When I was sixteen, I was a member of a ‘
day program’ at the
Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario, sixth floor, east wing. Survivors scattered around the
Ottawa-Carleton region simply call it
Six-East. There’s a lot of us.
The program was designed to
assist and
nurture under-18 kids who were in poor living environments, or had
trouble coping with day-to-day events,
depression,
fears, and
social issues. I went in for the day program under the recommendation of my mother’s
psychologist, and they ended up keeping me for a few months. They didn’t feel that I was safe to let back out.
Most kids were
supervised constantly, except for when they were sleeping, or using the washrooms. The unlucky ones were on a system called
one-to-one, where they were constantly in the presence of one of the
councilors. No privacy, at any times.
Good behavior was rewarded with unsupervised
cigarette breaks, increased
autonomy, and kitchen
privileges.
The kitchen was fairly bare. No
sharp things to hurt yourself with, ice cream eaten with
wooden sticks, and oven-ready mini pizzas. And
brownies. Not from scratch, or from a popular mix, but from this
industrial brownie mix that comes in white
wax bags, used by
caterers all over the country, and bought in
bulk by the
hospital.
The smell of brownies was
overpowering, and
ever-present. Only the occasional
incense stick of a
hopelessly depressed romantic trying to change the air and enjoy a bit of beauty before the nurses noticed, broke the pattern.
Incense sticks,
cigarettes and
razor blades were the currency.
It was these things that came rushing back to me when I walked into the
kitchen at work, intending to get a
coke. Someone was making brownies. The same kind, from the same mix.
I knew that I was not in
Six-East, that I was not at the hospital, that I was not
a fucked-up kid with a problem and no social or
coping skills. I wasn’t forced to stay here, I was only at work,
I could leave anytime, if I really needed to.
I almost want to go outside for a moment, and breathe the cold air, just to make sure. I think I would, if I could
trust my hands to stop shaking long enough to open the door, and my legs to not give out on me again.