#I was putting mattress straps on cause the mattress topper I have now makes it hard for sheets to stay on

[hihello-what-are-you-booing-here]

Thinking about how earlier I kept counting 5 corners on my bedsheet for some reason, what was going on there

[addictedtoredemption]

Poop Sock

It’s November 14th , 2019. I had just woken up, and it was time for the usual morning pee. As I pull down my pants and go to sit down I brace myself for the cold steel metal that soon will be touching my bare skin. The initial shock of the brisk coolness fades, and my eyes gaze over to the side of the toilet, and I see a gray frayed sock that has been tied in a knot. I think to myself, “this must have been left here by someone before me. Yuck, that’s fucking gross.” I contemplate whether I should throw it away. I hope to myself that I won’t be here long enough for it to matter. Hopefully I will leave today, and this sock won’t matter. Why bother throwing it away? “No, I better just get it out my sight, plus I don’t want them to think I have something extra or that I am not picking up after myself.” I grab the sock between my pointer finger and thumb and the oh so familiar “this is fucking gross” scrunched up face is on full display. That’s weird, it’s heavy, what the hell is in here? I don’t want to know. I toss it in the trash, and hear it thud against the brown plastic bin. I sit down on the blue mat on the floor.

I haven’t cried much yet. I’m still in shock. How did I get here? Why do I do this to myself? Why can’t I just play by the fucking rules? I hear the slamming of the thick steel door, and I hear the corrections officer yell, “Food! Top tier.” Ladies begin rushing down the stairs. It’s wave of orange jumpsuits that form a long line down one side of the commons area of Mod 13. Mod 13 is the women’s minimum-security housing for inmates. Definition of inmate: any of a group occupying a single place of residence especially: a person confined (as in a prison or hospital.) Inmate- Jenna West, 34, wife, mother, daughter, sister, friend, nurse, and now inmate. In jail, you are none of those other things, you are inmate. “Inmates line up for food, inmate meds are here, inmate line up for court, inmate you can use the phone, inmates you can shower, inmates it’s time for lights out.” You see, the corrections officers don’t know my story, they don’t really care. They are here to earn their paycheck and go home. They see me simply as another criminal, piece of shit, and deservedly here to serve out time for the deviant ways I have betrayed society. I stare at the women in line waiting for the slop that is to be served on scratched up, sometimes clean brown trays. They hold their brown cups in their hand hoping that by the time they get up to the front the juice won’t be gone. I use the term juice lightly, as it is a cup of water with a splash of flavoring. As they wait for their food they laugh, chat, braid each other’s hair, and seem oblivious to their current situation. It enrages me that they can be having a good time. Do they not realize this isn’t summer camp? We are in jail! “Bottom tier, let’s go.” I grab my cup and walk across the bright white floor to take my place in line. I am careful not to push my way in and try to remain unseen. That is until “Inmate! Are you forgetting something?” I don’t even look up; it doesn’t occur to me that she would be talking to me. “Hello?!, Inmate orange needs to be on.” I look down and I still have my brown t-shirt on. I feel like it’s the first day of school when you inevitably miss the memo on what’s what, and now you are the center of attention. “Sorry, I’ll go get it.” I quickly walk over to myself cell and grab my orange shirt and walk back to the line. I get my tray of food. It’s brown mystery meat. I’m told it is hamburger. A piece of white bread, a plastic spoon with ½ teaspoon of ketchup, a potato side, carrots, and cookie. I eat the cookie. The hamburger is completely inedible. The potatoes have no flavor. The carrots are cold. I don’t have much of an appetite anyway. I begin to think about my family. How worried my mom is. How mad my husband is. How clueless my kids are as to where Mommy is. I just want to be home. I want to be watching my two-year-old little girl playing with her toys, watching Pink Fong, and running to me for the occasional snuggle or kiss. I want to look outside and see my son, 10, walking down the hill from school. I want to greet him at the door and ask how his day is. I want to have some funny banter with my husband over texts. I want to give him a kiss when he comes home from work. I want to sit down on the couch with him and watch our shows. I want to sleep in bed next to him. Oh, a bed-I would give anything for a bed. I had dreams almost every night I was in jail about finding pillows in secret passageways. I just wanted a fucking pillow. All we are given is a 1-inch-thick blue mat with one end a little thicker for what one might call a pillow. It’s a stark contrast from my king size bed, with a 2in memory foam thick mattress toppers, Casper pillow, and down comforter. I don’t get a sweet tap on my shoulder at 2 am from my sweet Stella, asking if she can sleep with me. Instead, I lay awake most hours of the night counting the white bricks that make up my small cell, all 252 of them. I am anxious, I am sad, and I am defeated. During phone time, I call my mom just to have a small amount of comfort. She hears the pain and sorrow in my

voice. I know it’s selfish of me to call her, I know that calling her, and letting her hear me cry is painful, but I can’t help it. I need that comfort, I need to hear her voice, and I need a moment away from my reality. I call my husband, Casey, next. I ask if he has spoke to my lawyer, if he found out when I might get out, and I ask what he told Jaxson. His tone with me is firm, and his answers are concise. I don’t find much comfort in talking to him, as I know that he is angry with me. I’ve let him down. I’ve made him the sole caretake for our children for no one knows how long. I’ve placed my job in jeopardy. I’ve embarrassed him. There are few family members, and friends that know of my situation at this point, and he now has to tell them his wife, mother of his children is in jail so he might need some help with the kids. He tells me he told Jax, that Mom had to go on a work trip, and she is somewhere where there is no service. Jax asked, “Why would she just leave? Why wouldn’t she say goodbye? When will she be back.” These feelings my son had to feel because of my poor choices is just another ripple of many ripples in this giant ocean of the clusterfuck I have made of my life. The burden my husband had to bear is one of many he has had to endure because he married an addict. The pain and disappointment my mother and father felt is only worsened by images of their youngest daughter in jail away from her family, and there is nothing they can do to help.

I do find some comfort in that I don’t have a cellmate. I get the bottom bunk so I don’t have to try to hoist myself up on the top one. That comfort is quickly taken away on day two of my jail stint. Midday on November 14th a pretty brunette girl storms through the cell door into my cell. She says, “Hey, I am your roommate, can I have the bottom bunk? I just had a baby, and I can’t climb up there.” She could have given me any reason as to why she wanted the bottom bunk, and I would have conceded. She seemed like this wasn’t her first rodeo, and I wasn’t about to start any bad blood with someone I’d be in an 8X10 room with for the foreseeable future. Rachelle, had just been moved from the medical infirmary back to general population, “gen pop.” She had her baby only three days early. She gave birth under police custody, she spent 24 hours with her baby before she was shipped back to jail. I felt sad for her, and I felt angry for her. How can the system be so heartless that they rip a newborn baby from their mother just hours after birth? She clearly isn’t a murderer or armed robber; she is in minimum security. What could she have done that was so terrible? I’d later find out that she was caught shoplifting from a Thrift world Store. She was nearly 7 months pregnant at the time, and when they searched her, they found meth in her bra strap. They didn’t give her a bond because they wanted to ensure the baby had a fighting chance. She was to serve out the rest of her pregnancy in jail, and after the baby was born they would then decide her fate. This girl gave zero shits about anything. She quickly rummaged through her clothes- two orange pairs of shirts and pants, two underwear, two sports bras, and two pair of socks. The standard wardrobe for Douglas County inmates. She threw of her orange shirt, and through her brown shirt I could see two wet sports where her nipples would be. She was leaking, engorged, and in pain. She threw off her bra and exposed her bare breast, then asked me what I think she should do? You see on top of the emotional pain of not being with her newborn, she had to endure the pain of not being able to breastfeed therefore having engorged breasts that leaked constantly causing chapped nipples that chaffed against her sport bra. She tried to put socks and toilet paper between her skin and her clothing to ease the discomfort, but it was to no avail. I looked down quickly, and just said you need to just try to keep them dry. I told her that if she had some Chapstick that it might help with the chaffing. She swapped bras and grabbed a clean shirt and continued to unpack her bags and make herself at home. She raised hell about how dirty the cell was, and ranted, “this is fucking disgusting, how do people live like this?” She ran out of the cell to grab cleaning supplies. Cleaning supplies? I had no idea we could just go get cleaning supplies to make things a little more livable. I assured her had I known, I would have cleaned, and I told her I was hoping I was leaving later that day, so I didn’t see the point. But I picked up some supplies and assisted her with the cleaning of our humble abode. Once everything was in order she said, “Do you have any extra socks?” I replied, “No, only what they gave me, why?” “Because we need to make a poop sock.” What the hell is a poop sock I thought. Is it what she used to wipe her ass? Does she poop in it in and throw it away, or reuse it? My mind mulled over what in the actual fuck is a poop sock. Turns out a poop sock is what I had thrown away earlier. You see I had no idea that that poop sock was a gift. A glorious gift that one inmate bestowed on future inmates in order to lessen our suffering. She explained that a poop sock is when you take a bar of soap, and crumble it into many pieces, let it dry out, and then stuff it into a sock and tie a knot on the top to hold it all in. Then when you take a number two you beat the sock against the wall and shake it all around you. A dust of soapy freshness then fills the air. A poop sock is a jail made bathroom air

freshener, and it was genius. I walked over to the trash and fumbled through the dirty paper towels we had just used to clean and pulled out our poop sock. Relief and delight washed over Rachelle’s face. Turns out she was an avid poop sock user, as I would soon be choking on soap flake dust every time she went to the bathroom. She would bang that thing against the wall and violently shake all around her while she used the bathroom. I couldn’t help but giggle because she looked like a priest throwing holy water on someone the way she shook that gray ratty sock all over the place. Day two, and I was learning the jailhouse lingo, and already impressed with what these ladies could come up with. I later told my mom, well at least this experience builds character.

I ended up only spending 7 days in jail. Some people respond to that, “Oh my god, 7 days? How did you get through that? I would die.” While others, like people I was on drug court with, would reply, “Ah, 7 days, man, that’s nothing. I lost 7 years while I was in prison.” It’s all about perspective.