When you are down in the dumps and nothing is going your way, what can you do? It’s like the whole world is out to get you and you’re all alone with yourself because no one understands. How could they? Life isn’t perfect. You want life to be one fluid motion and sometimes it can be infuriating when nothing goes as planned.
Stand Up, Be Proud, and Be Yourself. That is the motto that kept bouncing around Ryan’s head during his travels. A promise from the company Stride, that if you come as you are, then you’ll walk away loving yourself after their treatment program.
Tightening his fists by his side, Ryan was lost in his thoughts. In the past week, he went from a loving family to a teenager on the run from his troubles and problems. Of course he didn’t exactly up and disappear, his parents knew where he was going and mutually agreed this was a good option. They all needed time to sort things out. Ryan he needed to get away, get away from it all.
In which case, what better way to get away from everything then to travel to an undisclosed location for a new and never tested treatment program. There were many enticing factors that brought forth a plethora of willing and viable candidates for the treatment program but only a lucky handful were traveling to the treatment location.
For Ryan, he first traveled by foot and subway to get one of many evaluation sites. After being accepted into the treatment program, his travels consisted of a plane, boat, and finally car. The car was a simple black sedan waiting for Ryan and another attendant to arrive from a boat. The driver had seized ahold of both passengers' possessions and ushered them into the car.
Ryan was too focused on himself to give his traveling companion any recognition or acknowledgement of their existence. In fact, it was the evaluation of his own existence that had him contemplating everything. The evaluation had identified him as a Reformer.
What exactly is a Reformer, you ask? Well in the eyes of the company, Stride, Reformers are the advocates and idealists who change the world. They have strong personal convictions with a sense of responsibility to others and hold themselves to a certain standard. Most often, unwillingly to admit they are lonely souls and who have a hard time expressing themselves. To Ryan, that description felt like a summarization of his entire being. With just as few words, he was marked, branded and boxed within that identity of a Reformer.
Before Ryan could ponder further into the one word identity of a Reformer, he was interrupted by the greetings of the treatment staff.
"Welcome to Stride. We hope you end up loving yourself after your treatment".
