Zero tolerance policy is why I ended up at Summit Education Center, where they send kids who pull guns on their teachers or get caught selling drugs. One particularly uppity kindergartener was there for throwing a computer monitor at his teacher’s head. The student body is an angry bunch.
I was sent there for trying to get a bunch of people to wear shorts to school. Shorts were a big “no-no” at Duncanville High School. Silly dress code.
Written From Summit, May 2002
Hour after hour goes by. No sleep, socialization, or looking around the room. Like a concentration camp, everyone looks the same: tired, abused, depressed, weak-willed.
Occasionally, a new student will come in still full of pride and think they’re above the rules. But they are quick to realize that everyone is part of the same pile here.
It’s somewhat ironic. I sit here reading about America and all its constitutional rights. Yet here I am, forced to dress alike with everyone else to avoid conflict.
The Rabbit
We are treated like prisoners. Set bathroom breaks. Fifteen-minute lunches. Hell, even the rabbit they keep as a pet has more freedom than us.
For the majority of the day, he is allowed to hop around wherever he pleases. Even when locked up, his cage is far larger than any of the cubby holes we are forced to reside in.
That rabbit sits there, chewing his food as slowly as he wishes, and mocks us all. He makes sure we know that we are inferior to him in this place.
The Mechanics of Survival
A constant battle to stay awake. One becomes addicted to caffeine tablets. Your own metabolism is forgotten after about a week and replaced with the jittery hyperness that caffeine on an empty stomach brings.
Worksheet after worksheet. No matter how hard you work, there is always more.
When the stress overwhelms you, you take an emergency pass to the bathroom and suck in as much nicotine as possible in the ten minutes you are allotted. You can only have two of these a week, so careful judgment is needed.
The Lesson
One thing this place does do is make you live life to the fullest on the outside. You aren’t allowed much time for fun, so when you get it, you take it.
You might say that Summit is like hell, only on the weekends you’re allowed to vacation in heaven.
I was seventeen when I wrote this. I was there for organizing a protest about shorts. Around me were kids who had done genuinely dangerous things. The administration couldn’t tell the difference between us.
That’s the lesson, I think. Systems that can’t distinguish between violence and rebellion eventually punish both the same way. And sometimes the kid who threw the monitor and the kid who wore the shorts end up in the same room, reading about freedom while a rabbit hops free.
Recovery is a spiritual journey.
Explore the Shadow Work series to understand the parts of yourself you’ve been avoiding.