The City Bus

Riding the city bus is a fucking nightmare!! While in the work release center unless you are a federal parolee, you are not allowed to drive or have your car. I am not a federal parolee. So, my life consists of a lot of walking and riding the city bus. I am in a small city in the Midwest. A small city that is basically a factory town. Public transportation is not a priority. I have ridden on buses and trains while in Europe and in big cities here in the U.S. This is not that kind of public transportation. I am not sure what this is exactly........other than a type of social experience or experiment. This is white trash meets the ghetto meets the substance abuser. The routes are hopeless and only come once per hour. The only connection is downtown at one terminal. If you miss one bus, you are screwed because it will be at least an hour before the next one.

The first and most important step of the work release is obviously finding work. Unless your family lives near by and can drive you, you must take the bus. Imagine my first time out....I have never ridden the bus in this city. I havent been in the city since I was a child. I have no idea where anything is or where to even begin looking. But, I head out and walk the 15 mins to the nearest bus stop. Convenient, not!  I am armed with a bus ticket and a schedule. I am to apply to 6 jobs per day. I climb aboard and am first met with a very distinctive odor...unwashed pits and crotch. Oh, boy. Here I go. The first trip is only 10 minutes to the transfer spot. That is where you get the full experience of people milling around smoking, bumming cigarettes, borrowing cell phones and worst of all macking all over each other. We are talking full on, tongue down the throat kissing. Most of the couples are climbing and groping each other in full view. Giving each other hickeys on the benches. Didnt that end in highschool? Seriously?


After walking about a million miles while applying for jobs, I am finally ready to head back to the center. I get on the final bus and lo and behold...who is sitting spread eagle on the back seat of the bench? None other than LaShonda. It is easy to see that she is up to something. I walk closer to the back of the bus, part fascinated and curious and part horrified. This 400 pound woman is spread eagle, partly sitting up with her hand down the front of her pants. Remember, she is facing the front of the bus. The almost empty bus. I dare to ask her "What the hell are you doing?" Without missing a beat, she tells me that she is attempting to put her cell phone "up my twat."  I just looked at her and said "Excuse me?" She tells me that she is putting her cell phone up her twat so that she can get it into the center. Another rule of the center: no cell phones. This is how she smuggles it in. I look at her and say, "OMG, my eyes are burning out of my head." She calmly replies in her yelling voice, without stopping the shoving of the cell phone, "What? It is in a ziplock bag." 


This is what I now live with every day. 

Work Release

Living in a co-ed work release center is an experience that most are fortunate to never have. It is a world unto itself. I have met people here that I would have never met in my "normal" daily life. There are people from all walks of life but the majority are uneducated, with some pretty unbelievable social skills. Or lack of, I should say. Dont get me wrong, there are a few (maybe 3, if I am being generous) who come from similar background as mine. But, not many.

Let me tell you about LaShonda......this is a 400 pound, 20 year old, woman with 4 children. She is the most obnoxious creature I have ever met. Without question, she has been sexually abused at some point in her life. There is no other reason someone would act the way she does. I kid you not, she is a walking 400 pound mass of sexual acting out. She wears her clothes as tight as will fit her. It is not a pretty sight. She speaks in a voice that is just above a  yell at all times. Oh, I should add that there are stiff rules for interaction between the men and woman who live in the work release. Basically, you are not to look, talk or have any contact with the opposite sex.  That just is not possible for LaShonda. She is constantly yelling and trying to get attention from the men. Hell, sometimes the women as well. She will stand in the hall, yell to get attention and then proceed to fondle herself, grope herself and while she is doing this she is talking obscenely to the men. I should say yelling, because she cant speak without yelling. Seriously, who wants to see that??? Yuck.  


I am in the shower the other morning, (three shower stalls in a common area, without curtains) and I can hear LaShonda yelling for women to come and watch her shower. Yelling. Repeatedly. (So much for my peaceful shower.) Fortunately, she didn't have any takers. Or so, I thought. I get out of the shower, dry off, slip on my robe and get ready to head to my room and there she is........all 400 pounds of her.........standing naked in the middle of the room..........."drying" herself with a towel, while watching herself in the mirror. OMG, I could have gone my entire life without seeing that. I just look at her and say "LaShonda, really?"  She looks at me all innocent and say's "What, I'm just drying off."   And that is how I start my day, living in a work release. 

And so it begins.....

I used to make forty dollars an hour with an expense account before I went to prison. My first job in prison, I made forty cents per hour. Yep, forty cents. My first job out of prison I made forty dollars a day. 


Really, is it possible to fall any lower than that? Believe me, you can. I have fallen hard and lost almost everything and everyone that was dear to me. Now, I am fighting and struggling  to have a "normal" life again. Each day is a struggle to fight through the remorse and despair I feel by the bad decisions I have made and the fall out from those. Each day I am swamped with regrets and fear.


I was a mom to four wonderful children. And I have harmed them in many, many ways. My oldest boys no longer speak to me. I have hurt them that badly. 


This is my struggle to return and recover from my time in prison. My daily struggle to live in a work release center. This is my struggle to become whole again and to regain the trust of my family.


This will not be pretty. It really is ugly. I am not a very good person. But, I want to be again. I WILL be again.  This is my story of loss, despair, harm, fear and recovery.


Many of the things that have happened to me are quite funny.  At least they are to me, if I have learned nothing else in the journey. If you don't laugh, you will cry.