APRIL 2012 - ISSUE 03 - Massive Magazine
APRIL 2012 - ISSUE 03 - Massive Magazine
APRIL 2012 - ISSUE 03 - Massive Magazine
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FEATURE<br />
Beethoven seeping into the room from the<br />
wooden veneered stereo. The final piece of<br />
furniture was the counsellor’s desk, a huge<br />
mahogany or oak construction that dwarfed<br />
the door into the room. I often wondered,<br />
during compulsory reflection time, if the office<br />
had been built around the desk. What<br />
sat on top of the desk changed with each<br />
new counsellor, and it changed often, but<br />
the posters, furniture and even the phrasing<br />
used by the counsellors never did. They<br />
had all been given the same ‘sheet-music’<br />
to solve the problem but had never heard<br />
the music aloud. All they had were old techniques<br />
that they tried to form into a ‘bandaid’<br />
to troubled youth. But it was like trying<br />
to convince a severed arm to heal.<br />
Diversions were the main attack strategy.<br />
The plan was to convince the students these<br />
feelings didn’t exist, that way we could all<br />
get on with life. Lyrics such as “You don’t<br />
talk about what happened, you shouldn’t<br />
feel that way, don’t be dramatic, you’re too<br />
young to think that, that didn’t happen, get<br />
over it,” were heard often within the counsellor’s<br />
office. Get over it! What a terrible<br />
attitude to take. After being convinced you<br />
were fine, you were sent on your way with<br />
a note to collect another student. Their job<br />
was done for now.<br />
The counsellors were well intentioned,<br />
but ineffective. But then the subject itself is<br />
tricky. It makes people feel uncomfortable,<br />
squeamish, and angry. The problem was<br />
compounded by the fact that if someone<br />
wanted to talk they could never define what<br />
the problem was. I liken it a radio scanning<br />
through stations but unable to focus on one.<br />
It shifts, changes, and morphs, obscuring<br />
the music behind it through static. One day<br />
it’s anger, the next, sorrow. The day after<br />
it’s confusion, annoyance, aggravation, or a<br />
sense of nihilism.<br />
Even trying to define this emotional trip<br />
with my adult mind, the words escape me,<br />
let alone my 12-year-old self. I feel that it<br />
isn’t an emotion at all, but the body compensating<br />
for a lack of something and trying<br />
to fill the void with a random emotion<br />
(a sound plan). I tried to fill it with something,<br />
anything for some normalcy. I tried<br />
studying, I tried wrecking friend and foe<br />
alike in bull rush, I began acting as the lead<br />
in the school production, and even joined<br />
the boys gawking at Alasdair’s pornography<br />
stash behind the bike sheds, (we didn’t<br />
understand what we were seeing, we knew<br />
we were supposed to like tits, but not why.<br />
It was enough to know that we were breaking<br />
the rules). Nothing worked. One day I<br />
was too angry, the next too sad, then too<br />
happy, then too confused, then too bored,<br />
then back to anger and then confusion<br />
turns up again. A wild roller coaster of ups<br />
and downs. It was enough to make me sick,<br />
to make me scream at the ride attendant to<br />
stop the ride, stop it, I want off!<br />
‘She took a blade to herself while in the camp kitchen peeling potatoes<br />
for dinner. Dinner was cancelled, as was camp, and she joined<br />
the other ‘troubled’ children at Sunnyside.’<br />
And that’s exactly what 28.7 teenagers<br />
per 10,000 officially did. In 1995, New Zealand<br />
led the world with the highest rate of<br />
youth suicides per capita. A disgraceful label<br />
for an ‘egalitarian paradise’ that prides<br />
itself on openness and freedom of speech.<br />
The nation also shared the counsellors’ attitude<br />
towards ‘the S-word’ and tried to<br />
cover up the embarrassing figures. Unofficially,<br />
hundreds more ‘bailed’ in secret.<br />
They were labelled as accidents to cover up<br />
the records.<br />
The road toll in 1995 was just over 600,<br />
the highest on record. Many of these were<br />
caused by head-on collisions between car<br />
and truck. Many of the truck drivers protested<br />
there was “no accident, the vehicle<br />
came straight at them”, but they were labelled<br />
as such anyway. Suicide-by-truck is<br />
the industry term, but officially it doesn’t<br />
exist, just ‘traffic collision’.<br />
The figures also don’t include the thousands<br />
more who were caught in the act and<br />
smuggled away to mental hospitals. The<br />
Intermediate had several believed suicides,<br />
and dozens more attempts of varying ‘seriousness’.<br />
All attempts ended the same way.<br />
The students cemented themselves outside<br />
of the local counsellors’ help and landed<br />
them into Sunnyside Hospital. Veronica<br />
was one them.<br />
+++<br />
For Veronica, being dumped by Sonny on<br />
day 3 of the camp was too much for her,<br />
at least that’s what we thought. We had no<br />
idea about her parents’ breakup, the CYPS<br />
callouts to her house, her father out of work<br />
sitting at the pub all hours of the day or<br />
scoring at the tinny houses. We had no idea<br />
that her mother would invite women over<br />
and have sex with them on the front lawn.<br />
Veronica took a blade to herself while in the<br />
camp kitchen peeling potatoes for dinner.<br />
Dinner was cancelled, as was camp, and she<br />
joined the other ‘troubled’ children at Sunnyside.<br />
Sonny wasn’t the same after that.<br />
He left school, taking his stereo with him.<br />
Now silence sat over the playground.<br />
+++<br />
Once you went into Sunnyside, you<br />
could never leave it behind. We called<br />
the dentist, the ‘murder house’ and Sunnyside<br />
the ‘loony bin’. Actually, the parents<br />
called it that, mine included, and we mimicked<br />
them. Our parents warned us not to<br />
speak to the kids who came back from there.<br />
The ones we did speak to were not the same.<br />
Something was changed about them. They<br />
appeared robotic, on autopilot for most of<br />
the day. It was as if their volume was stuck<br />
on medium, it could never be cranked up<br />
or toned down, like the counsellor’s radio.<br />
Just kept an inch below the passing of time.<br />
Manageable. In control.<br />
It was too much for some kids to take.<br />
Veronica, just 13, spent most of her school<br />
life leap-frogging in and out of that place.<br />
She would come back to school, a few kids<br />
would talk to her, some would invite her to<br />
play games but she rarely smiled anymore,<br />
or got angry. Even when people would tease<br />
her, she just looked on blankly. She took her<br />
medication at 2pm each day. The teacher<br />
would make a ceremony of it. He would<br />
tell her to come up to the front exactly at<br />
2pm, maths time, and swallow her pills. She<br />
called them happy pills, which made sense –<br />
the label was covered by a neon smiley face<br />
sticker. She didn’t know what they did but<br />
sometimes we would steal them on a dare<br />
and swallow them. A pill seemed a logical<br />
way to be happy. They didn’t do anything<br />
to us, but we pretended they did and would<br />
smile at everyone and laugh insanely, revelling<br />
in the Placebo effect.<br />
+++<br />
But whether we were carted off to Sunnyside<br />
or made it through outside of<br />
its walls, we were all walking wounded. The<br />
thousands that made it through the ride<br />
but could never forget the experience. Still<br />
stuck with mixed feelings, trying to fill the<br />
void with family, work, drugs, alcohol, anything.<br />
Were others awake now? Listening to<br />
long-forgotten music in the dark, their head<br />
spinning with ideas. Maybe there are hundreds<br />
still suffering in silence but carrying<br />
on regardless, still ignoring the subject like<br />
the counsellors before them. But recently<br />
24<br />
PHOTOGRAPHS BY SARAH BURTON