafter the equality ceased. The groups were formed. The friendships were made and the negative contracts were formed. The rest seems to be history!
The great divide formed: the way things really were vs. the way things were supposed to be or intended to be! Dean Hepper, himself always would say “the road to Hell was paved with good intentions!” The way things were presented to families, potential donors, the community at large vs. the way things really were as the truth surfaced were all part of this abysmal divide. For many families, their hopes of reuniting with a drug-free loved one were short lived. The community of Jackman, the sleepy, little hamlet in which Kinsman Hall became rooted watched its initial skepticism come to fruition each time Kinsman Hall openly and arrogantly displayed how it really operated. There are still people in Jackman who remember how the split teams would hunt down its escapees. Their allegations of witnessing physical abuse still remain vividly with them 50 plus years later. There are former business owners who were lied to and duped out of goods and services with the promise of payment. "I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today" seemed to be the Kinsman Hall motto. For many of those businesses, Tuesday never came! The community saw how some staff members acted as if they existed in a protective bubble that allowed them to do anything whenever and wherever they wanted. Rude, arrogant and even illegal behavior was what had become expected from the inhabitants of Kinsman Hall. The medical staff at the local hospital had ethical/legal concerns regarding Kinsman Hall and with each resident that was treated there came more concerns.
The great divide: (or maybe it was a subsection of the great divide) Residents who had completed a marathon (therapy) vs. residents who hadn’t had the magic wand waved over them yet. Until a person participated in a marathon, marathons remained cloaked in mystery. No one who had been through one would talk about their experience with someone who was "untherapied" thus they were unworthy of any knowledge. Until the clouds parted and the great hand of Dean Hepper and Jack Palmer swooped down and gathered up the flock of needy wannabes, the mystery remained intact. What reappeared days or weeks and once months later were smiling, good little ducks all in a row with out-stretched arms wanting unconditional acceptance from the entire house.
I often wondered if the children of affluent families were treated with more favor than the less fortunate, but I saw clear examples of Kinsman Hall being an equal opportunity abuser. Some equality existed after all! I often wondered if the staff members stayed up at night thinking up ways they could fuck with us as if we were part of some demented psychological experiment or rats in a lab experiment gone awry. I often wondered if anyone was actually qualified to run a place like Kinsman Hall. I often wondered if my viewpoint was merely slanted by the road I had walked down and I don't mean Attean Lake Road! I wondered if drugs had jaded me so I was incapable of seeing the positives in the great divide. But were there any positives?
The nagging question that seems to still remain with me 50 years later: was there any good that came from Kinsman Hall? To answer that question one would have to ask each person who resided there. Maybe to answer that question best, the families and friends of former residents should be the ones who are asked. I think one might safely assume that each person walked away from Kinsman Hall with something positive. Even those who walked away only to succumb to their addiction/inner demons once again initially walked away with something positive. What doesn't kill us, only makes us stronger! Unfortunately, not all of us were strong enough and not all of us survived the transition process back into real life. In all honesty, I believe everyone who experienced Kinsman Hall ranks it among one of their most bittersweet memories for a multitude of reasons. For me, it gave me a much-needed time out. It gave me a chance to live past a period in my life where I surely would have perished if left to my own devices. Did it magically take away all my self-destructive tendencies? Did it take away the pain and replace it with optimism? Did it heal the wounds or did it just create darker, more colorful scars? Perhaps the answers lie within my story...
My biggest obstacle I tackled while writing this book, was deciding how truthful I should be, What I ultimately decided was to simply tell my story as I lived it. In doing that, I cannot and will not apologize for the truths contained within this story. They are my truths, my path and my story. If my story hurts or offends anyone that is not and never was my objective.
Chapter One - A Lunatic Is In My Head
Sure, I had moments of clarity, but they were brief. Those moments, when they did happen, were devoured quickly by a gluttonous apathy that consumed everything decent and wholesome in my life. That apathy was at the heart of all my self-destructive tendencies and bad behavior. It was those tendencies and behaviors, my aptly named “demons” that made my journey through adolescence and beyond a trek more arduous and more colorful than Dorothy’s adventures over the rainbow.
What I discovered during those fleeting moments of clarity seemed much too harsh to be real, yet as I grew older, I slowly realized life really was caustic and the truth was like some slow-acting poison that often times imprisoned a person within a state of emotional paralysis. Those people who claimed the truth would set anyone free saw the truth from a different perspective than mine. I often thought those deluded individuals might be aliens sent to Earth with the mission to infiltrate mankind with peace, hope and prosperity… a truly thankless and a positively no win job for those alien beings. For me, the truth was anything, but a warm, safe cocoon. To me, those alien creatures who saw the truth as an agent of freedom were misguided souls who lived a fantasy-filled lie. Although their days on Earth were numbered, those misguided souls were actually the lucky ones. They lived life not as it really was, but as they wanted it to be. They actually found the inner-peace, love and happiness they believed existed for all people.
For me, the truth was as elusive as that omnipotent wizard behind the curtain bellowing statements about his overly inflated self-importance to the less fortunate who were only seeking their hearts’ desires: a brain, a heart, some courage and of course, the most important heart’s desire… a way home to be reunited with those people they loved the most. Each step, each insight broadened my horizons and made exploring a life beyond my small corner of the universe a must-do for me regardless of any pain or difficulty I might experience along the way. I believed my heart’s desire was anything, but a circuitous route home. It was a way to find a new home and one very different from the one in which I had grown youthfully old.
Although my version of the truth was developed and deciphered through a mind severely impaired by several forms of abuse, my fate always seemed perfectly clear to me. Yes, my truth and my path was as easy to follow as following the infamous yellow brick road in the merry ole land of Oz and the path that lay before me was just as adventure-filled as Dorothy’s path. My adventures did not involve Munchkins, wizards, witches and flying monkeys, yet the things it did involve were as awesome and frightening as the ones Dorothy encountered. My grand finale did not lead me to the conclusion that “there’s no place like home.” My epiphany was more like discovering a half-cocked code to govern my conduct and to guide me along my way:
I spent much of my younger years attempting to escape the pain in which life held me prisoner. Instead of using experience as a trustworthy guide and companion, I didn’t allow myself to reap the rewards of any glorious optimism or to benefit from learning certain valuable lessons until I was much older. My younger years were spent in a haze that I later termed as the beginning principles of “Karenism” or better known as “never taking the shortest route between two points.” Aimlessly wandering along any given path was an integral part of exploring life and doing my own thing. It also was responsible for the exploring tendencies I developed. I never allowed myself the luxury of embracing my own pain or even acknowledging it in order to make life more bearable. I simply ignored the obvious and instead, I neglected my pain and myself until my negativity almost completely devoured me.
It wasn’t until many years later that I realized it was okay to make mistakes as long as I learned something from them. Perfection was not required to go through life. It also took me a very long time to learn knowledge does not always have to come from personal experience. It’s okay to take advice sometimes. These concepts seem like such fundamental building blocks now, yet long ago, when I first discovered them, I was almost embarrassed that I could have overlooked something so obvious for as long as I had. I often wonder how different my life would have been if I had been blessed with the same tools most people have.
Apparently, my version of the truth was riddled with many holes. Some were so large that I could have buried a small city within them. I existed nestled snugly deep in my favorite hole blanketed by lies and misconceptions. I could have remained blissfully ignorant for the remainder of my life living buried in that hole, but I chose to emerge from the crevice in which I lived. I chose to open my eyes and to stumble from hole to hole until either all the holes vanished or they blended into one enormous abyss. At that point, I would have nowhere else to go and nowhere else to hide.
My struggle during those years felt like I was constantly swimming upstream against the current, yet somehow I always managed to stay afloat. One might think I would eventually grow weary and drown, yet the constant battle energized me in order to go another step forward towards the point of no return or to swim a little further upstream. Ironically, somehow I always accepted responsibility for my misguided actions, blatant blunders and intentional mistakes as I eagerly made each one of them. I wore that mistake badge with honor and always kept it well polished. Perhaps my willingness to accept responsibility was just another way of eagerly pushing myself towards self-destruction and self-discovery. Surely, one day my list of misdeeds would catch up with me and I would feel some guilt or remorse or maybe both. I felt certain that day would be the day I would fall helplessly into the abyss forever. That day would be the day I would finally die or maybe finally start to really live.
I remember one day sitting in court awaiting my fate. My crime was a deliberate union of stupidity and apathy or as I like to call it being willfully dense. Like most teenagers, I skipped school and cut classes, but unlike most teens who did it occasionally, I steered my punishment into being much worse than what it normally would have been. I skipped school for weeks at a time. What normally might warrant detention or possibly a brief suspension from school turned into a court appearance because I disregarded following anyone’s rules, but my own. To make matters worse I kept running away from home before my court dates. How did it all spiral downward so quickly out of control?
Months later when I was caught and finally was forced into making an appearance in court, my simple punishment had turned into a major ordeal. Once I was housed in the Penobscot County Jail overnight. It had no female facilities at the time. Although I was put in a section by myself, I have to admit I was terrified to be locked in jail with the entire male population who banged on the walls and hollered all night. What a long, sleepless night that was! Another time, I was put in Utterback’s Private Hospital, a mental sanatorium/asylum for several days. Both times were to prevent any further missed court dates. Yes, they were drastic measures by anyone’s standards, but in my case, those drastic measures had been deemed necessary.
The official word describing my action was “truancy,” but nowhere in the legalese for my actions could the words “willfully dense” be found. Our legal system doesn’t properly account for such a thing when classifying an infraction of this type. That is a concept left for the lawyers to cleverly prove or disprove and to help psychologists earn a livelihood. In my case, if successful, a psychologist could have become rich and famous and a lawyer incredibly frustrated and confused by my actions. Yet, the truth was simple. My actions made no sense at all as I spiraled downhill.
With my mother seated next to me, I sat there wondering what would happen next. My mind was already busy trying to figure out Plan B before I even knew what Plan A entailed. Although the tense atmosphere was laden with my usual aloofness, for my mother it was just another golden opportunity to place the blame where it didn’t belong. It was always easier for her to blame my friends for all the trouble I had been in than to accept my unruly behavior as being entirely my own creation. Sitting there with me gave her the opportunity to have me as a captive audience. Each time she lectured me, I tuned her out, but now as I listened to her words I wondered if she really felt her youngest child and only daughter was some mindless drone incapable of thinking for herself. With my head hung low not from shame, but as a way to block out the reality of the moment, I listened to everything she said. With each word, I felt the gap widen between us. Did she see some weak-minded, misguided follower each time she looked at me? Suddenly, as I stared at the flawlessly polished gray speckled granite floor beneath my feet, I realized she really didn’t know me at all. I was no more than a stranger to the woman I called my mother.
That thought was such a sobering one that it suddenly made me sit up straight and instantly scan the room hoping to see a familiar face. Then, as I leaned back against the hard wooden bench trying desperately to get comfortable, I scanned the room again more slowly than the first time. This was my chance to finally make her look at who I am and what I’ve done to myself.
As I raised my hands motioning for her to scan the room also, I simply asked, “Do you see any of my friends sitting here?”
My mind was screaming, “Hey, look at me! Blame me! They didn’t do it! I did!”
She quickly surveyed the room, but she never answered me. I knew from her silence and her avoidance to look at me again until the judge uttered his final words that she conceded defeat on the point I had just made. She was wrong and I was right. Now, I was going to pay for all those rebellious acts I had done to myself by myself. Stupidity and apathy has its price! She still had the remnants of an “I told you so” look as we parted, but she skipped giving me one last sermon as she held me close and told me she loved me.
What I discovered during those fleeting moments of clarity seemed much too harsh to be real, yet as I grew older, I slowly realized life really was caustic and the truth was like some slow-acting poison that often times imprisoned a person within a state of emotional paralysis. Those people who claimed the truth would set anyone free saw the truth from a different perspective than mine. I often thought those deluded individuals might be aliens sent to Earth with the mission to infiltrate mankind with peace, hope and prosperity… a truly thankless and a positively no win job for those alien beings. For me, the truth was anything, but a warm, safe cocoon. To me, those alien creatures who saw the truth as an agent of freedom were misguided souls who lived a fantasy-filled lie. Although their days on Earth were numbered, those misguided souls were actually the lucky ones. They lived life not as it really was, but as they wanted it to be. They actually found the inner-peace, love and happiness they believed existed for all people.
For me, the truth was as elusive as that omnipotent wizard behind the curtain bellowing statements about his overly inflated self-importance to the less fortunate who were only seeking their hearts’ desires: a brain, a heart, some courage and of course, the most important heart’s desire… a way home to be reunited with those people they loved the most. Each step, each insight broadened my horizons and made exploring a life beyond my small corner of the universe a must-do for me regardless of any pain or difficulty I might experience along the way. I believed my heart’s desire was anything, but a circuitous route home. It was a way to find a new home and one very different from the one in which I had grown youthfully old.
Although my version of the truth was developed and deciphered through a mind severely impaired by several forms of abuse, my fate always seemed perfectly clear to me. Yes, my truth and my path was as easy to follow as following the infamous yellow brick road in the merry ole land of Oz and the path that lay before me was just as adventure-filled as Dorothy’s path. My adventures did not involve Munchkins, wizards, witches and flying monkeys, yet the things it did involve were as awesome and frightening as the ones Dorothy encountered. My grand finale did not lead me to the conclusion that “there’s no place like home.” My epiphany was more like discovering a half-cocked code to govern my conduct and to guide me along my way:
If the people who are supposed to love me will do things to hurt me, what’s the rest of the world going to do to me?It seemed my philosophy was simple and covered all my bases that allowed me to venture forward doing exactly whatever I wanted to do from moment to moment. Yes, life really is a bitch and then you die, but with my philosophy held close, I defiantly took one day at a time, one tiny step at a time into the treacherous world of self-discovery and real life.
I spent much of my younger years attempting to escape the pain in which life held me prisoner. Instead of using experience as a trustworthy guide and companion, I didn’t allow myself to reap the rewards of any glorious optimism or to benefit from learning certain valuable lessons until I was much older. My younger years were spent in a haze that I later termed as the beginning principles of “Karenism” or better known as “never taking the shortest route between two points.” Aimlessly wandering along any given path was an integral part of exploring life and doing my own thing. It also was responsible for the exploring tendencies I developed. I never allowed myself the luxury of embracing my own pain or even acknowledging it in order to make life more bearable. I simply ignored the obvious and instead, I neglected my pain and myself until my negativity almost completely devoured me.
It wasn’t until many years later that I realized it was okay to make mistakes as long as I learned something from them. Perfection was not required to go through life. It also took me a very long time to learn knowledge does not always have to come from personal experience. It’s okay to take advice sometimes. These concepts seem like such fundamental building blocks now, yet long ago, when I first discovered them, I was almost embarrassed that I could have overlooked something so obvious for as long as I had. I often wonder how different my life would have been if I had been blessed with the same tools most people have.
Apparently, my version of the truth was riddled with many holes. Some were so large that I could have buried a small city within them. I existed nestled snugly deep in my favorite hole blanketed by lies and misconceptions. I could have remained blissfully ignorant for the remainder of my life living buried in that hole, but I chose to emerge from the crevice in which I lived. I chose to open my eyes and to stumble from hole to hole until either all the holes vanished or they blended into one enormous abyss. At that point, I would have nowhere else to go and nowhere else to hide.
My struggle during those years felt like I was constantly swimming upstream against the current, yet somehow I always managed to stay afloat. One might think I would eventually grow weary and drown, yet the constant battle energized me in order to go another step forward towards the point of no return or to swim a little further upstream. Ironically, somehow I always accepted responsibility for my misguided actions, blatant blunders and intentional mistakes as I eagerly made each one of them. I wore that mistake badge with honor and always kept it well polished. Perhaps my willingness to accept responsibility was just another way of eagerly pushing myself towards self-destruction and self-discovery. Surely, one day my list of misdeeds would catch up with me and I would feel some guilt or remorse or maybe both. I felt certain that day would be the day I would fall helplessly into the abyss forever. That day would be the day I would finally die or maybe finally start to really live.
I remember one day sitting in court awaiting my fate. My crime was a deliberate union of stupidity and apathy or as I like to call it being willfully dense. Like most teenagers, I skipped school and cut classes, but unlike most teens who did it occasionally, I steered my punishment into being much worse than what it normally would have been. I skipped school for weeks at a time. What normally might warrant detention or possibly a brief suspension from school turned into a court appearance because I disregarded following anyone’s rules, but my own. To make matters worse I kept running away from home before my court dates. How did it all spiral downward so quickly out of control?
 |
| Utterback’s Private Hospital |
The official word describing my action was “truancy,” but nowhere in the legalese for my actions could the words “willfully dense” be found. Our legal system doesn’t properly account for such a thing when classifying an infraction of this type. That is a concept left for the lawyers to cleverly prove or disprove and to help psychologists earn a livelihood. In my case, if successful, a psychologist could have become rich and famous and a lawyer incredibly frustrated and confused by my actions. Yet, the truth was simple. My actions made no sense at all as I spiraled downhill.
With my mother seated next to me, I sat there wondering what would happen next. My mind was already busy trying to figure out Plan B before I even knew what Plan A entailed. Although the tense atmosphere was laden with my usual aloofness, for my mother it was just another golden opportunity to place the blame where it didn’t belong. It was always easier for her to blame my friends for all the trouble I had been in than to accept my unruly behavior as being entirely my own creation. Sitting there with me gave her the opportunity to have me as a captive audience. Each time she lectured me, I tuned her out, but now as I listened to her words I wondered if she really felt her youngest child and only daughter was some mindless drone incapable of thinking for herself. With my head hung low not from shame, but as a way to block out the reality of the moment, I listened to everything she said. With each word, I felt the gap widen between us. Did she see some weak-minded, misguided follower each time she looked at me? Suddenly, as I stared at the flawlessly polished gray speckled granite floor beneath my feet, I realized she really didn’t know me at all. I was no more than a stranger to the woman I called my mother.
That thought was such a sobering one that it suddenly made me sit up straight and instantly scan the room hoping to see a familiar face. Then, as I leaned back against the hard wooden bench trying desperately to get comfortable, I scanned the room again more slowly than the first time. This was my chance to finally make her look at who I am and what I’ve done to myself.
As I raised my hands motioning for her to scan the room also, I simply asked, “Do you see any of my friends sitting here?”
My mind was screaming, “Hey, look at me! Blame me! They didn’t do it! I did!”
 |
| Penobscot County Courthouse and Jail |
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