After this incident, I was immediately ostracized and forced to "regain trust" from my group members. I was lucky, however. If I had been under 18, I'm sure I would have been dropped back down to level one, but due to my age, I was allowed to remain on a probationary status at a level five.
After a couple of weeks of groveling and enduring numerous group sessions during which I was the object of ridicule and criticism, I eventually convinced Garth and the rest of the high phase girls that I was "ready to work."
And so, I was cemented into the system at that point - I was completely brainwashed into thinking that the program had saved my life and that I would be dead if my parents had never sent me there (the same robotic mantra of all brainwashed WWASP kids). I became a cruel and ruthless high phase girl - just like the ones who had hurt me when I was new at CCM, and I extolled the virtues of the program that had caused irrevocable damage to my soul. The rest of my incarceration at Cross Creek was fairly smooth, and I graduated in late May, 1999 - two months before my 19th birthday.
After I graduated, I returned to Houston to live with my parents for a couple of months before being admitted to the University of Texas - Arlington in the Fall of 1999. By the time I was living in Arlington, away from parental or program supervision, it had only been about three months since I had left Cross Creek.
I entered college a completely conflicted, damaged, neurotic, depressed and anxious person - with the next few years ahead of me to experience levels of depravity that I never came close to prior to my incarceration at CCM. I don't feel comfortable getting into all those details now, but suffice it to say, that the program DIDN'T WORK - and in fact, it DID harm me more than it helped.
To this day, my parents still do not really believe me when I try to tell them about what went on at CCM. They still proclaim that the program "saved my life," and told me that I am "ungrateful" whenever I have attempted to let them know the real story. This hurts me more than anything else. Nothing that happened at Cross Creek, or during a seminar, can compare to the hurt that I feel from my parents' unwillingness to believe that I'm telling the truth. The fact that they take the program's side over mine - their own daughter - is something that I will probably feel and carry with me for the rest of my life.
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