23 Days, $650 of My Own Money, and 12 Pounds Later, I am Out of Jail

The note reached me even before I was in my last pod of the gauntlet I was running to freedom. “Bond at noon Sunday”.  Looking at the clock, I thought, I can sit 22 more hours. After 500+ hours, what was 22 more?  Sunshine, shampoo with conditioner, coffee, freedom were all just a few long long hours away.

In those 23 days, in 4 different counties,  you have limited options to pass the time.  You can read a book, watch television, sleep, or write. (if you can manage to finagle paper and a pen).  I learned early on that the fact that I ate very little in jail, my food was a valuable commodity.  “You want my breakfast? I want some paper and a pen.”, “You want my dinner? I need an envelope with a stamp”  So, in those 23 days I had plenty of time to think about what I would write when I got out.  How would I explain my month-long absence online. You can’t come back from social media suicide without some sort of explanation.

I have wondered how much, or how little I would write.  It would be easy to just gloss over it, sort of‘personal issues in real life’which is true, but my online relationships are as important and as real to me as my real life relationships, so why would I be any less honest, or spend any less time repairing those relationships?  I wouldn’t.

There were semi minor traffic issues that I didn’t take care of when I should have.  I could give you a long list of excuses as to why not, but basically I was stupid, scared, and poor, but had I reached out and asked for help, I could have gotten it and avoided this whole mess.  So, you can only run from your mistakes for so long before Karma steps in and kicks your ass.  June 15th, on my way home from dropping off the girls with their Dad, Karma made me her bitch.  Several matters stacked on top of each other leaving me with $3000 in bond money standing between me and freedom.  [It was $3000 cash only, so I couldn’t ask for 10% or $300.  It was not a $30,000 bond, and I only needed 10% ($3000) to get out] I called everyone I could, texted everyone else, I Tweeted, and Facebooked it too.  Those who might have helped, didn’t have the money, and those who might have had the money wouldn’t help.

I was left to figure it out on my own.  And in jail, you got nothing but time to do nothing but think, and if you haven’t spent more than an hour inside your own head, you can’t imagine what 23 days is like.  I spent the first 12 days trying to figure out how I could get out sooner, if I could find any shortcuts.  Could I post bond here and save myself a few days?  Of the $650 spent out of my own pockets (every last penny I had) only $150 of it made any kind of difference.

It took me until June 27th to accept I had to sit and wait this out.  I was their bitch, and there was precious little I could do to hurry this process along.  Accepting that is one of the hardest things about being in jail.  You have hours and hours to think, and of course you think about home and family, and friends, and outside, and to have to accept you won’t have any of that until the judges and courts say so, is very difficult.

Now that I am out, I still have court dates to go to.  I will be making the rounds into August.  If there is any good to come out of the time spent sitting, all that time will count, and I will be able to go to court, and just get time served.  I will have done the punishment up front.  There were several lessons learned in this, besides the obvious.  I learned that I am too damn old, too damn smart to be doing this shit.  I’ve got quite the legal mess to clean up, relationships to heal and rebuild.  None of it will be easy, and nobody out there has any reason to believe or trust me, but I am determined.