[I posted this as a Guest Post, with permission of the author. Now I am posting it as regular post for it to receive more views, because of the value I feel it holds to those who visit this page and others associated with going to prison and related issues.]
Nothing could have prepared me for the day that I got arrested. It was a bleak January morning in 2008 and I was at my rented house with my mom and two of my sons. I was not surprised by my arrest since I knew it was going to happen although just didn’t know what day. The knock on my door filled me with apprehension as I answered it. The moment I laid eyes on the man standing in my doorway, I knew exactly what he had come for. He was accompanied by a couple of police officers and that’s when the exhaustion and relief hit me all at once. I was glad the waiting was finally over while consumed with a fear of the unknown.
The very worst part of that day was not the arrest itself, nor the shame in what I had become. Watching my family, witnessing me get arrested was one of the worst gut-wrenching feelings that I would ever experience and probably never forget. The detective was kind enough to let me tell my then four-year-old son, a lie that he was taking me to the police station to help them out in catching a criminal. It wasn’t entirely a lie, he just wasn’t aware that the criminal was his own mother. The detective didn’t even handcuff me until we were outside by the police car out of sight by my young son. To this day, I will never forget the sorrow, regret and shame that I felt on that day.
One of my older sons was there also who was well over the age to understand. I hated that, at 17-years old, he was watching his mom slowly turn into a monster right before his very eyes. Falling from grace in your children’s eyes, in my opinion, is much worse than falling from grace in your mother or father’s eyes. What a way to get to know your mom’s true colors. The darkness and depression on that day was overwhelming and my future was bleak to say the least.
Without going through all the legalities of the charges just yet, in a nutshell, I was arrested for embezzling at my bookkeeping job for a home products company. I thought I had sealed my fate and was headed for several years in prison. At the age of 37, I had lived long enough to understand that I was facing a very difficult future. What hurt me the most was that I stood the chance of not being there to raise my youngest son. That was very important to me because in my mind at the time, he was the last chance I had a being a good mom. I had literally fucked up with all my other kids. I always wanted to be a good mother, but let other things get in the way, including my crazy mind.
I wanted a change so bad at that time in my life. I had been pretending to the world that my life was fine and that I was financially capable of handling everything on my own. I had become exhausted with the pretenses and with the dependency on the extra paychecks that I was illegally writing to myself. That’s why I was relieved that it was over.
Despite my overwhelming sorrow and self-loathing, I mustered up the courage to change my attitude almost from day one. I had decided on my ride in the police car that I was going to do my very best from that day forward. I knew I needed help mentally and emotionally and had made a decision to do my part. What’s that saying in the Bible about sweeping out demons? Something along the lines of when you clean one out, several more come back in. Little did I know that I would be in for experiencing the most challenges that I ever had experienced in my life by deciding to become a criminal.