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Solitary Confinement
Λnya Λdora posted a photo:
Tonight when processing this recent image, i flashed on being alone in a dark jail cell all night awake for 8 months. This is the type of thing i deal with at times still in my life, flashes / flashbacks of things.
I don’t speak about it because i suffer from PTSD now, sometimes severely after what happened 10 years ago (Which i’ve explained here)
I spent the first 3 weeks of 8 months of Solitary Confinement in an ice cold ‘drunk tank’ i was kept in. I had my clothing removed and i was given a ‘suicide smock’. I literally shivered and froze night and day for 3 weeks.
I was denied psych meds, suffered multiple suicide attempts and was at times prevented from seeing both the therapist and attorney working with me. It was literally a nightmare. I ended up in jail after a medication reaction and essentially sobered up from it withdrawing over a week or two to then spent 8 months without help.
I then was transferred to another facility where two guards made me strip to change in front of them and then began making jokes about raping me in the room we had just came from which was private.
At that facility i was only given meat for 5 days to eat. Everything had meat in it, I am a vegetarian now of 23 years. I didn’t eat for 5 days.
I was then transferred back to Olympia, held for 7 more months for misdemeanors that should have been heard in Mental Health Court. I, like many minorities especially got the ‘Transgender Treatment’. I was punished much more severely than any non-trans person, but… Likely the same extent an African American or other minority would with be with a bigoted judge is my honest belief.
In the end, i spent 8 months in jail for a crime i not only felt badly about but i pled guilty to because i owned up to the fact that what happened still was wrong.
Others wanted me to fight it as a mental health issue, i did not.
To this day, a decade later i struggle feeling guilt over that day, even though i can’t change it and it wasn’t ‘me’ in that moment.
The entire experience caused me to lose my way in several aspects over years… being homeless, suicidal at times and feeling hopeless.
It wasn’t until 2016 i got help here in Seattle, finally got off the streets and am getting both Transgender Medical care i needed but also Mental & Physical Health care for my actual disabilities in life.
I am strong only because i have suffered. I have experienced days so dark most won’t ever understand the pain.
Yet somehow, I still try to connect, learn to trust others and find beauty in the world around me now in photography.
10 years later, still to this day…
Not a single Transgender group, entity, org i’ve contacted has ever cared to help with anything. I’ve learned a lot along the way about community, And it’s often cisgendered in my world.
It’s easier to pretend these things don’t happen, didn’t happen and maybe i needed help. It’s also easier to just judge and dismiss me. One thing i’ve learned about LGBT advocacy is, It’s anything but.
If any of this happened now, I’d actually have support.
Instead, It happened a decade ago, my life got ruined without any support at all… And now i’m forced to pretend i have a community among people waving pride flags too stupid to know recent history of people like me going through hell like this.
I feel like most of them lack the actual capacity to think.
So, I go to therapy and do my own thing.
A happy ending i suppose…
At least i’m real, and a hell of a lot stronger than 99% of them.
Ask anyone who knows me.
www.flickr.com/photos/anya-adora/42281385530/
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