APRIL 2012 - ISSUE 03 - Massive Magazine

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