My Girls in the Florida Lockdown Facility

It was a prison for teenage girls and all that we had was each other

At the age of 15, I was locked up in a behavior rehabilitation center that was funded by the state of Florida. It was far worse than you’d think. The place was so bad that it was shut down by the state of Florida itself. My experience there was mashup of the films Sleepers and Girl, Interrupted, only there was no justice for us as adults like the boys got in Sleepers, and no babes like Angelina Jolie to help us escape like the girls in Girl, Interrupted.

What had I done to get in there? Well, I fought back against my biggest tormentor in school. I was bullied, and you can probably guess why. I was a freethinking autist who didn’t know how to be quiet. In San Francisco, this would have gotten me my own TEDx series. In New York, this would have gotten me a minor role at a Broadway production studio. In Florida, this got me endlessly harassed and tormented by the other students.

One day, I snapped at my biggest bully. Her name was Stacey Holub, and she spent her days aiming spitballs at me during Science Lab in between humiliating me in the locker room during gym class. She’d violently push me down whenever she’d see me in the hall. That one day, I went feral on Stacey in Science Lab. I picked up my desk and threw it directly at her, finally doing my diligence. I remember all the other students gasping and hiding under their desks that day, yet I stood tall and proud as Stacey crouched down in terror after the desk hit her precious little face.

I was expelled from school immediately, which I was quite happy about, yet I didn’t know this was going to lead to me being imprisoned in a 24-hour lockdown facility for teenage girls with severe behavioral problems. I was admitted for “being a threat to myself and others” which I’m now told it’s too late to sue for. I was locked up against my will under false pretenses, and all I got were these traumatic memories. Tough shit, right? Yet I don’t want to relive the trauma of what happened to me in the facility. I want to talk about my girls there.

I met some of the most amazing girls of my life in that place, and their stories will forever remain in my heart. They’ve shaped my development in more ways than I’m able to understand. I would not be who I was today if it wasn’t for my girls. While I was eventually able to escape state custody and get out “against medical advice” after six months of torture and imprisonment, some of my girls were not as fortunate. I will never forget them.

I first think of Amanda, who was struggling with some kind of depressive schizophrenia. The other inmates harassed her for being anorexic, and I couldn’t stand to witness this. What was most important to me was that everyone left Amanda alone, so I confronted her main tormenter Kiera the first day I was in there.

“You wanna fight? Fight me instead, whore!”

Now it was my turn to be attacked by Kiera, which was fine with me because I knew I could take it. Amanda could not. She was so skinny, so sad, and so pale. Kiera would become my new Stacey. Looking back, I don’t understand why Amanda had to suffer among us “bad girls." She was incapable of hurting anyone, even when she was being attacked. She couldn’t defend herself because she didn’t know how to. I think she may have been a foster girl who was admitted because her parents were unfit to take care of her. I took care of Amanda in my own way, like I wish someone would have taken care of me in school.

Kiera was 14, and had landed in prison with us for pulling a knife on her abusive stepfather. She hated other girls with a passion, especially Amanda, but she eventually took a liking to me after our month of violence. We ended up roommates in state-funded bunk beds as punishment for our fights. The beds were far worse than you’d think. We’d fool around together when the lights went out. This was our salvation, being able to enjoy the soft touch of one another as we discovered our sensuality in a place where sex was verboten. We’d whisper to each other erotically about how much we hated the other girls, falling in love with our little secrets. Under the sheets, I could feel her passion and pain. I really do think that I loved her.

I found out that Kiera was mean to Amanda because she saw a bit of herself in her. Kiera had acted toward her abusive stepfather in the same way Amanda had acted toward her, never fighting back for a second. Never fighting back until the night when Kiera hit her breaking point. Her throwing-the-desk-at-Stacey-moment. That very night, as her stepfather was coming home drunk and violent and screaming, Kiera pulled a kitchen knife on him and went directly for his throat. It took nothing else for the authorities to bring her into custody. They were unwilling to listen to Kiera because her mother had denied the abuse. I think Kiera wanted Amanda to pull a knife on her, in some strange way. She wanted Amanda to fight back like she had finally fought back against her stepfather. 

Then there was Melissa, a raver who had been convicted of selling Ecstasy. The War on Drugs was still a big deal at the time. It all seems so minor now, but when you’re thinking about a state-funded lockdown facility, so does everything else. Melissa was a borderline personality candy kid, a wrist-slitter, and one of the sweetest girls I’d ever met. There was nothing wrong with Melissa, except for the typical teenage angst of being born in the suburbs, and maybe a desire to be cool in a world that she found lacking in vitality. She was sane in an insane world, she told me often. Melissa became rougher and rougher during her imprisonment and was eventually transferred to an even worse facility. We all cried the day she was chained up in a straitjacket and transported away. Losing Melissa was like losing a sister. We were all sisters in there.

Jessica never left me. She was imprisoned for being angry and autistic. We spoke to each other in secret metaphors, and when she was finally discharged from the facility we became good friends. "Hanging on the outs," we called it. She introduced me to the world of goth. We got kicked out of Marilyn Manson's hotel room after a show one night. Back then we thought it was because we weren’t normal enough to hang, but I later realized that it was because we were minors. Yet we’d created a shared narrative and it stuck: We were too morbid, even for the band. We loved this about each other. I still think about Jessica, and I wonder what she is up to now. I was never able to find her online. Did she disappear forever? Did she leave me in the end?

The girls were my family. Amanda, Kiera, Melissa, and Jessica. We did everything together. We ate our gross cafeteria food together. We shared our mandatory feelings in group together. We watched each other get locked up in restraints and forced into the quiet room. We fought against the staff members who took away our autonomy. We rioted. We screamed. We cried. We kicked each other and punched each other and loved each other and hated each other so much. All that we had was each other.

I look back at how this shaped me, and how I grew to view myself as the “leader of the alternative girl gang.” I look back at how I used this persona to walk through The Tenderloin in San Francisco and the ghettos of Bushwick in Brooklyn. Somehow, it worked. As I walked past the gangs of pimps and drug dealers, I was the leader of the alternative girl gang. They knew it, and that was enough for them to leave me alone. I was the leader of the alternative girl gang. If you’ve been imprisoned, others who have been imprisoned can pick up on it. I was the leader of the alternative girl gang.

Teenage girls have everything these days. Their biggest concern is how many people are going to view their TikTok videos, yet they constantly stream about how angry and depressed they are. They do it ironically. They do it creatively. Nobody takes them away to prison for it. I detest their naive attitudes. I detest the way they’ve reaped the benefits of progress without having to lift a finger. I detest the way they’ve crusaded against those of us who have dared to use words that offend them. Mere words. I detest the hypocrisy of it all. Yet somehow, when I’m feeling melancholy and reliving the trauma of my imprisonment, I’ll think of the more hardcore influencers and everything comes flashing back. Are those my girls?

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