I don't think anyone reads this anymore, and that's ok.  I need to get things out that I don't feel comfortable talking about anymore.  I need to purge myself of things that happened to me over a time span of about four years that have apparently affected me more than I ever thought they would.  While all of this was happening, I laughed it off.  I adopted the persona of the "tough girl" who can smile through anything, and it worked for me for a really long time.  People believed that persona, and to a degree, that's who I am now.  I rarely, if ever, get angry.  I don't often let any emotional disturbances peek their way out of my heart.  But, now, all of the sudden, I'm having a hard time staying chill.  It surprises me at times when I least expect it.  When I'm watching an episode of Law and Order.  When I'm watching the morning news.  When I read an article online.  When I see kids I think I recognize.  And all of the sudden, I'm tearful.  Anxious.  Scared.  Worried.  PTSD?  Probably.  My logical brain has a hard time with that concept.  Why should I be experiencing PTSD?  I haven't gone to war.  I haven't experienced extreme abuse.  But, really, I guess I have.  There are at least four instances that I would count as extreme, but many more, lesser instances in between those four that were damaging as well.  It should be noted that everything that I'm about to tell happened at my job.  A job for which I was paid a starting wage of 8.00 an hour.  I worked at a residential treatment center for at-risk boys, aged 10-18.  The four years that I worked there were four years of physical, emotional, verbal and sometimes sexual abuse.  I was called a bitch more days than not.  The kids I worked with were pros at finding weak spots and exploiting them.  If they found a crack, they got in, and could cut you to the bone.  And they did.  I was punched, kicked, scratched, bit, choked, stabbed, had my hair pulled, spat on.  I had kids make subtle and not so subtle sexual comments and gestures towards me.  I had kids invade my boundaries in very inappropriate ways.  For four years, I went to work every day with the knowledge that my physical safety could be seriously compromised.  After I became a supervisor, not only was I responsible for my own safety, and the children's safety, but for the safety of the staff that I was in charge of.  It was a big job for me, and often I'd decide to risk my own safety for the sake of someone else's.  It should also be noted, if anyone is reading this, that I am a 5'7" woman who weighs about 130 pounds.  I am not a big person.  Many of these boys were much bigger and much stronger than I, and I often had the responsibility of ensuring the safety of a campus of 40-50 boys plus staff, by myself.  In this light, the "tough girl" persona worked well for me.  Even when I was terrified inside, I could keep a pretty cool exterior.  I've stared down kids who were threatening me with railroad spikes.  Turned my back on kids who were threatening to punch me.  Gotten in between two boys twice my size.  Jumped into restraints with kids who I had no business trying to restrain.  Because of things like this, I think the boys were a little bit scared of me.  Just because I seemed to be a little bit crazy to them.  If I was willing to jump into situations like that, they couldn't predict what I would do.  This worked to my benefit, and I worked to foster that impression of me.  It kept me safe.  Kind of.

The first of the (at least) four really bad things happened to me merely a month after I started working at this particular center.  I had been assigned to work in the cabin with the youngest, lowest functioning boys.  For those who don't know about at-risk kids, or kids in general, the lower functioning they are, and often the younger they are, the more volatile they can be.  This for a number of reasons, institutionally, maturationally, and developmentally.  First of all, younger boys, merely by virtue of their age, have less self control than older boys.  They haven't learned to control their emotions or their actions, and tend to act on impulse.  Secondly, boys who are already in "the system" at young ages tend to have much more troubled and violent pasts than older boys who have stayed out of "the system" until they were a little older.  Because of these troubled pasts, the young boys tend to have an alphabet soup of diagnoses.  ADD, ADHD, ODD, RAD, PTSD.  Some are heavily drugged, which also have interesting and sometimes adverse effects on their behavior.

So, I had been working with these young kids every day.  I am pretty good at working with little ones.  I have a patience with situations that most don't have, and have an almost bloated sense of empathy, which is what the young boys really need.  I fell into the "mom" role in their lives fairly easily.  This particular night, I was working with another fairly new staff.  Neither of us had much of an idea about how to control a cabin of 12 little boys.  This other staff, named Bob, was an older man, in his 60's, but was in marvelous shape and was reminiscent of Hulk Hogan, in his hey day.  Thanks to this, the boys typically felt pretty safe around him, but this particular night, one of the most violent boys was upset about something.  At this point, nearly five years later, I don't remember what the problem was.  S**** Y** (I starred out his name, for confidentiality's sake)  was his name.  I had had a hard time with this boy since day one.  He had a hard time bonding with new staff, and I wasn't one to force myself on anyone.  I had been in restraints with him before, and although he was small, he was strong, and he was a fighter.  He bit a lot.  So, he was mad, and there was a disassembled bed in one of the rooms.  Now, the beds that they used at this center were made out of wood, and used long 2 by 4 boards as bed slats.  Sergio had gotten a hold of two bed slats and was walking around the cabin, pounding the slats on the walls and the railings and door frames.  A third staff member, Dan Moody (who has actually been instrumental in many of the most traumatic events of my life), was in the cabin, distributing meds to the kids who needed them.  He was absolutely the most senior staff member there, having been there for over a year.  As SY walked through the cabin, Dan pulled me aside and told me to tell Bob to put SY into a small child restraint.  The restraints we used were what are called physical restraints, in treatment center lingo.  There are chemical restraints, such as sedatives and tranquilizers.  There are mechanical restraints, such as handcuffs or straight jackets.  Then there are physical restraints, which are staff members restraining the residents with their bodies.  The only restraints we were authorized to use were physical restraints, which were a little less invasive on the part of the residents, but also put both staff and residents at greater risk.  Later, in my years at this center, I was to become a Therapeutic Crisis Intervention trainer.  TCI was the crisis management techniques we used, including physical restraints.  A small child restraint is basically, standing behind the child to be restrained, grasping his two forearms with your hands, crossing his arms in front of him and holding his arms tight against his body, so he can't lash out.  So, this is what Dan wanted Bob to do.  Now, Bob is a lovely man.  Over the years, he has also seen me through some very difficult times and has provided much needed emotional support.  But, I didn't know Bob very well at that point, and although I passed on the message to him, I got the impression that he didn't take too kindly to having a young 20-something girl tell him what to do.  So, I decided to do it myself.  SY was running around the cabin, but being the smart boy he was, knew what was coming when he saw me walking toward him.  He dropped one of the boards, but kept the other one in his left hand.  Then, he started running into the area where the meds were.  The thing about distributing medication at a center such as this, is that med time is always a very dangerous time.  The staff distributing the meds aren't locked in another room, and it is always just one grasp away for a boy to jump into the area and grab the meds.  Once that happens, there are a number of different scenarios that could arise, all very undesirable.  The boy could take the meds in an attempt to overdose.  The boy could distribute the meds to other boys for money, popularity or power.  The boy could attempt to drug another resident.  Knowing this, I wanted to keep SY from getting to the meds, so I reached out and grabbed his arm.  The arm with out the board.  This left him free to swing around with his other arm and hit me full force in the face with the 2 by 4.  I gasped and looked down and covered my face with my hands.  When I looked up, I saw 10 young boys surrounding me, with terrified looks on their faces, and SY on the ground, in a restraint with Dan and Bob.  No other adults.  I couldn't leave the other 10 boys unsupervised, and I couldn't show them that I was scared, because a scared adult equals scared children.  When children are scared, they do whatever they can to make themselves feel safe.  And often, as counterintuitive as this sounds, that means starting a fight or acting violently, in order to get more adults to the scene.  When another adult finally did arrive, I was able to leave the cabin and fill out the paperwork that comes with being injured on the job.  A police officer arrived, took my statement, and charged SY with third degree assault.  Then Dan came into the room and congratulated me on being such a champ and not crying or showing that I was upset.  From this, I got the impression that the "tough girl" was what I was supposed to be, and I internalized that.

Alright, that's enough for today.  Maybe more later