the contraband

(continued from previous post)


I sat there in my anger long enough to let myself think it defined who I was, then I stood up and told Nic I needed to use the restroom. He said he'd go get Liz and I couldn't help but wonder what Liz had to do with it. "I know where it is," I told him, but he said I needed Liz to unlock it. "They keep the bathrooms locked?" I asked myself. Not only did they keep the bathrooms locked, but certain girls, myself included, were placed on bathroom restriction; meaning that if they wanted to use the bathroom within 2 hours after they've had a meal or a snack, a behavioral health assistant had to go with them. Considering the fact that we had three meals a day and three snacks in between, that left me little to no room to find un-monitored bathroom time. My anger elevated to an unethical degree and I suddenly decided I could hold it much longer than I had originally planned. Girl mode set in as I thought about the horror of what would happen if I had to go "number two." Two all of a sudden seemed like such a large number and I panicked at the thought of something so private becoming so public, even if it was only in front of one other person. Number two is not an experience to be shared between two people, and though at that point I only needed to experience number one, I wasn't ready to share that either. So I held it.

I don't remember exactly what happened next, I remember meeting girls and just listening in on conversations. I let time linger and I thought I had waited long enough for a full two hours to pass after my meal, but it was slightly under and I just couldn't hold it anymore. My bladder was about to pop like a pre-teen pimple. I finally informed someone that I needed to use the restroom and sure enough one of the female behavioral health assistants (I will refer to them as BHAs from now on) led me to a bathroom in one of the back bedrooms. When we got back there she looked at me and said "I don't have to go in with you, I can just stand at the door" and there was this glimmer of hope with music and all for a split second, until she followed it up with, "but you'll have to sing or something so that I know you aren't... you know... doing anything else."

"Tactful," I thought to myself, followed by "is she serious?" I went in the bathroom, left the door open and got in position. Nothing happened. It was dead silent. How could anything happen? After all, if any one's bladder has stage fright, it's mine. Much like my sleep habits that require white noise for any sleep to take place, if I am in a public restroom, it is almost impossible for me to "let the river flow" if there is no white noise of some sort to encourage the floodgates to open. Whether it be in the form of the faucet water running or pretending to be out of toilet paper so I can "accidentally" shake the toilet paper holder too hard, there has to be background sound of some sort. But this time it was just me and the silence... and one other girl. It was so awkward. I knew she was standing at the open door, listening, and it freaked me out."What if she thinks I'm trying to go poo and I can't because it's too quiet (God forbid she think I would go number two)? What if she thinks I was lying about needing to go just so I could get into the bathroom and... you know... do something else? What if she... oh god, please just pee, you idiot!" I couldn't understand it! I was literally just busting at the seams a few minutes ago but as soon as I got the chance to do something about it, I couldn't get a single drop out! Before I could continue bullying my bladder to make a move, her voice chimed in, "hey, can you sing the ABCs or something?"

There I was, 23 years old, singing the ABCs to the person who was monitoring me using the bathroom. Talk about getting knocked off of your "I have everything under control" horse. I bashfully began to sing the ABCs, but between my deprecating thoughts, the girl at the door, and apparently the inability to multi-task singing while peeing, at least to a complete stranger, I couldn't go. I didn't even get all the way through the alphabet before I gave up. I was crying inside. I felt helpless, and even more so, stupid. "I swear I really did have to go," I told her, "it's just that now that I'm here, I can't seem to." She said she understood and that "we" could try again later. "we," I thought to myself. "There shouldn't be a 'we' involved, I'm 23 years old, I'm the only person that should be involved in me going to the bathroom." I followed her back out to the lobby with my head hung low as if I has just lost the biggest game of my life. Before I could sit down I was informed that someone was now going to go through my suitcase with me to make sure I had nothing illegal or harmful hidden away somewhere. Wonderful. How about we squeeze just a little more lemon juice into my fully exposed paper cut of pride?

I was exhausted and felt weak in every way... mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually. All I wanted to do was lay down and sleep, but I kept up my pace and followed closely behind yet another BHA. I ended up going to the same back bedroom where I was previously taken to use the bathroom. "Deja-vu," I tried to joke with myself, but not much was funny at this point. I think I even told myself to shut up. One of the guys checking my bag was Brian, and though my mental state was so far out of whack for me to even have noticed, at least this early on, I can look back and appreciate that he was probably a good looking guy. He took everything electrical out of my bag including my hair dryer, hair straightener, and my beloved fan, whose comforting white noise I had never slept without. He said he had to go "test" them and he'd bring them back, even though when he brought them back I was going to have to put them in a locker that I did not have a key to. Upon his return he said they all cleared, which was obvious because they now had little green and white affirmation stickers on them saying they "passed." To this day my hair dryer and hair straightener have those exact stickers on them. On one of them the writing is rubbed off, but on the other it says clear as day, "TESTED FOR ELECTRICAL SAFETY By: BM On: 2/05/07." So long as I have those hair appliances in my possession, and I plan to keep them until they give out, I will never take those stickers off.

What didn't make it back to the room where I and my wide open suitcase sat was my fan, my beloved fan. Where was it? Brian told me that because of the fan blades, and issues involving girls who would use anything to self harm, I was not, nor was anyone else, allowed to have a fan. I explained to him that I only needed it to sleep at night. "It's purely for noise," I politely exclaimed, "I promise, you can keep it during the day, I just need it to sleep. I have to have it to sleep!" He said he would ask someone and let me know before nightly curfew. Curfew... there's another word I didn't want to hear, though at this point that word didn't surprise me. I was going to ask when curfew was but I found myself distracted by the gloved woman pulling my underwear out of my suitcase. She was pulling everything out of my suitcase, but it was the underwear that stood out to me; probably because it was my UNDERWEAR! Not to mention, Brian was still in the room trying to hold my attention as he was explaining some of the policies of the facility. I don't remember much of what he said, I just remember having the thought "if he looks over there right now he is going to see my unmentionables, oh god!" I don't even like it when male cashiers ring me up at a grocery store for tampons, but at least I more than likely won't see them again. With Brian, I was going to be spending the next two months in the same building as him, the last thing I wanted him to see was my underwear, even if it was just in my suitcase. My underwear was obviously going to make it onto my body at some point, and I didn't like the thought of Brian knowing what it looked like.

It felt like weeks had gone by since my dad left that morning, but sure enough, when I looked over at the little green and white sticker on my safely tested hair dryer, it confirmed that it was still only February 5th, 2007.

The gloved woman and Brian proceeded to sort through all of my belongings. "Any shampoo, conditioner, lotions, soaps, etc. with alcohol as an ingredient... you can't have," they said very matter of factly. "Any razor blades, bobby pins, safety pins, pencils, pens, i.e. anything sharp or potentially sharp... you can't have. Any cell phones or cameras... you can't have." Brian continued reading the long "you can't have" list as the gloved woman pulled almost all of the very objects that were listed as prohibited out of my bag. I knew they were just following protocol and saying what they had to say to every girl upon arrival, but I couldn't help but feel as if they were exclusively addressing me, this detestable new girl who couldn't be trusted. I felt like a liar and a sneak for even having shampoo in my bag to begin with. The fact that I had in my possession numerous items that "normal" people used on an everyday basis, but were deemed "contraband" and taken away to be stored in my "locker," that I didn't have a key to, made me begin to under if I was crazier than I thought and therefore in need of all this heightened security.

I explained the reasoning behind all my "contraband," assuming that no one had ever explained it to them before, and that they would somehow reach enlightenment on the issue and in their state of "OOOOH OK," they would hand it all back. This was not the case. As the gloved woman gathered up my pink, bic razors I envisioned the scratch attack that would take place in my arm pits if I wasn't allowed to shave them within the next few days. I assumed she would understand as I explained the sole reason I had them was for shaving my arm pits, and an occasional leg when I wasn't feeling lazy, and she said she understood, but her look was one of "that's what they all say!" She followed up with her look with, "for the safety of everyone, razors and other sharp or potentially sharp objects are strictly forbidden." I wanted to punch her in the face for saying "potentially sharp" again. "What does that even mean?" I thought, "Like I can't even have an un-sharpened pencil because it has potential to be sharpened?"

Truth be told, all the heightened security about sharp objects was new to me because this was my first time being in an environment where girls openly struggled with, or had previously struggled with, self harm. I basically needed Brian to spell out for me what "self harm" meant. I was picturing girls beating themselves up, so it caught me really off guard when he blatantly said "the girls cut themselves." In that moment, I felt a little bit bad for making jokes about sharp objects, but at the same time I didn't because of my own ignorance on the subject matter. I didn't understand why you would cut yourself if you weren't trying to commit suicide. I didn't understand why "those girls" would want to do that. Their addiction made no sense to me, but then again no addiction does make sense, and so I can only assume that I didn't understand their addiction at the time because I was in such denial about my own. Don't get me wrong, I knew I had a problem, obviously, there I was locked up singing the ABCs to a person with the title "Behavioral Health Assistant," but I also thought my problem was very different, and honestly, not as bad as theirs. At the time, I didn't see the correlation between my issues and their issues because all I saw was the method used to numb (or feel) as opposed to the reason behind wanting to numb (or feel), so I didn't care... about them.

A quick disclaimer before you deem me heartless and refuse to read the rest: I eventually got to the point when I did realize that we were all the same in our struggles, and when these girls, who were once "those girls," became my sisters, and they allowed me to enter into their pain as I allowed them to enter into mine, but that is later in the story. For now, at least for in this part of the story, I'm still an ignorant bitch.





To be continued...