I apologize for the lack of entries. I’ve been busy and distracted, but life is going well for us here in Somewheresville. It stopped raining briefly this morning around 11AM and the sun came out. The fall colors were suddenly on fire and ultra-vibrant. An hour later the clouds moved back in and it started to rain…again. It has been raining now for 10 days. Enough is enough. Sweetie Pie is going crazy to be outside and I let her get out whenever she can manage it, but most days she has stood on the stoop and looked out at the weather. She’ll then look up at me and give a pitiful, aching, cry of “Why don’t you do something about this?” Ah, well, I am not a god, so I have to put up with the rain too.
I’ve been wanting to write about my time in jail for a few days now. Perhaps that’s why I’ve been avoiding writing. I need to start processing some of that experience and move away from the trauma and pain that it has caused me and my family. In a way, my haiku are a start. I did write them during my time behind bars, so sharing them is a beginning. But there is so much more to say. I kept a journal, which totaled about 1800 pages, and if I took my time and sifted through the entries, I could probably glean about 120 pages of really good stuff. The rest is just self-centered crap. I’ll do that later. For now I’ll start at the beginning…
When the gavel fell and I was sentenced to “2 years in the County House of Corrections” my mind went numb. I barely saw my mother slump in pain at my father’s side. I was immediately shackled at the wrists and ankles and taken from the courtroom, downstairs into a waiting room, where my pockets were searched. Before that happened I was able to hand my father my wallet, watch, belt, and tie. At the time I was wearing a 2-piece green suit that I had purchased a couple of years before for my sister’s wedding. When they searched my pockets, they found the dried remains of a single rose, the boutonniere I had worn on that day. The guard crumpled it up to make sure I wasn’t smuggling any drugs and then asked me what it was. I explained and he looked at me like I was crazy. He tried to pronounce “boutonniere”, but fumbled the word, giving me a sudden insight as to where I was headed. I was loaded into a Sheriff’s armored van with 3 other prisoners. It was raining and the afternoon sky was growing dark. As we drove through the small city to the jail, all I could see were the headlights of the cars behind us. At one point the van hit a bump and my glasses fell off my face. I was helpless, handcuffed, and almost blind in the dim light. I saw my glasses beginning to slide towards a space in the door. I was able through great dexterity and twisting of my arms to hook a finger around an earpiece and slide them back to where I could pick them up and put them back on. I never took them for granted again. It was then that I realized that what I was seeing out the back window of the van was the last I would see of the outside world for a long time. My mind turned on pure survival mode and I suddenly had no thoughts other than to save my own skin. I would make it through this dark time, somehow.
As the van pulled up to the chain link fence with its curly rings of concertina wire I sensed that this was to be the greatest challenge I had ever faced. Little did I know, that in the end, I would never want to change a single aspect of the experience. I was going to jail. It would not be like television or the movies. It would be completely different from any reality I had ever known. It would prove to be terrifying in its barrenness and mind-numbing in its boredom. But that, dear readers, will have to wait until tomorrow…
Inmate #1229
