My Old Friend, Sasifraz

Today is May 19th. It marks 45 years since an incredibly thin 14 year old girl was taken to Child Study and Treatment Center which is a part of Western State Hospital by her junior high school counselor. I was 5'10" tall and weighed 112 pounds. To say I was disturbed would be an understatement but the amazing transformation I have undertaken in those 45 years is nothing short of astonishing. 

I was extremely at risk, suicidal with a penchant for razor blades. I also had a man in my head, Sasifraz, who was instructing me on the art of self harm. No one knew specifically about Sasifraz. But, I imagine my mental health providers suspected. 

At 12, Sasifraz had started off as a buddy. Someone to talk to me when I felt so terribly alone. The first time he spoke to me was when I bemoaned to myself that I had no friends. Sasifraz answered me with, "I'm your friend."

My response was, "Who the hell are you?"

He said, "Your friend."

"No friend talks to me in my head."  I stated flatly. 

He said, "I do," and so started our many decade relationship. 

Initially, Sasifraz was kind to me. I longed for someone who knew my secrets. Someone I could confide in. He went with me everywhere. I walked to and from school talking to Sasifraz. He was with me in classes. He was with me in the evenings and in the dead of night.  I thought he was my friend. I thought he was knowledgeable and wise. I thought he was an adult, and I confided everything to him. Being in my head, it's not like I could keep anything from him.  I relied on him. 

I also had external relationships in my mom, brother, and my grandparents. I had my junior high counselor, Mrs. Keenan. I hung out with favorite teachers and the school librarian. I saw my psychologist, Dr. Audrey Williams, at the local community mental health clinic. But, omnipresent was Sasifraz. I spoke of him to no one.  We had an invisible partnership. 

At 13, I began talking to Sasifraz about wanting to kill myself. Ever helpful, Sasifraz discussed the options with me. I didn't have access to drugs, guns, or high bridges.  Resources wise, we settled on razor blades and cutting my wrists. I had access to razor blades. Then, we had to discuss timing. 

Sasifraz was a practical fellow. Since we didn't know if I had the capacity to cut my wrists, he suggested I do a practice run. God bless him. 

In those days, my mom and I shaved our legs using a double edged razor. I spirited a blade away, and Sasifraz and I waited for an opportunity.  One evening my mom was out. Sasifraz said, "Tonight's the night."  At around nine in the evening, he and I got the razor blade to make a trial cut. We decided it would be best to cut on the inside of my left elbow so I could hide the cut.  I held the blade pressed against my skin waiting. Sasifraz yelled, "Now!"  

The blade pressed and drew along my skin as if out of my control. Suddenly, there was a white gap in my skin. Then, blood rushed to fill the open space. I was surprised at the seriousness of the cut.  I thought, "Oh god, I've gone too far."  It was about an inch long and a quarter inch wide at the widest place. I had to make a mad dash for a lot of toilet paper to handle the blood.  After the bleeding stopped, I was able to go to bed before my mom came home.

I went to school the next day and pondered telling Ms. Keenan about the cut.  Sasifraz wasn't giving me an opinion, and it didn't work out to tell her that day.  I had worn a long sleeve shirt so no one knew.  However, I got scared about it healing on the following day, and I told Mrs. Keenan.  She took me to the clinic and had the nurse look at it.  Mrs. Keenan said it would have needed stitches had she seen it the day before.  But, it looked like it was healing okay, and the nurse didn't recommend stitches at this point.  I was off the hook this time.  I breathed a sign of relief.

The amazing thing I discovered though was that I felt better.  Cutting myself seemed to make me feel lighter and not so depressed.  Things were looking up for a whole week before the Depression settled back in, and Sasifraz took a different tone with me.

"You're going to have to do it again."

"Why?"  I asked.

"It's the only way to make things better."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes.  You're going to have to do it again."

In two weeks, we had a repeat performance.  Sasifraz kept telling me I had to do it.  I felt worse and worse.  We picked a night when my mother was gone again.  I held the blade at the inside of my elbow pressing down.  Sasifraz yelled, "Now!"  The blade moved seemingly on its own.  There was a separation of white and then the cut filled with blood.  This time I was prepared with toilet paper.  It was the same dimensions.  

I went to school, and this time I told Mrs. Keenan on the first day.  She said it needed stitches and had to call my mom.  My mom came and got me, took me to my pediatrician, and he stitched up my arm.  No real plan was made to deal with me.  My mother thought I had low blood sugar.  My doctor ordered and I took a six hour test for low blood sugar which was how it was done back then.  My blood sugar was fine.  My mother was disappointed and didn't believe I didn't have low blood sugar.  I knew it was because she didn't want to think about what was really going on with me.

Sasifraz and I went back to business as usual except every two weeks I cut myself.  I just didn't cut it bad enough to need stitches and wore long sleeve shirts.  No one knew except for a friend who noticed in gym class.  She asked me about it, but I didn't know what to say.

Gradually, inexorably, I spun downward which was how I found myself at Western State Hospital.  Mrs. Keenan drove me there some 20 miles.  I don't think either of my parents wanted to take me.  It was a long ride.  I really didn't know what to expect.  I only knew I could no longer live with either of my parents.  However, I was expecting a couple days stay in a regular hospital.  I'm not sure how I missed exactly where we were going.  For a long time, I felt tricked.  But, I trusted Mrs. Keenan.

When we arrived, we went to the administration building.  Mrs. Keenan was interviewed.  While I waited in the lobby, a girl came in quite excited because she was being discharged.  With a deep foreboding, I asked her how long she had been there.  "Nine months," she said.  A chill ran down my back.  Nine months was forever.

Then I got called into the meeting with Mrs. Keenan, a psychiatrist, a psychologist, and a mental health counselor.  It was the do or die moment in my mind.  I asked Sasifraz what to say.  He said, "I think you should tell them the truth."  I didn't know if that was the right thing or not.  But, I followed his advise and explained that I couldn't keep from cutting myself.

The psychiatrist said, "I think we need to keep you here."  

I felt frozen.  Did this mean I was crazy?  Could I really be crazy?  In a very tight voice I said, "For how long?"

She gave me the answer that was positively annoying.  It would not be the last time I heard this answer.  "That depends on you."

It was late on a Friday.  A counselor named Claudette took me to the girls' wing of Child Study and Treatment Center.  They hadn't had time to prepare a room.  I was put in a room with a bed and chain link fencing over the window.  I made the bed with Claudette.  I was tense and didn't have anything to say.  She left me there alone.  I looked out the window down towards the road where hours before Mrs. Keenan had driven me in.

I thought, "If Mrs. Keenan brought me here.  Then, this is where I'll stay.  I have nowhere else to go."

I was there for five months.  I never really told anyone about Sasifraz.  One time, I told a story that Sasifraz had told me.  I tried to tell a counselor that a man in my head had told me the story.  Her response was, "If it's in your head, it's just you."  Well, I suppose that was true, but it didn't help.

That was 45 years ago.  Sasifraz has been gone for 14 years or more now.  I'll be 60 at the end of this year.  Although it's been a long time since I cut myself and even longer since I heard Sasifraz's voice, I know I must always guard myself against the hazards of severe Depression.

I don't care if people know my story now.  My arm is scarred.  I make no effort to hide it.  I am not ashamed of my scars.  They are merely a record of what I've been through.  I understand the mechanism of arm cutting now and why it brought relief.  Cutting releases adrenaline and other chemicals in the brain which creates a type of anesthesia.  Recently, I talked with my psychiatrist about this.  He said, "That's the trouble with cutting.  It works."

It's been a long time since Western State Hospital.  Every May 19th, I ponder where I have been and where I'm at.  A lot of people have helped me along my path both because of and despite my history.  Sasifraz is gone.  I don't miss him.  I have a good life.  I work daily to keep it so.  I've been on the receiving end of many good things.  Let the magic of life continue.  I'm not alone.

L'Chaim. 

Joceile 

5.19.17

[Pictured above:  Jeri, a staff volunteer; Joceile; Kathy, a patient]

Why Do I Bother?

I'm in a restaurant in Montreal, Quebec visiting family.  As I begin to push open the door to the women's restroom, a female waitperson rushes up to me and says, "This is the women's restroom."  I am only somewhat taken aback, but words seem to fail me.  I shrug as if to say, "What can I do?"  I continue on into the restroom.

There are two stalls with very solid wooden doors.  I enter my own private toilet stall.  I have important business to do, sit down, and open my game of solitaire on my phone.  This could take awhile.  After a fair bit, there is knocking on the door and a male sounding voice says, "Sir, Sir?"  I say just a minute.  Fortunately, I am finished.  As I open the door, the maitre'd who earlier had led my family and I to a table says to me with the restroom door ajar, "This is the women's restroom."

I nod to him and say, "Yes, I AM a woman."  

"Oh sorry, sorry," he says bowing and withdrawing.  Several little girls enter the restroom as he leaves with big eyes giving me a look of suspicious wonder.

As I exit the restroom, I think to myself, "Why do I bother?  Why do I continue to bother..." putting myself in this situation.  Over and over again.  I ponder why I continue to do it when I could just as easily use the men's restroom.  No one would be the wiser except for me, my partner, and family members.  And, where would it end?  When and where would I use the men's restroom?  At work?  At restaurants?  In theaters?  Any other place where I find myself using the public restroom?

This has been a thing in my life ever since I let myself just go ahead and wear the clothes I liked.  I stopped trying to be female enough to be taken as a female.  I allowed myself to just wear men's clothes top to bottom.  Since then, I decided that I just didn't care whether people could tell my gender or not.  In fact, I felt it could be considered confidential information.

One day, I was looking at shoes in a Portland, Oregon shoe store.  A saleswoman rushed over and asked me what gender I was.  I looked at her knowing there was aHi bsolutely no need for her to know my gender to sell me a pair of shoes.  I calmly, quietly told her, "I wear a men's size 10 shoes in narrow."  I knew this did not satisfy her curiosity.  However, at that moment, I felt that my gender identity was none of her damn business.

At first when I started wearing men's clothes, I did use the men's restroom.  It was easier.  No one ever complained.  Men's restrooms always had a stall.  Only once in the ten years or so that  I used the men's restroom was there a stall with no door.  But, what I learned is that if I just acted like I knew what I was doing, no one looked.  On that day, there was a man repairing something on the wall outside the stall with no door.  I just knew he wouldn't look as long as all seemed normal.  So, I sat in the stall behind his back, did what I had to do, pulled up my pants, and left.  He exhibited nothing so much as a twitch.  All was as it should be.

All this male restroom usage began to be a problem when my daughter was born.  I was not the birth parent but had mother bear instincts just the same.  I realized that I was not going to take my baby girl into the men's restroom.  Society was just going to have to deal with me in the women's restroom.  The flip side was I was just going to have to deal with society. 

I've had security guards called on me.  I've been confronted in the restroom by a male landlord.  "What are you doing in here buddy?"

My response was, "I may not look like it, but I am a woman.  I'm washing my face and then I'm going to pee.  Do you want to see some ID?  Otherwise, I'll be out when I'm done."  My friend who was in the lobby later told me about the hullabaloo about there being a man in the woman's restroom.

She said, "I knew who they were talking about."  Not exactly rocket science.

I've walked into restrooms where women were laughing and talking until I walked in and I could hear a pin drop.  I had a little girl look at me quizzically and say to her mother as they left, "Mommy, is this an everybody's bathroom?"  I can only wish her mother said, "Yes, dear, today it is."

I've had women stare at me while I washed my hands just begging me to say something to explain my presence.  I just continued on about my business.  If they've got something to ask, let them ask.

Then, of course, I wear ties.  I love ties.  I've loved ties since I was a little girl.  Only my mother knew about my secret love of ties.  She let me wear them when no one else was home.  I wear them to work.  I wear them for a night on the town and to restaurants.  Some people know me at work by my ties.

What is really remarkable to me is that people think only men wear ties.  This bit of fabric cut and knotted in a certain way means unmistakably that I have a penis.  Remarkable is this piece of fabric and the power it confers.  Talk about magical thinking.

Recently, I was in Mexico.  I don't know much Spanish, but I do know the word for bathroom is "baño". I went into a women's restroom.  There was a small Mexican woman looking up at me telling me it was the women's baño. I raised my hands to cup my breasts and said, "La female'."  She gave me a surprised look and nodded.

On another occasion in Mexico, I walked into the women's restroom to startled looks but no one said anything.  I am settled on the toilet.  I hear a tapping and this little woman's voice saying something about blah, blah, baño.  I know that I better address this right away before things escalate.  I pull up my pants, open the door, cup my breasts, and say, "Female."  Again, she apologizes and withdraws.

It's not that I blame these women.  In Mexico, I did not see a lot of tall, androgynous women.  But, in this country, I get really tired of the immense concern that I maybe in the wrong restroom.  I am just taking care of bathroom business.  How is it that everyone forgets that at home most of us have gender neutral bathrooms?  Why this eternal fixation?  The majority of assaults in the United States committed against women are by heterosexual men they know.  Really, we all just want to pee.

So, why do I bother?  Why don't I just make it easy on myself and use the men's restroom where I have never once been bothered?  It is a political statement for me.  I believe that all people should get to wear what they want and use the restroom that matches their personal sense of identity.  I believe this infantile focus on sex role stereotypes keeps all of us in little boxes.

If I wear what I want, move, and walk how I want, I am demonstrating to female and male children that they can be and dress how they want to in our world.  Only then can little girls know they can grow up to be president and little boys know they can grow up to be ballerinas.  No one should be shamed for wearing a piece of fabric cut, folded, and knotted in the way they like.  See you in the women's restroom.

L'Chaim

Joceile

5.10.17

For more stories, go to joceile7.blogspot.com