We used to vacation at Lake Waramaug near New Preston, CT, and my parents discovered that there was a boarding school nearby. It was about a minute before whey decided to A send us to boarding school and B be definitely interested in Kent, especially because of the equestrian program.
In other words, my mother and father discovered Lake Waramaug when she was having a breakdown. And it just made perfect sense to get us out of her hair a bit by sending us to Kent, some sort of an extra rest for her and doing the best for the kids. I always remembered how she wept at least once while we were packing our suitcases for two weeks summer vacation at the Lake.
They checked out a few other schools in the area but settled on Kent.
Fast-forwarding to the future, I have not ever been able to go back to Kent, save one trip when I was in a horrible state of breakdown myself and with someone who really didn’t understand. We got as far as the gate at the airport when there was a reunion event scheduled at the old girls’ school, which I guess was sold off for another use; I believe riding is still in full sway, I heard something about major horse shows there. (I used to be a rider but was too much of a cripple to continue after Freshman year.
People were good to me. But I used to say to myself, it was the place, the beautiful Valley and mountains, the gorgeous old boys’ school, the Housatonic River, the tiny town of Kent;
this is what I remembered. I was not well schooled in ANYTHING except numbers logic and language. The problem now, I know, is that I had a sexual deficiency as so often said by me. I didn’t know at the time what on earth was wrong. Supposedly I was pretty and smart; why didn’t anybody want to talk to me?
my chief agony was over food. And I had other battles like that that I don’t want to dredge up.
Going to Kent gave me tone. Socially. Physically too!! those walks down the Ho Chi Minh trail… On the one hand we were living in the woods, on the other, we were the brightest and best, the most steadfast young intellectuals of the day (that would be the boys) (but I jumped on board with that).
I have lost a lot from that time through the trials that followed. So much that was GOOD that should have been salvaged by my 6 weeks at Johns Hopkins Hospital Affective Disorders Unit.
I have lost grammar; and math. I can’t remember how to describe an integral. Well, I sort of can but only in a very broad sense, for instance, to make an analogy. My analogies such as they were. broke up during my second and third (last) stays at Wernersville over calculated abuse by the head of the program in who openly stated that he did not like me and was forced to take me; the first time we met. I kept trying to explain what was happening to me but I wasn’t about to talk about it and this went on intensely for many years (the program director left for another position) and is only now being healed. that makes about 35 years. That is the CORE of my illness and it is not just mental.
omg i’ve finally said it.
Un.Bon.Mot 