CW: suicidal ideation
On the day of the inauguration, which was also Martin Luther King, Jr. Day because the cosmos can be cruel, I was among the legions of spiritually tired human beings who opted to guard my sanity and not watch. I put my phone on Do Not Disturb. I drank coffee, watched comedy, played a very tentative first game of chess1 against a very patient Adam. I took a walk in the bitter cold and grabbed phở with friends to warm up. I visited Margaret and Nick and Jess, and Batty and Bucky the cats, and knit and watched ‘90s thrillers.2
When the Lyft dropped me off that night I realized that my decision to remain insular resulted in my not really being much of service to the world outside my social circle, and I felt guilty about it. I hadn’t physically gotten out into the community, but I could make myself of use. So I sat down with my laptop to do some volunteer transcription for Address This.
Address This! is a project of Books Through Bars, a kind of correspondence course/discussion group for incarcerated people. Participants, who may be in maximum security facilities or even solitary confinement, are sent readings as well as discussion questions and are invited to return worksheets with their thoughts. Because most inmates in America aren’t given the means to type up their responses, Address This! receives hard-copy worksheets mailed back to them, and volunteers like me interpret the handwriting and type up the responses to create a collaborative compendium of thoughts about the readings that can be sent back out, connecting participants to each other.
The current unit I’m working for focuses on Control and Resistance—your Dorothy Robertses, your Dan Bergers. There are questions like: what would you say is the power differential between the surveillance of correctional officers on the job, vs. the surveillance of prisoners by those officers? or more personally: what’s one thing about yourself that you would never want anyone to be able to change?
I had gotten cozy to do my easy little volunteer tasks, robed in sweatpants, propped up on pillows in the guest bed. l just thinking about the wholesomeness of a book club, how nice it was to share thoughts across time and space, when I was reminded of the reality of who I was working for.
The question was regarding Dr. Edgar Schein’s “behavior modification”3 protocol. Participants were asked whether they had ever experienced anything during their incarceration that seemed designed to break down their sense of self.
And one participant started his response simply: “Suicide watch.”
I froze in the comfort of my bed. I read on.
I spent my first two weeks in jail on suicide watch because I was brought to jail directly from the ICU from a suicide attempt. Let me tell you, even if you don’t want to kill yourself, give it 24 hours on suicide watch and you will. I had no mattress, blanket or anything but a turtle suit for a week before I figured out I needed to lie about not wanting to kill myself to get a blanket. It’s punishment for being sick.
I had to look up “turtle suit,” and I hope you have no cause to be familiar with the term either.
A quick google search brings a Wikipedia article to the top of the page, one for “Anti-suicide smock.” It’s an armless, broad quilted smock that is given to people in psych wards and solitary confinement. The purpose of its thick fabric is to prevent it from being easily torn, or tied in knots; in other words, wearers cannot fashion them into nooses the same way they could modify their civilian clothing, blankets or bedsheets.
However, form does not predict its full function; obviously, it is designed with a theoretically beneficial outcome in mind, but it has the effect of being dehumanizing, or at least infantilizing.4 It’s offered not only in lieu of clothing, but in lieu of bedding and other comforts. Wearers are to be naked underneath “for their own safety.”
An article that came up when I searched the term was from a local paper in South Dakota: “Jail uses special suit to keep inmates from harming themselves,” published summer 2017 in the Aberdeen News as though profiling a local celebrity for a human interest story. The administrator being interviewed says that an inmate has the choice to refuse the suit, but if “out-of-control” behavior continues, they will be strapped to a chair, potentially with a plastic guard over their head to prevent spitting; “In most cases,” the admin said, “it doesn't take long for a person to calm down.”
To calm down, I thought, or to be broken?
I don’t know what to say about this, what to do with this new knowledge, except to take it as a reminder that there are entire worlds of cruelty we’re not privy to in our everyday lives.
I’m not ashamed that I didn’t know about this before—after all, no one should have to. But now that I do, I can remind myself to be extra gentle. That there are things people are suffering for which I do not and cannot have a frame of reference.
If I were a different person, I could take this experience and feel guilt doubled back on itself that I even had the privilege of putting myself on Do Not Disturb for the day when so many out there don’t have the luxury of ignoring what goes on.
I don’t think that’s a productive way of looking at things. It is not my job to suffer in kind; there is no nobility in suffering for suffering’s sake. It is my job to listen when I can, and then to act in accordance with the time and energy I am able to provide. Rest begets energy. Energy begets progress.
This new administration will seek, like Schein’s “behavior modifications,” to wear down our own senses of self. To break us until we don’t have the energy to use the tools at our disposal. But there is a way to stay aware of and invested in what we’re up against without letting it steamroll our will. To maintain the self, we’ll have to indulge in life’s small pleasures to remind ourselves what’s worth fighting for. We’ll have to build a better world to welcome people back into.
Yours in survival,
Arielle
Three Things Bringing Me Joy
750 Words.
My friend Katie is a devoted user of 750words.com, which is a journaling site that encourages you to keep up a habit of writing 750 words a day. I’ve been meaning to write more without the yoke of needing to worry if it’s good enough to share, and this has been a great tool for getting that done. I’m on an eight-day streak, babyyyy! You can’t shut me up!!
Kentucky Route Zero.
Adam has been playing Hogwarts: Legacy and watching him play has made me miss having a good game to get into. I could just start Stardew Valley over again, I know; I had asked my Scouts and they recommended Wobbledogs, which seemed simultaneously a little too cheerful and a little too body-horrory for what I was looking for. But someone recommended Kentucky Route Zero and I am absolutely hooked. It’s a post-apocalyptic, magical-realist Southern Gothic with simple graphics that are nonetheless breathtaking in their judicious deployment. There has to be some kind of term for the kind of FOMO you experience while you’re actively enjoying a good thing, because you know that sometime soon it’ll be over and you won’t have it anymore.Philadelphia.
Go—and I cannot stress this enough—birds.
What I’m Reading
I said, Seriously? But I knew she was serious and I wanted her to be. What was intimacy if not a space to command and to listen.
—A Good Happy Girl by Marissa Higgins
I have always resisted learning chess because—this has been my actual reasoning—what if I try to play but then I find out that I’m actually very stupid? Better not to know!
Sneakers (1992) and The Rock (1996), if you’re wondering.
Read: brainwashing.
Alternate, sinisterly sing-songy names for it include “pickle suit” and “Bam-bam suit.”