Welcome to the Ranch

After admissions, I am driven to the Ranch proper.  Had I not been about to enter a rehab center, I might have thought it was beautiful.  Just outside small town Arizona, Remuda Ranch is situated on at least 10 acres of undeveloped desert countryside.  There are horses and beautiful stucco buildings.  The Ranch itself looks like a grand lodge of the sort one finds at a National Park with Western landscape paintings and bronzed deer head mounted on its walls.   When you enter, there are two sides to the Main Lodge, each named after a type of horse (Appy and Paint) and each complete with tables and chairs, for eating of course, and several couches for lounging and watching TV.  I am lead to the right, through a door to the Paint side.  I am petrified.  There are girls at the far side of the room having some sort of meeting and then a single, thin, blond-haired woman dressed in a navy athletic suit.  Please, I think, just give me something to do, somewhere to go, so I don’t have to interact.  But the burly woman just sits me down at one of the tables, facing the blond girl, and hands me a red folder of papers to fill out.  I avoid eye contact.  I fill out my forms.  I pray someone will come get me soon.

I try not to stare at the women having the meeting at the far side of room, but I want to size them up.  I wonder how I compare to them.  I catch sight of a young woman, perhaps 20, who probably weighs 70 pounds.  Her legs are the size of curtain rods.   Crap, I think.  I’m the biggest girl here.  I imagine groups of girls gathered in corners discussing my arrival:  “What is that girl doing here?” I imagine them saying.  “She’s the size of house.”

Suddenly the meeting has broken up and the girl with the curtain rod legs is standing in front of me.  Her head seems really large.  She asks me where I am from.  I learn soon hat this is the requisite ice breaker that everyone asks when you first arrive as if they’ve  all been trained to welcome the other girls by an administrative staff.  I’m not sure how to answer.  “Virginia, originally,“ I say.  Then the girl does something that really surprises me:  she smiles wide and chirps, “Welcome.  If there’s anything you need, just ask.”  What is this place?  I think.  Welcome?  Welcome!  This is a rehab center for God’s sake!  Who wants to be welcomed??!!!  “Okay,” I say without much enthusiasm. 

The Admissions Office

I was dropped off in downtown Wickenburg at an official looking admissions office, several miles away from the Ranch proper.  A woman whom I would never see again ushered me into a small office where I was visited briefly by a high level administrator/psychologist (Sam, I think) whom my parents had persuaded to speak with me.  Although I had every intention of asking normal, straight-forward, intelligent questions that would convince him that I certainly was not suited for such a crazy, cult-like treatment facility, instead I started babbling on about all my greatest fears in such a way that probably left him convinced that I couldn’t get to the Ranch fast enough.  I asked him if I would be the biggest girl there.  I asked him if I was “sick” enough for such a high level of care.  Keep in mind, I had just left the hospital day before.  I asked him if the Ranch was going to make me fat.  In essence, I asked him every question that every deranged girl with an eating disorder had asked him before.  I know now what I was really asking him was, “Can you please give me a reason to turn around and go home?”  Of course, no wise-minded business man would give his client a reason no t to pay him.   Furthermore, my crazed, fear-driven, completely predictable line of questioning would have made it professionally irresponsible for him to do anything but get my ass signed up as soon as possible.

Naturally, Sam attempted to respectfully reassure me that Remuda Ranch was a good match for me (not that I was convinced) without making me feel like he had my number.  Then the woman who had greeted me initially and who was, for some reason, still in the room, placed what seemed to be a hundred-page document in front of me and asked me to sign.  I realized, then, that these people had duped me.  I had fallen into their trap.  I was exactly where they wanted me.  They weren’t even going to take me to the Ranch until I signed 45 days of my life away.  Well, sort of.  I could leave any time I wanted to, but they weren’t going to make it easy for me to do so.  Because I wanted to send the message that I was a clear-headed intelligent adult, I insisted on reading all the paperwork before I signed.  I have no idea what the paperwork said, but I pretended I knew, and they probably knew I was pretending.