Love, Justine

December 20th, 2024

Friday

12:04am

I can’t sleep. I’ve been basically sleeping for a week, so Daisy made me (I was willing) drink a bunch of coffee to get out of my funk, which worked, but now I can’t sleep. Commissary tomorrow, so I’ll have my own coffee and I won’t be forced to share it with Swiper, because she left. Thank God for that, but now we have to worry about who we’ll get to replace her. At least I have a lock now, for my locker. Ironically, Swiper gave me hers, so I couldn’t use it while she was here because, obviously, she knew the combination. 

I’m glad she’s gone and I hope she doesn’t come back.

I wonder if I’ll sleep at all tonight. I told Stryder that I was going to write Sassypants a letter and send it to him so he could send it to her. I have a virtual visit with him tomorrow afternoon.

Boy, there are farts galore this time of night. At least Swiper’s not here to announce every single one.

People fart, lady.

Get over it.

I wonder if she’ll keep stealing things, which is what got her in prison four times. My feeling is yes. I’ve been really depressed about another Christmas in jail. And next Christmas too. I still can’t believe my stupid lawyer said he didn’t know what I was talking about when I mentioned petitioning the court for a shorter stay at the Women’s Center.

Asshole.

No word on Cool. I take it he’s in a permanently psychotic state these days. Paranoid schizophrenic, they say. 

I can’t say I’m surprised.

Sad, but not surprised.

The new lady next door, Sondra, calls me Pearl, for reasons unknown. She says it’s off some 70s TV show. She’s still up too, watching TV. I wish I had a TV, but it’s too expensive to ask anyone for. Nobody has an extra $230 laying around, except maybe my parents, and they’re too stingy with money to ask.

I’m afraid this place, this system, is breaking my spirit. I think about the writing I did in 2007-08, when I wrote Kidowed during and after Kaylee’s death, and I still had a sense of humor. I don’t anymore, it seems. I used to be funny, seemingly effortlessly, even during those dark times, as if I still had hope that things would be better in the future if I just could get through this part. But it didn’t. Not for the next 17 years it didn’t.

How much can one person take?

I don’t have any hope for the future anymore. I don’t even believe that I have the smallest iota of control over my life anymore. I used to believe I was in charge of my life, and that I made the good things in my life happen. 

Now, that idea seems monumentally stupid.

Now, life seems very random and luck-based. Self-determination seems like an oxymoron. In this Short Reads class I’m going to on Tuesdays, there is this teacher who says she doesn’t believe in God. My problem is that I believe in God, but I don’t like Him or trust Him, because he has treated me like he hates me. Why does nothing good ever happen to me? My life is just misery following misery. I wonder if people who commit suicide don’t believe in Hell, or they believe in it, but figure that it must be better than this shithole life? Eternal burning in hellfire sounds better than life on Earth? 

I can believe it these days.

December 21st, 2024

Saturday

7:02pm

Cool came home to my parent’s house. Apparently he’s staying in the apartment most of the time. Seems weird to me that he came home to not be alone, and is now isolating himself. I had hoped things would become more normal if he was around family. He brought his dog, who he renamed Falcore from Sunshine.

Hm.

I’d be interested to see what he’s posting on social media now that he’s home. I hope he doesn’t act like a crazy wacko in front of the kids.

December 22nd, 2024

Sunday

11:55am

It is rumored that Lolita came back to prison after only being gone for four days, and that she may have killed herself today. There was a weird lockdown and everything was running late, and Zuko just told me in the bathroom. I heard that he was back with new charges a couple of days ago, and that she was “freaking out” in the Infirmary, but then I didn’t hear anything after that.

She gave me her eyeshadow when she left.

I’m wearing it today.

4:08pm

It’s true.

Lolita killed herself.

Zuko cried. 

I hugged her for a long time.

I’m incredibly sad.

After all that she had survived, she died all alone in a cinderblock cell…Zuko kept saying, “I wish somebody would have helped her…there’s no help here…(sob).”

This place will crush your soul…although it sounded more like it blasted hers to smithereens. There’s rumors of screaming and blood and a broken window…I wonder if the shattering of a soul makes the same noise as a window spider-webbing into a million pieces…

It’s inconceivable that such small buildings can house so much pain…you’d think they’d just burst apart with the weight of it.

But instead, people’s brains crack in half, and their spirits snap too. 

I wonder how such a monumental happening could not make a noise?

I wonder if she cried, 

Or if there was a steely resolve, 

When she decided to die, 

Instead of living

In this brick and mortar cage.

When she took her last breath, 

Was she relieved?

Was she finally free?

Sometimes I wonder

How the Earth doesn’t shift on its axis

Every time a soul gives up

They talk about strength, resilience, 

And the indomitable human spirit. 

But I know a place that can dominate

A human spirit, 

Conquer it, 

And smash it, 

Stomp it, 

Until it loses all hope.

And the despair takes over 

Like a creeping black mist, 

And the spirit starts thinking about Heaven, 

Instead of this Hell on Earth

That is Muncy State Prison

In Pennsylvania, 

America.

Land of the free?

Is she finally free?

Did it make a noise?