The Damage Done...

I can't begin to tell you what it feels like to be 21yrs. old, inserted into a set of circumstances that seem almost surreal, and then locked in a room for two months with authority figures and criminal investigators, who sometimes gently, and sometimes not so gently...are trying to convince you that you are insane. I know when it started, I absolutely knew I hadn't committed this crime, but to be honest, after two months of relentless pounding away at me, I wasn't sure anymore..after all, according to them, I wouldn't know it if I had done it. I was scared to think they might be right, because I still thought I had a grip on reality... and on my life...but my known use of psychedelic drugs gave them the opening they needed to chip away at my version of the facts. And I had gotten to the point where I was actually afraid to go to sleep at night..on the slim possibility that they were right, and I was wrong. They were driving me crazy, and after a while, I became anxious for them to either charge me or clear me, because I really felt like I was losing touch with everything that made sense to me. I refused to admit to something I didn't do, or admit to a possibility that I just didn't believe was possible, and the police were getting as frustrated as I was...and so they came up with a way to get a definitive answer, once and for all. They wanted to put me on a polygraph machine. I was dumbfounded, furious, and petrified, all at the same time. I couldn't believe they had subjected me to this mental torture for two months, if all I really needed to do was to take a polygraph test. I never thought for a second I would fail the test. But, on the other hand, I wondered why, only now...after everything they had tried on me to get me to confess to something I hadn't done had failed...why now, should I trust the results of their polygraph? I was sure that no matter what the true results were, the police would say I failed the polygraph test, and use that to justify an unwarranted arrest.They told me if the results cleared me, I would no longer be considered a suspect. I didn't know if I believed that at all, but I was so exhausted from the whole ordeal, that I finally just said OK. This had to end. I couldn't take it anymore. And so they set up the test. The first three times I started to take it, the machine said I was lying when they asked me my name. I was sure I was being set up..and I didn't trust the police, I didn't trust their machine, and worst of all, I didn't know if I trusted myself...I started to wonder...maybe, I didn't really know my name...