The Women’s Center
May 23rd, 2018
Wednesday
Day 324
5am
I got up an hour ago. I’m afraid I’ve gone into a manic phase of my bipolar depression, because I can’t seem to sleep, yet I’m not tired during the day. It’s actually a nice change from being tired all of the time. Tori’s birthday is in two days. I have to think of something nice to do for her. Her son Jackson’s birthday was yesterday, which was hard for her. Today I have to write my mother a letter and get my driver’s license renewal sent out and give my “And Still She Laughs,” book to Sugar Momma and read the book of John in the Bible three times.
Whew!
Maybe that’s why I’m up early! I have a lot to do! I also have to pay taxes and other bills and I’d like to plant more in the garden. It rained last night a good bit–we’ll see how it looks today. My joints are definitely feeling the weather. I’m worried about Sugar Momma. She moaned and groaned and got up and sat back down and left the room three times and switched chairs with me because she was uncomfortable all during the inspirational video about Jesus last night, and at medication time, I finally asked her what her problem was with God. Her eyes welled up with tears when she said, “I’m just so mad! Why her and not me??!”
She was talking about her 22-year old daughter, Kayla, who died a mere four years ago from a heroin overdose. I didn’t know what to say, other than I knew how she felt. Maybe she should read my book, “Kidowed.” I had nothing but pure rage for well over a decade before I finally accepted the fact that God loves me and my children, and He chose me to be their mother, and that it was an honor and a privilege to serve Him in this way.
But Kayla (which is very similar to Kaylee, my daughter’s name) didn’t die of a fatal illness. She died by her own hand, for which Sugar Momma also probably has a fair amount of anger at. I never was put in the position of being angry with my children, but I can identify with her feeling that God took her from Sugar Momma, and I get the unfairness and betrayal in that.
Of course that’s not the way it works, but far be it for me to tell that to a bereaved mother, for people must come to these conclusions on their own, or they are rendered meaningless.
Maybe I’ll ask Mr. Big how he thinks that I can help her. I did pray for her, but she has to come to know several important things before she will be able to make peace with Kayla’s death, most of them God-centered. If she refuses, then she will be stuck in the same pitiful cycle of self-loathing, unrequited grief, anger, bitterness, and resentment that I was for so long, and that’s an extremely dangerous place for an addict to be.
Letter to my mother:
Mom– (not Bindi) 5/23/2018
I’m sorry it took me this long to write, and I’m forever apologizing for my handwriting, but that never changes. 🙂
I wanted to tell you first and foremost that I forgive you. I have come to realize that I have an unforgiving spirit and that I carry a lot of resentments and bitterness in my heart, and I need to let these things go, or they will continue to destroy me.
Also, I wanted to tell you how much it meant to me that you made me a pillow, and that you thought of me at all on Mother’s Day. Yellow is my favorite color, and the saying was just beautiful. I hope you know that I mean these words from the bottom of my heart, and that I pray for you every day and wish you nothing but the best for you and your family.
I also hope and pray that you will give my children back to me when I get out of the Center in July, so that we don’t have to go through a long, drawn-out process in court, but if that is your will, then that’s what we’ll do. I have come to know that I deserve good things too in my life, and that I have forgiven myself too, which means that I have made the decision to stop punishing myself for past wrongs, and have started a new beginning. I hope that you take these words to heart, and that someday you will be able to forgive me.
I love you.
Love,
Justine
8am
Time for Community Group. I’m grateful that I’m so awake today. Being tired all of the time sucks. Our community is still reeling from last night’s screaming match between Sandra and I, but today she seems better, and is talking about writing her essay. Maybe something I said (yelled) did stick.
12pm
“Repent…that times of refreshing may come.” (Acts 3:19 NIV)
9pm
We just got back from the meeting and Nikolai was sitting outside. As I got closer to her, I could see that her clothes were just hanging off of her and when I hugged her, I could feel all of her bones. Her eyes looked weird and her face was sunken in and she wouldn’t hold my concerned gaze and she said, “What?” twice when I asked her questions, even though I was peering right into her face and talking to her up close.
I have to pray for her right now.
Tori and I prayed.
I feel helpless to do anything to help her even though she is literally feet away from the Center. I’m going to bring her food tonight and give her my debit card. I have to trust that she’ll do the right thing and buy diapers and food and not drugs.
May 25th, 2018
Day 326
Friday
It’s Tori’s birthday today. She turns 28. Sugar Momma fell down in the hallway this morning and her blood pressure was super high. I wonder how Nickolai is doing. We’re currently watching an inspirational video on Will Smith talking about fault and responsibility. All three of my kids should be coming this weekend. Will Smith says that the difference between joy and depression is a sense of purpose to serve humanity.
I have to do laundry today.
I didn’t do so hot with eating yesterday–I ate too much. It seems like the more tired I am, the more I eat.
“Seek wisdom, and faith will follow.”
Fucking great. Big is freaking out because we didn’t follow the schedule last night and that I didn’t go to the meeting. I fucking sick and super tired!!!! Now I need a damn shower. Now we can’t smoke.
FUCK.
Big is saying that it is everyone’s fault that we didn’t follow the schedule, which is completely unreasonable. We can’t control what the staff does! They’re the ones in charge around here!!
11:30am
Tori is taking her blood pressure while holding her breath–85/51!
Holy Crap, that makes her almost dead!
They took Sugar Momma to the hospital–I hope she’s okay.
I guess I have to make up names for the new women…..how about June and Diamond? Neither of them are staying here very long. Of course. Diamond can’t do much because she had a knee replacement a month ago, and it’s still not healed. She’s on Percocet, which pisses Big off. He tried to get her to sign a release to get it changed to something that wasn’t a controlled drug, but she would not sign it. Big and Elaine are talking about the time she puked and then vacuumed it up.
Gross.
It was vegetable lasagna.
I guess I’ll read my Bible until lunchtime. John 1:5: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
Now we’re talking with Mr. Big about the theory of human evolution. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm…………………………………………………………….
Huh.
Mr Big’s father is a science teacher and his mother is a Christian, and they’re still married. Interesting.
Now we’re listening to Sandra read her essay on the proper way to communicate with others.
Now we’re in a group about thinking errors, which are:
- All or nothing statements and thinking.
- Catastrophizing.
- Manipulating.
- People pleasing.
Oh, now Jolene is hijacking the group with her problems.
10pm
Random drug tests again. Not that it’s actually random–Tori and I get “chosen” every time. And, every time, I test positive for marijuana, and they they send it out and it’s negative.
Omg, June is weighing herself–122lbs. She’s obsessed with not eating–she says she only eats once per day, and she wants to weigh 106lbs. This is what women do to themselves when they have no control over their actual lives. They control their bodies, and usually destroy them in the process. It’s like suicide on the installment plan.
Take away a woman’s spirit, her bodily autonomy, her “what I was supposed to do with my life, but…” and she will hurt herself until she dies.
Sometimes she eats too much.
Sometimes she eats too little.
Sometimes she cuts herself.
This is what she has control over.
This makes the pain of not being in charge of your own self less painful.
Almost all women now do a form of this self-harm, this slow suicide. Because inside, she is already dead, or parts of her are. The parts that contained her hopes and her dreams.
And most of the time, this was taken away by the people that were supposed to love her the very most, like her parents, or her partner.
Craziness.
Wrong.
Bad.
And then the MEN, who think we have gone CRAZY, put us in jails and prisons and psych wards and Women’s Center’s, right?
And then they tell us that we have “Thinking Errors,” right?
Because they make the rules and not us, right?
I was sentenced to do time in this “Women’s Center” by a man.
This Women’s Center is run by a man.
So is most every jail or prison for women.
Made by men and for men.
And we’re told to behave.
Just shut up and sit down and look pretty and smile, right?
We are sentenced to go to these places because of our behavior, when we act up, like standing up for our rights and stuff.
Still.
Again.
Again still.
Women, from the beginning of time, have fought and died, and have been imprisoned in homes and in jails and in psych wards, and all of the rest, when men try to break our spirit.
Over.
And over.
And over again.
Well, I say it stops.
Right here, right now.
I just wish other women would listen to me.
But most of them have had men, and even other women, talking in their ears for their entire lives about how to behave and about what “works” and what “doesn’t work.”
Well, it’s time that women had a turn at the wheel.
‘Cuz men done fucked it the whole way up.
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