Doing Time On The Outside

This is a piece I wrote that was recently published with other local women's stories. They were all performed by a cast of ladies who did a great job. I cried like a baby! 

Doing Time on The Outside

 

As the metal gate slammed shut behind me definitively, I knew I had made my decision, I knew I could not turn back, that the natural procession of choices and consequences and life and love had all convened and that here I was in a maximum security prison walking toward an unknown fate. My mind wandered back to Isaac. Back to the man who started it all.

I met Isaac in the winter of 2009. I was immediately drawn to his caring soul, shy demeanor, and crooked mischievous grin. A story board, a kind of map wove up and down his body in the form of black and grey tattoos. I loved watching him push his sleeves up, skulls and clowns leering, the crying faces of women peeking out.  He awakened something deep within me that I had buried long ago. I fell in love with a heart, not a lifestyle, not an image, not a story. I fell in love with a broken man with an amazing heart, and a derelict attitude. I loved him like none other, and I grieved him like none other. Suddenly I snappedback to reality while waiting for the second set of bars to slide open in front of me.

I paused, took a breath, and raised my head. I would not enter this environment feeling ashamed, stupid, or belittled. My eyes searched until they found their home…in the face of my groom to be. Yes I was here in this prison, in this maze of cells, tombs, and sterile hallways, a place of yelling, and dull yellow jumpsuits, K9 units, and guards with rings of keys that clanked and echoed. Suspicious looks and stares of disgust lingered, but all I could see was you, Isaac. Your eyes, your face, our future, and suddenly a peace washed over me. My mind began to wander again to a little girl prancing around wearing a white bed sheet, all tucked into place to resemble a wedding gown. Paper flowers in her hair. As a teenager that same girl fantasized about beautiful venues, bright bouquets of flowers, family members lining the aisles. Today was my wedding day, today was my slightly altered fairy tale, and I told myself that I wasn’t letting that little girl’s dream die when I walked inside those gates, I was letting it live. In less than an hour I would be classified as a prison wife…and I was ok with that.  

​I took my first step towards my fiancé amongst the watchful eyes of inmates, visitors, guards and prison staff. I walked into the walls of this prison a 30 year old woman with a relatively normal life, yet a string of judgment always trailing her. I walked into that prison a woman madly in love with a man, a man who is incarcerated. I felt giddy, butterflies floating in my stomach just like any bride on her big day.  I would be lucky though, I would be walking out of this prison a free woman. I would leave in a state of great joy and in great sadness, and I would walk out with a new label in my life because I simply loved a man, a man who lost his way and found it in crime. Yes on Valentines day 2012 I became the wife of an inmate. I married my husband behind three layers of steel, bulletproof glass, and bars, inside the walls of a fortress. But I had to recognize that one of the happiest moments of my life was also one of piercing loss. I walked out of those gates past the disdainful faces of many with a smile on my face and void in my heart. I had to leave my new husband behind and he would proceed to go back to his 8ft by 10 ft cell with a hole in his heart as well. That night we would both lay down in separate beds crying ourselves to sleep, but feeling so grateful to have found a love that even prison could not break. My fairy tale of marriage, sprinkled with the notions of society and a woman’s want for the lavish of ceremony and celebration had become a prison wedding, and I was also ok with that. The ceremony was beautiful in my eyes, the grim green walls melting away to a place of safety and love. All I saw at moments were the eyes of my husband welling with tears. His eyes held me, almost in a state of protection from the despair that lurked all around us.  

We were married in a tiny glass room located within the visiting room. With inmates and their loved ones watching we said our vows, exchanged rings, and our first kiss as husband and wife. I was nervous throughout the entire ceremony, not because of getting married, but of breaking a prison rule. How sad I thought…Could I take his hand? How many inches must I stand away from him? How many seconds is too long to kiss?

There was an adjoining glass room to ours, reserved for inmates to meet with their lawyers. A single inmate sat inside waiting for his attorney. I didn’t notice him at first until his movements kept distracting my peripheral vision. I glanced behind my groom at this man. He sat one ear cocked towards the ceremony wiping the smallest of tear drops from his eyes. He stared straight ahead. In a place of hardness, of darkness of constant noise and chaos, I realized my wedding WAS important. It WAS a type of fairy tale.  Isaac and I had brought a piece of humanity to a place that lacked a soul.

Isaac and I had no reception, no honey moon, no mind blowing wedding night sex. No driving away in a car tied with soup cans as our family and friends waved us on with good wishes. Isaac’s skin did not feel the starch of a suit and tie and I did not wear white. I had a simple bunch of gerbera daisies glued together by my sister so they could pass through security.

When most think wedding they think catering, venue, dress, music, flowers, loved ones. Prison weddings are different. You think about whether your underwire bra will set off the metal detector? Is your dress precisely 2 inches below your knee? Will your simple bunch of flowers be seen as something that could be construed as contraband or a weapon? Will they cut the ceremony short because of an unforeseen lockdown?

But in the end, this wedding, this experience, this slipping from one category into another was indeed about celebration, about the beauty of peace amongst pain, about a strength of love that waits, that “does time on the outside.” While inmates serve sentences longer than their life spans, Isaac lives among them in his tiny cell waiting for 4 years to expire. Waiting for that long over due honey moon, that uninhibited kiss with his wife. I sit staring out windows lost in thought about a husband that I cannot touch. But this marriage, this wedding was perfect in our eyes. It was our new beginning. Due to its setting, it meant something different. What really happened was this: Isaac and I shared an experience of redemption. And when people ask me the details of my wedding, I speak up with pride as a woman and a wife, a prison wife whose lavish affair was marrying the warm soul of a man in the depths of a winter. I could not ask for more. Neither could that little girl with flowers in her hair.