Yesterday I shared my last day of incarceration so today I thought I'd share the first 24 hours I spent incarcerated.
October 11, 2016. That was the day I went to court for sentencing. I had been assured that I was not going to jail by everyone from my husband to my lawyer to my therapist. There were fines and maybe community service coming but no jail time. There was no president in Virginia for jail time to be given in cases such as mine. My restitution had been paid, my record was completely clean, I was not the kind of person who was put in jail; I'm Caucasian, a female, college educated, upper middle class, stay at home mom with a clean record. So, I got up, got dressed and ran out the door without stopping to kiss my monsters because I was going to be back by lunch time.
So...that didn't happen. What did happen was that the judge sentenced me to 30, yes 30 years in prison of which I was to serve 12 months and the other 29 would be suspended. That means that if I were to get anything more than a parking ticket, I could get all 29 years enforced. In addition to the 30 years in prision, I was told I would be put on probation indefinitely, to start immediately after my 12 active months in jail.
As you can imagine, I was hysterical, inconsolable and my family sitting in the courtroom could do nothing but watch. Not a hug or a kiss, not a single good bye, just off I went.
I was whisked away and put in a holding cell where I sad for a couple hours before being transferred to the jail. Where I sat for nearly 5 hours waiting to be processed. I sat in that cell crying and crying, shaking. I was in complete disbelief, it was surreal. The longer processing took the more distraught I became. I didn't get to say good bye to my monsters, I've ruined their lives, I will never make it through.
Booking time finally came and I was finger printed, had DNA collected, pictures taken and intake interview. Every time they did something else I cried more. During my interview, I said things that led the correction officers to believe that I was going to possible harm myself. So off to "crisis" I went. This is where they but the folks that are mentally ill and suicidal to keep them safe. It is important for the next part of my story to remember that "crisis" was to protect and keep people safe.
I was escorted to "crisis" by 2 female officers who once there opened a steel door that behind it had cement everywhere. The walls, the floor, the ground and even the bed(I use this term lightly). My head was spinning, and I was still crying.
Next, it's time to change. They make me strip down. Everything off! This was a problem for me because with everything else going on, my period had just begun that morning. I explained this to the officers and they told me I still needed to give them all of my clothes and my glasses. Here I stand naked, bleeding and crying. This is when the handed me a green Velcro wrap to put on. I would compare this to a cape at the dentist's office for all of you not luckily enough to experience the real thing. But guess What, the Velcro on my suit is old and worn out so it won't stay on at all! That was all the had though so I needed to make it work.
As the officers were leaving I asked who I talk to when I need to use the bathroom. They looked at each other, smiled and pointed to a sewer grate on the floor and told me that was the toilet. Oh and if you need toilet paper you had to ask the guard when they did checks and they would give you 3 squares or so.
They left; I was alone in a cement room, sitting on a cement bed, bleeding all over myself, holding my Velcro suit up. I sat up most of the night and at 4am they served me breakfast( I would come to find out that 4am really was breakfast time here, every day!) Sometime the next morning an officer came to my cell and opened my door so that I could have my hands and feet shackled so I could be assessed by the therapist there. I explained that my " turtle suit" would not stay up so I needed to hold it and I could not handcuffed. Yeah, they didn't much care and walked me through the clinic, full of inmates, mixed sexes as I exposed myself to all of them.
When I got to the therapist he did find me a blanketto cover myself with and then he told me to enjoy my time in jail a d think of it as a vacation from my monsters and husband. Hummm...probably not going to happen. He did offer me a marble composition book for journaling and off I went.
That was first 24 hours.
