In the Space Between Hurt and Healing: A Call for Amnesty

I don’t know about y’all but I am struggling with this flurry of memories and emotions when I think about many people during my time at TM. I consider myself well connected with alumni but almost all of them are either from before my time, after, or they were people on the opposite shift and outside my typical circle. I am not connected to anyone in my family core nor any of my GI roommates despite still being friends on social media. Now that people are getting reconnected, I’m starting to wonder what it’s going to be like saying high to best friends not seen in almost 2 decades. That social awkwardness feels weird enough on its own but now maybe we should talk about the big elephant in the room. This probably isn’t going to be the happiest of reunions.

We were hurt big time, wounded, injured and even abused. The documentary did a great job showing the top-down abuse, but I don’t think it highlighted the lateral abuse enough. I think ultimately the buck stops at Teen Mania and leadership, they created the environment where we hurt each other. A lot of us had toxic power dynamics with bosses or subordinates. There was sexism, racism, homophobia, toxic gender roles and stereotyping, bullying, shouting, physical altercations. The list goes on! For beans sake, we were essentially one long Stanford Prison Experiment. Talk about a psych study for the ages!

Now that everyone is reconnecting, I imagine that there might be a lot of friction, at least for some of us. I’ll admit that I’m probably going to be a problem. I am a bitter person and I hold grudges. Not only that, I feel as though I associate certain alumni with hurtful memories, TM values/beliefs, or that maybe you’re the poster child for [insert trauma here]. So since I have a painful emotion from Teen Mania, I am angry at you because it’s your face I see. Some people are the representation of the Standard^TM that I couldn’t live up to so I hate them for being better when I could not. Some people are the representation of a haughty attitude whose voice echoed in my head next to Hasz’s. Some people I just wanna sock in their gorgeous, chiseled jawline. What really sucks is that if I really think about the relationship with the person, everything was great. It was the environment that was toxic, not them. But my brain wants to shake fists at these perceived threats.

On top of that, I was also a hurtful person. I either said some horrible things thanks to the crazy beliefs I had. I was stressed out, getting hurt from leadership above so I took it out on my peers and subordinates. I helped facilitate a lot of the LTEs and I know that I am directly responsible for physical injuries. I can only imagine how much emotional and spiritual damage I caused. I have carried grief and guilt from hurting people and I imagine that I have more apologies to make in the future. I want to reconcile and do my part to help people heal.

So I offer amnesty. Can we all agree that hurt people hurt people? This doesn’t excuse every misdeed, injury, or vandalism. Some things can’t just be wiped away unseen and unaddressed. I know that there are egregious harms done like sexual assault. That is a whole can of worms that I know too little about and shan’t address now.

Instead, amnesty for the crazy, culty things that we did to each other. Can we recognize that we were young, naive, and eager to serve? Our pre-frontal cortices weren’t even fully developed; we were children! TM exploited this and pitted us against ourselves. I might have beaten you with a stick when I should have offered the carrot. Heck, I worked in the MOB so I know that many interns were there directly because of my help. I owe a whole class or three an apology!

Let’s not sweat the small stuff that’s really TM’s fault. In reconnecting with old friends, let’s try to give each other the benefit of the doubt that we’re all reconnecting to be friends but also even to heal and that would come easier if we can work together. Let’s be quick to apologize and quick to forgive if possible. Can we promise to be honest with ourselves and each other?

Let’s work to give each other another shot but be okay if a boundary has to be set because the wound is just too deep. Instead let us recognize that we all heal at our own pace and sometimes it’s not time yet. Then we can be hopeful that there will come a time when the wounds can mend. Then maybe we can be that big happy family that we all took a stupid oath for. A lot of us had great friendships and we helped each other out. We were the reason why so many of us had great experiences. The only reason I was able to survive as long as I did was due to my fellow GIs making life bearable.

Amnesty comes from an authority. I’m not really an authority but I do recognize that the Recovering Alumni blog/brand/whatever has some weight, some history. But I think in reality, the authority really lies in all of us. The responsibility of reconciling or not certainly does. So why not use our power to help each other out so that we don’t wallow in guilt and grief?