Don't get use to it
This is my first writing. I can’t tell you how many times I have asked myself,”where to start”? I’ve come to the conclusion that it can just flow, frankly i don’t even know if there is a beginning. I want to get down to brass tacks on some topics that are hard to talk about and personal.
Policy Changes, why does our goverment make that so hard? Mental illness. U.S.A and the mass incarceration addiction. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and the harsh sentences handed down for low level criminals? The broken family’s that are forced apart by our child protective service thoughout the US. We can fix all of this.
That is just a few of the topics I feel I need to be honest about and tell.
I come from a large family and if truth be told I would much rather stay in the background of life and just kind of mind my own business because its been a long humilitating 40 years. To recover from a family disease is a lifelong process. My point in trying to put my words in writing is in the hope to inform. The way our Current Criminal Justice System gets way overly involved in peoples lives causing a cascade of pain and pure sarrow in the lives of many innocent people. In my personal life just ,for pot, one dirty pot urine in my town got me sentanced to 4 years. After that I was assigned a dirty parole officer.He was caught but only cause i had to reprort him. That did not work in my favor. Ive lived through a false arrest in the year 2000 by said dirty officer and for that his criminal partner cuffed me for reporting dirty officer and i watched 9/11 happen accross the Hudson River in the Hackensack County Jail, I was 2 weeks pregnant. Falsly accused by a corrupt officers. Yes we went to trial. He’ll never work in a goverment position job ever again but that doesnt help me today. I still remember. Most recently 2018–19 a Superior Court Judge in my hometown knew I was on the New Jersey Medical Marijunia Program and sent me to the county jail for 2 weeks then a contracted (to the courts) rehab for 4 weeks. She said “I cant possibly be a mom and smoke pot” and then just caged me. I am a sole parent, my child was left alone for 6 weeks, 16 yrs old. Her and I are still feeling that effect. The judge simply ignored our Attorney General’s Orders pertaing to Marijunia, to use disgression in sentancing in NJ. Her disgression was to crush me and my daughter.
I want to help make the system stop all of this. And in no way can I do this alone. We all want system change for our kids and grandkids, absolutly we can make these changes in policys happen . Change lives.
I feel like I ran through life like my hair was on fire. I first learned addiction “may” be a core problem, but I was 14. Most addicts know its is a long road but once we learn there is a way to recover then hopefully we take that path.
Did you ever get that feeling in your gut that you know something has to be done but…you’re hoping someone else will get to “that”? Thats where I sit now. It's pretty uncomfortable too but maybe some good will come out of the writing? Humiliating as it is for me to recall jagged peices of my past I know my PTSD will get better if can just contfront the imposed demons.
For myself and my own personal story the PTSD came first. Addiction next, then decades of my hometown’s Justice Center. That life long cage. We are literally stuck in the system and can not get out. What started out as Probation, almost instanly went to State Prison Time, Edna Mahon in Clinton NJ. From there the system will offer something called ISP. That’s Intensive Supervised Parol. They use that tool and tell you its all in your favor, but it is not. Then theres is just plan O’lParole. You got your longterm rehabs over flow and waiting list to get in. It is an endless cycle that has been spinnig wildly out of controle for decades. When I get the guts to find the proper words I plan on writing them here, in this Medium app. For me it will be like talk to the air, universe, all of you. The reason I know I have to tell this story is because if I dont, I’m terrified it will just keep happening to the next innocent generation.
Both of my parents are deceased. When my mom was alive she would say to me, ‘You have to write a book” tell the story. And when she would say this to me I’d cringe inside. I would give her all the reasons I felt this was not a possible task. I could see her eyes now when I think about her response, my mother was an avid book reader. My father would just shake his head in agreement as she would nudge me more. After she passed away, he picked up that torch and continued to ask me all the way up to this past July 2021, “You start that book yet”? I can promise you they would both just want me to start writing and telling what happens to the average American.
I live in rural/suburban NJ. It is a part of New Jersey that looks like a slice of paridise. I have a sneaky suspicion what is going on in my town is going on in yours.
I live my life in a way where I can sleep at night. I do live by the Golden Rule and know I was born free. Im not ashamed of my life but i am definily ashamed of a system I was caught up in. I intend to talk openly about what the policys have been for the past 40 years and let’s see if that leads to change.
