Revisiting the bell jar: Putting young girls under the lenses of patriarchy

Off Our Backs, Jul 1999 by Spiers, Rebecca Myers

I remember how they tried to stunt my creativity. I remember them removing my poems about some of my first sexual experience because they considered them indecent. I remember them removing a drawing from my notebook that showed a pair of lips and read, "Why do you hear me when I open my legs but not my mouth?" They also removed other art from my bulletin boards. And damn it, I want my drawings back. I remember when I drew a snake in "art therapy," thinking nothing of it. But since, in their narrow Christian minds, it was a symbol of Satan, I received zero points that day.

The one thing that I remember most, the incident that rings the clearest in my mind is the "quiet room." After two weeks in the hospital, I made the most desperate attempt on my life yet. For the last week, I had saved pieces of the tin foil juice lids. I fashioned them into a knife like structure. I also removed the metal eraser holders from my pencils. I had managed to sneak in the hospital in a bra with an underwire. I removed it from the bra. Alternating between those tree tools, I began to carve on every part of my body that I could find, hoping to bleed to death before they found me. My roommate saw and reported me and before I knew it they had taken me to the padded cell they called the "quiet room." They didn't hug me or ask me why I had made an attempt on my life. They just left me, with tears streaming down my eyes and blood streaming down my wrists with the reminder that I was a danger to myself and everyone around me. The only contact I had with others was when they threw my journal at me and told me to write an essay on why I shouldn't kill myself (I faked it), when they slid my meals through the door, and when I had to use the restroom.

But often it was the things that I didn't remember that stuck out. I couldn't remember the words to any of the songs that I loved before my hospitalization. Only one came to mind. It's the one that goes, "Early in the morning/Rise into the street/Light me up that cigarette/And I strap shoes on my feet/...Love's what I got/Don't start a riot/You'll feel it when the dance gets hot...hot" I would sing that song over and over again, ensuring that as long as I could remember that song, I would still have some connection to the outside world and to my sanity.

They let me out three days after my suicide attempt and confinement, saying that I was better. In actuality, my insurance was running out. I knew I wasn't any better than when I came in, even that I was worse, but I smiled and agreed because I had to get out of the hell hole that I was in. It wasn't until almost two years later that I stopped my rituals of self-mutilation and until I could function.

After three years, it still hurts to remember and write this. I had to stop to remember and even stop to cry. It still hurts to know that the people who were supposed to help me, that were supposed to care the most, contributed more to my emotional and spiritual downfall. It still hurts to know that when I needed to talk to someone the most, they only let me see my therapist once every three days. It still hurts to know that they never once considered that it might have been my fucked up family, the horror that other kids put me through or the sexual abuse I had experienced and not a chemical imbalance that made life in this world unbearable. But what hurts even more is that this is still happening to people. So I urge you to reconsider hospitalization. I urge you not to put your daughters, your sisters, your mothers, or even your best friends through this. I urge you to remember that the first step in dismantling the patriarchy is not listening when they tell you that you are the one with problem.