Stories From the Sharing Circle

This morning a headache the size of your momma blew through my head, pulsing through my brain like a balloon being blown up over and over. It was a rougher morning than the last; I skipped breakfast to rest. In and out of sleep, my headache remained. Removing myself from the miniscule mattress I sleep on, I washed my face and cleaned my teeth.There was another 30 minutes till we were released from our cells, I just waited. I started to become too focused on my impatience. Being here for one and a half days, I have begun to understand how the idea of confinement can take your emotional status to a downfall. I consider myself a very emotionally strong person, and I found it hard at times to imagine having no other options than to be here. That's why mothers send their children to their rooms when they've misbehaved. It's because the children go crazy in there, so they learn their lesson. Same as in here, but instead we're all adults.

As the day continued, my relationships with the other girls started to open. I found myself inside gossip of: “she said, he said”, and emotional stories of crime, children, and even cancer. The majority of women in here are not too much younger or older than myself. With experiences ranging from years of being in and out of jail, insecure households, abusive relationships, to addiction. It makes us think as humans how far we have to go to improve ourselves. They say it starts with our surroundings, which is why they put you in here. But for some it seems the scars are too deep to be fixed with just “sitting time”. Since I've been here phone messages regarding deceased boyfriends, cheating husbands, and family problems flood the phone lines. Angry outbursts followed by tears fill the housing unit. With nowhere else to go I find myself being involved in the situations due to just being another person in the room. You never realize how hard life can be until you feel the experience of it through the mouth of it's victims. The women who I call my roommates are incarcerated for offenses ranging from drug trafficking, trespassing, to arson. With 10 other women sitting in the Sharing Circle, I could overflow 10 blogs with the intense stories I've been told.

Do any of them intimidate or scare me? No, because I know that at the end of the day we are all somewhat similar; we all need to be fixed sometimes.