As harsh as everything seemed in the beginning, that harshness faded over time. Like an abused person who is continually beaten, once the spirit is broken the beatings may not hurt any less, but they become part to a person's reality. The abused person starts to believe they deserve the abuse and they have no way out. To that person some attention, no matter how severe is better than no attention. Isn’t neglect or abandonment a far more lethal form of abuse than the constant hammering at someone trying to break that person’s will? So, like mindless drones after awhile, we followed suit because we no longer knew any other way to do things nor did many of us care. We deserved this treatment because our lives had spun so far out of control that Kinsman Hall was our last hope...our only hope or so we were told. For those people who were sent to Kinsman Hall due to drug issues, drugs had destroyed all normalcy in their lives. Drastic actions require drastic measures! Kinsman Hall was definitely a slap in the face and a shock to the senses that made a person briefly stop long enough to reflect upon the issues that had been pointed out to them and to examine the path on which they now walked.
Despite the wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds housed under one roof, we all shared some common threads that wove an unsolicited bond amongst us. One common thread each person seemed to share with each other was the problem of trusting people. Trust issues ranged from those learned on the streets from being part of the drug culture to being that of full-scale paranoia seen in the mentally ill. For some, the baggage they carried with them to Kinsman Hall transcended having addiction issues to being problems that caused serious breaks with reality.
There were a few residents whose flight took them over the cuckoos nest and then eventually back to land safely in a world governed by reality. An unfortunate few never improved. They were doomed to spend a life stigmatized by their mental illness. Having special needs put them at the mercy of those who profited from their shortcomings. The prison that held the mentally ill captive had no bars, yet their prison was more horrible than anyone could imagine. I often wondered how or why these people came to Kinsman Hall. Had their families become so desperate they were willing to try anything? Even back in the 1970's how could a parent send their mentally ill child to Kinsman Hall where not a soul was equipped to care for the mentally ill? Some of the questions I had then were never answered and I still wonder about them.
When dealing with parents, the charismatic Dean Hepper always dished up a holiday-sized plate of hope for the hope-deprived families. He left no room for anyone to doubt his abilities. With his help and the help of others like him, anyone could be reshaped and transformed. I'm sure the plate of hope he dished up and offered to the government agencies he dealt with in hopes that they would send him residents was similar to what the families and the communities heard about the Kinsman Hall program, but contained less emotions and more straight forward eye-opening facts. Perhaps the answer I wanted was no more complicated than Kinsman Hall providing a much needed break for those families who were weary of dealing with the stigma that surrounded mental illness and of feeling inadequate when it came to actually helping their child. Whatever brought these new "children" to their new father, Dean Hepper Sr., their paths were much different and more difficult than the paths of the addicts and the other lost souls who had found their way to Kinsman Hall.
I know Kathy wanted me to heed all her warnings, but if I had done that there would have been no reason for me to be at Kinsman Hall in the first place. I was far from being the poster child for what a well-adjusted wholesome teenager should look and act like in the early 1970’s. Everyone at Kinsman Hall was a rebel in their own way. I was just another rebel in a house full of them. Even those people who constantly screamed about never having done drugs on the streets had issues as severe as anyone else residing at Kinsman Hall. We all had inner demons that had led us astray. Those demons were the drivers who dropped us off at Kinsman Hall's front door. Those dastardly demons led us to have a good time right up until it was time to pay for the good time and then we got dropped cold. For the first times in our lives we stood alone facing all the ugly, unwanted truth.
Kathy helped give me a better grasp on the need for being cautious and checking the water before diving into it. For someone impulsive like me, that was a hard lesson to learn. My first few months taught me to hone my observation skills and with each step of the way; I saw that what she told me had been the truth. Later, as I got to know the system better, I did see some rather obvious loopholes that could be taken to make life easier, but to me, they weren’t worth the price I would have to pay to benefit from them. Learning the ropes really meant learning who was trustworthy, how far the rules would bend without having to pay the consequences from bending them too far and what people belonged to what cliques. Knowing who was who really helped out in a pinch especially if the important who's liked you and it also made a person's place in the pecking order crystal clear.
Yes, cliques were constantly discouraged and people who were members of them were disciplined. But cliques existed regardless of what anyone did or said to try to do away with them. The peons had to "spread their action" by not exclusively hanging out with the same people all the time, while the Heppers (Carol, Faith and Dean Jr.) built and maintained a rather exclusive circle of friends consisting of what residents they deemed as being worthy of their friendship. The rest of us simply weren't good enough so we remained on the sidelines watching. For some, that reinforced their feelings of inadequacy and for others, it just caused resentment. One might come to the conclusion that people were jealous because they hadn't been selected and perhaps that was true in some cases.
In my case, jealousy was far from what made me dislike what I saw happening. The ego trips, the head games and the feelings that got hurt along the way left a horrid taste in my mouth and made me so disillusioned that I again was part of a dysfunctional family. I simply didn't like the way the Hepper children flaunted and used their special status. I knew it had to have been difficult for Carol, Dean Jr., and Faith to grow up being surrounded by people with such serious problems, but I never felt that was a good enough excuse to have gotten away with the kind of things it had licensed them to do because their last name was Hepper. I often wondered how Dean and Barbara expected to mold people in such dire need when they didn't appear to be able to mold their own children. Were they really that oblivious or were they just distracted by the amount of focus they had to exert in the name of Kinsman Hall?
Kinsman Hall was a therapeutic community aimed at getting people to recognize and to take responsibility for their bad behaviors. Each person’s metamorphosis began from day one with the help of fellow residents and staff members and ended when each of us ventured back into the real world. The primary premise on which Kinsman Hall was built theorized only when a person was able to recognize certain behaviors could those behaviors be modified. One of the many ways recognition of our bad behaviors was initiated was through a fundamental tool called a "pull-up" and then as time went on, each resident was introduced to more complex tools for behavior modification through the use of therapy. In order to explain the definition of a pull-up, I first have to explain that each resident had assigned jobs throughout their stay at Kinsman Hall.
Job assignments would change from time to time, so each person could work with new people, learn different skills and be a productive member of the community. By the time most of us left Kinsman Hall, we all had become a jack-of-all-trades, but a master of none. The rotation of job assignments was one way cliques were discouraged from forming, but on the other hand, how a person actually journeyed through the program was with a group of their peers who entered the program around the same time. Cliques/friendships were a catch22! Marathons, a Kinsman Hall style extended therapy session, were generally held with the participants being from a certain peer group. These sessions were filled with intense soul bearing moments.
During free time, the groups that socialized together tended to be with people from the same peer groups. After all these were the people who knew each other best. Yes, cliques were continually discouraged, but they existed nonetheless. Sure boundaries were crossed and there were exceptions to every rule, but for the most part Kinsman Hall was all about playing the acceptance game and the not breaking the rules game. The powers that be told us how and when to do things and we accepted direction without question or at least, we followed suit and went through the motions.
The “dorms” (dormitories) were like big sorority and fraternity houses with the older residents being the ones who ran the show. The younger residents were at the mercy of the older residents’ scrutiny and seal of approval. Not everyone got a seal of approval and those who didn’t went through the program being looked at by others as being unworthy or weird. Regardless of what was said or done, friends remained with friends and the outsiders remained on the outside…alone.
Quite frankly, more was done to encourage cliques than to discourage them, but I never felt the need to make anyone aware of something that seemed more than obvious. Things weren’t discussed that didn’t work like they were supposed to work. We kept some things to ourselves and the only time they would be openly discussed were in whispers amongst friends. Trying to change something that was just human nature would be like fighting a losing battle. Bitching and complaining had its time and place, but the proverbial suggestion box was non-existent. Making staff aware of any imperfections in a program that was supposed to rebuild all of us into stronger, better people just wasn’t done. Injustices weren’t injustices at Kinsman Hall! They were just creative ways to make us see the light and change our bad behavior.