My Bio - Part 9

What I hated most about Valleyhead was its overly structured and hectic routine and the fact that you had no space or privacy. It was worse than camp! They ran us ragged from 7:00 AM till 10:00 PM with school, group discussions, and outdoor activities. I didn’t mind going on walks, but the sports were a total bore. I only liked gymnastics and skating, and believe me, they didn’t have that at Valleyhead! We did do a little cross-country skiing, though, and this was kind of fun.

Everything was very controlled and formal. We couldn’t just go into the dining room, eat our meals, and then get up and go when we were done. Instead, we had to wait outside the dining room—often for up to fifteen minutes at a time—before we could sit down. Then we’d have to wait for a while for the food to be served. Then, after eating, we’d have to sit there some more for what felt like an eternity before we could be excused.

Besides Donna, her sister Margaret and a staffer named Barbara were definitely the worst when it came to meanness and playing favorites.

During my time at Valleyhead, I went from bone-thin to rather overweight due to the meds they were giving me. These drugs also caused me to stop having periods for a few years. Donovan would often fat-shame me (even though I was barely 20 pounds overweight), saying I had “enough fat to keep me warm throughout the winters.” Of course, if I’d dared to remind her that she wasn’t exactly a supermodel herself, I’d have gotten written up for it. Before I gained the weight, it was Mosca who did the picking on me.

Donna wasn’t a problem for me until April of 1983 when I jumped out the window of the room I was in at the time down in “the wing,” as it was called. At that point, I had just one other roommate but she wasn’t in the room at the time.

I had been on restriction, though I can only guess why—maybe for mouthing off to someone or for having something I wasn’t supposed to have.

There was a deaf girl named Brenda who snitched on me after my mother smuggled in all kinds of goodies for me one day (my mother was always generous when it came to material things). I think it was mostly money this time around—something like $10. That was a lot in those days. On weekends, if you weren’t on restriction, you could walk up to the local convenience store for candy and cigarettes. I was walking back with Brenda one day, and she noticed I had a lot of stuff. She promised not to tell, but soon after, Donna raided my room and confiscated my precious goodies.

This might have been why I was on restriction at the time. I was only on it once or twice. But this time, I wasn’t just on restriction—I was also on suicide watch. When you’re on suicide watch, you’re not supposed to be allowed to go anywhere alone. I guess Debbie, my therapist, let it slip her mind because she let me walk back to my room alone one day after our session. Given that it was the staff against the students, I doubt she was reprimanded in any way for this oversight.

I walked back to my room in a sort of trance after leaving Debbie and another one of our deep and dark discussions. Once there, I walked up to the window and looked down below. Students were passing by on their way to lunch. A sense of panic suddenly overwhelmed me. I felt so trapped and alone, so utterly depressed and helpless. I sat down and began to listen to music, but it didn’t soothe my nerves. I turned the music off, knowing I was about to do something stupid, though it felt as if I were powerless to stop myself. It didn’t matter, though—there was no one to cry out to for help who would care and not punish me for reaching out. I was just another face in a sea of unwanted outcasts.

I hopped up onto the dresser in front of the window, threw the window open, and yanked the screen out. The girls were now inside the dining room as I sat crouched on the windowsill at the empty ground below. All I saw was an overhang about six feet below me and the dirt ground with a little bit of gravel about ten feet below that.

I tumbled forward, bounced off the overhang, and hit the ground with a tremendous thud. Although the fall lasted only seconds, it felt like I was in the air for minutes. I had just enough time to realize that what was done was done—there was no turning back. It was too late. Maybe I’d be dead, maybe paralyzed, or maybe I’d just break a leg. I wasn’t really thinking about the possible consequences—I just wanted out!

When I hit the ground, it felt like I had slammed into it at 80 MPH. The wind was knocked out of me for several seconds, and I was unable to breathe. I knew right away that my upper right arm was broken. One look at the thing, coupled with the pain, told me that much. I had landed on my side, causing my arm to buckle under the weight of my body. My beaded necklace fell off and landed a few feet in front of me. One of my brown loafers fell off, too.

Reflexively, I screamed as soon as I could breathe again. Up above, the pale yellow curtain hung outside the window, slowly blowing in the breeze.

Donovan came running around the corner, then quickly backtracked into the building to fetch the nurse when she saw me. She must’ve been incredibly shocked to see me lying there because, a few months earlier, she had caught me about to jump out of a different window.

“If you really wanted to go, you’d have gone,” she had told me.

Well, I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t go from that other window, which was a straight drop to the ground. It was probably bouncing off the overhang that saved me from worse injury by breaking my fall and slowing it down a bit. This was room number thirteen, by the way, that I jumped out of.

When the nurse came running out, she ordered me to stay still and asked me what my name was, who the president was, and things like that. When the paramedics arrived, they strapped me to a board in a way that prevented me from moving my head. My broken arm was draped over my stomach, which I had to hold with my other hand to keep it from sliding off.

As soon as I got to the hospital, X-rays were taken. I had broken my humerus right in half.

I was put in a room with one other person, but I don’t remember how many days I stayed there—only a few, I think.

The day after I was admitted, they operated on my arm by scrunching the bones back together using a fluoroscope. Then they put a cast on and secured it to my body so I couldn’t move it from the shoulder, and believe me, I couldn’t move it if I wanted to! All I could move were my wrist, hand, and fingers.

My parents came to visit me, but they only made me feel worse. My father was okay, actually. The problem was my mother, as usual, saying things meant to be sarcastic like, “Do it again. Maybe next time you’ll succeed.”

Definitely not the right thing to say! I didn’t expect a pat on the back for what I’d done, but that was a rather cold and insensitive comment. I tried to explain to her that I didn’t do it to kill myself or with any set outcome in mind.

“No, you just wanted attention,” she accused.

“Pretty risky way to get attention, don’t you think?” I asked her, especially since the jagged ends of the broken bones could’ve easily punctured my aorta.

The truth was that I did it because I suddenly felt overwhelmed with feelings of being trapped with nothing but a bunch of control freaks who couldn’t care less about me. I panicked, not thinking about the consequences. I simply did what I did. Period.

But no one was willing to hear what they didn’t want to hear or believe. It wasn’t just stupidity I was dealing with from my mother and most of Valleyhead’s staff—it was sheer ignorance and stubbornness. Most of the staff and students handled the situation very poorly. Some of them smothered me when I returned while others turned against me as if it was somehow personal or I’d harmed others. They wouldn’t even let any of the other students visit me in the hospital during a time when my need for support was so great because I had “done it to myself.” Instead of helping to build up my will to live, they only tore it down further, making me rather sorry I didn’t succeed. But I wasn’t about to take my mother’s lovely advice and try again, risking an even worse outcome.

So there I was, returning to Valleyhead more depressed than I could ever imagine, shunned by those who were supposed to care about me and placed under very strict and supervised restriction. I couldn’t even sleep upstairs in my room or be alone for a second. I had to sleep downstairs and be accompanied by a staff member wherever I went. Donna took it upon herself to extend my restriction because of a lighter she found on me—one my mom had slipped in with my belongings at the hospital, unbeknownst to me. It felt like a kick when I was already down.

It hurt me deeply that my mother would even think of sending me back to a place that made me feel so miserable after what I’d done.

I could only bathe my lower body. My hair had to be washed in the sink, and of course, someone had to do it for me.

I was required to do my schoolwork with my left hand.

I could tell when the bones in my arm had fused together because I could then wiggle my arm by the shoulder inside the cast. The first time the doctor changed the cast, it was still broken. He rested my elbow on my knee, and after I commented that I couldn’t move it, he wiggled the bones, showing me that it was still broken.

The second time, he was surprised that it was finally healing. He had thought he might have to go inside and pin the bones together. When the cast came off some two or three months later, my arm was weak but quickly grew stronger. At first, I couldn’t even raise my hand to eye level.

Once my arm healed, I realized I had no choice but to be their little puppet and do what they wanted if I was to make my time there more bearable and leave with some sanity left. Besides, I was nearing adulthood and thought I would have the freedom to do what I wanted with my life once out of there.

I worked my way up to the highest level, and during my last summer there, I had a vocational training job with about a dozen other students at a local High School, earning about $55 a week. That money was kept in our accounts and not given to us directly. It was only given for buying things like clothes, and I’m sure the owners pocketed whatever was left over. The courses included computers, horticulture, landscaping, and similar subjects. Except for the computer classes, it was pretty boring.

Before the vocational training program, I was set up to teach a small sign language class in the main house of the school.

During my last summer, around the time I worked at the high school, I was moved from the main house to the small house next to it. I liked it better there because there were fewer people. On my side of the house, there were only a few rooms. I could smoke anytime I wanted and often had a room to myself.

Besides the three rooms, there was a kitchen and a deck in back.

I’m not sure if it was before or after I left the main house, but a young woman named Mary who I later learned was a lesbian started working there. She was with another woman who worked there and became the first person I developed a major crush on.

With Debbie married and gone, Lisa, another lesbian (there seemed to be several there), became my new therapist.

Lisa and the math teacher, Michelle, were the only two people in the whole place who seemed to care about me. Mary was nice during the time I was there, but I was led on by her afterward. I’ll get to that part later.

Lisa cried a bit when I left. After I left, I traveled by bus to visit Michelle a few times. She took in Denise after graduation, and I later learned that she would have taken me in as well had I needed a place to go. Michelle quit to work at another school not long after I left because she was fed up with the way the kids at Valleyhead were treated.

I also visited Denise after she moved into a rooming house and tried to persuade her to come to Springfield with me and be my roommate, but she wasn’t interested.

Although I graduated in June, I didn’t leave Valleyhead until August. I’m not sure why this was—perhaps because of the vocational training program that summer.

I regret how I handled my so-called graduation award. After performing a song I wrote with my guitar for accompaniment, I received a music book as a graduation present from the owners. While that was sweet, the “best behavior improvement” award felt degrading. I almost regretted not tearing it up right there at the podium.

I felt completely cheated by my graduation experience. Like most kids, I had envisioned a traditional ceremony with a cap and gown, but I didn’t get to have that. Not attending a real prom wasn’t a loss to me, though. We were occasionally taken to all-boys schools for dances, which were boring as hell. It seemed like such a waste of time, especially since, even if I had wanted a boyfriend, I wouldn’t have been able to get very far with anyone.

Towards the end of my time at Valleyhead, my mother dealt me yet another nasty blow by suddenly informing me that I wasn’t welcome back in her house. This was when I first started to really show signs of having a sixth sense.

One night, as I lay in bed, I was overwhelmed with a sudden feeling that I wouldn’t be going home in August as planned. Unable to sleep, I went downstairs and found Mary trying to get the troublemakers to bed. Once she did, I expressed my concerns to her.

“It’s the first I’ve heard about it,” she told me. “I don’t think you have anything to worry about. It’s kind of like having a plane ticket in your hand but not being able to get on the plane just yet. It’s just normal anxieties you have, that’s all.”

But it wasn’t, as it turned out. My mother simply didn’t want me back. So, I was resigned to living at Valleyhead for an indefinite period because I didn’t yet know that Michelle would have taken me in. However, just before my graduation, during a visit home, my mother woke me up at 2:00 in the morning to tell me she had had a change of heart and I was free to come home.

How kind of her, right? And I didn’t even receive a single apology for all the stress and depression she put me through before deciding I was worthy of returning to her house. Instead, I was handed a list of dos and don’ts.

A few years later, my mother admitted that sending me to Brattleboro was a mistake, but she never acknowledged that Valleyhead was an even bigger mistake. I honestly don’t think they were aware that I was brought to Northampton State Hospital and were likely horrified when they learned of it.

So, home I went, though things would be different this time around.

Two years later, a student set Valleyhead on fire. The students, who were housed in a church until the school could be rebuilt, were no longer accepted if they had previously played with fire or attempted suicide.

In the early 2000s, the FBI shut down Valleyhead for good.