This past Sunday I was released from the county workhouse after spending 10 days inside. This is probably going to sound a little weird but.. It was actually refreshing! I know, I know, it’s jail.. But it was more like a dorm. There weren’t any bars locking us down, the bathrooms were set up as stalls, and we had our own clothes and we’re allowed to leave the premises! My favorite thing though, was the nightly programs and groups. I think that’s why I feel so much better. So Anyways..

    Let’s back up.. A year ago almost exactly, I went through treatment (by choice) for an out-of-control opiate addiction. It was the best thing I’ve done for myself. Yes, I left a few days early because I could no longer handle the money hungry government fools running the place, but for the most part I learned what I needed. I was ready for my new beginning. Or so I thought. So I went home and I was honestly doing really well for a while.. Until my past decided it was time to resurface. Oh, my wonderful past..

    Rewind a little more.. About a year before I entered treatment I made a friend, kind of. I’m going to call this person ‘Bob’. Bob and I started hanging out almost everyday. I had cut off most of the world with my drug use and my best friend moved away, so it was nice to have someone to be able to talk to. It didn’t take long to realize what a huge mistake I had made by something as simple as befriending someone. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not the type to judge, but Bob definitely took the cake for all the strange people I’d met.

    Bob had developed a crush on me. Which was okay, people get crushes. But I wasn’t in any place to be in a of relationship. I was driving a car going 200mph towards a brick building, and no one was slowing me down. I told Bob I just wanted to be friends. This is where things went wrong. On my page, we continued to be friends. On his page.. Well let’s just say we were on completely different pages. I should have noticed something was a little off when if I didn’t reply to a text message for 15 minutes, I’d come back to my phone with 50 calls or texts. Anyways, I slowly found out who Bob really was. Bob had a multitude of mental disorders ranging from bi-polar disorder to depression to schizophrenia. I honestly had no idea. After hanging around all the wrong people, you never really know if someone’s weird because of drugs or they truly are crazy. (Or they’re just plain weird.) I started to find out from acquaintances that Bob was telling people that I was his girlfriend and we were getting married and things of that sort.. When I confronted him, he replied with ‘but it’s the truth.’ This is when things took a turn for the worse.

      Bob’s mom didn’t approve of Bob liking me. I’m going to call Bob’s mom ‘Patty’. Bob and his siblings were puppets to Patty. (I’m almost positive this is where all of his mental disorders stem from.) Patty controlled literally everything in her children’s lives. She put spyware on all their phones and computers, tracking devices in their vehicles, locked the doors from the outside.. Things like that. Anyways, I became a huge problem. I didn’t fit into her circus for obvious reasons. Reasons such as: She had to spend more time sitting on her computer - watching the tracking device attached to Bob, she actually had to allow Bob to spend ‘his’ social security money, I saw what was going on and told 21 y/o Bob to stand up for himself - he’s an adult for crying out loud! The craziest part was that she actually tried to control me at one point! I wasn’t having it.. Patty began doing things like calling my grandparents and saying things like ‘Do you know where Bridgette is??’ When they replied with ‘She’s an adult’ obviously that made her mad. After harassing my grandparents, Patty found other family members of mine through Facebook and would start with them.. Everyone seemed to realize she was off her rocker. If one person wouldn’t care, she’d find someone else. She was doing anything she could to just find one person to tell me I wasn’t allowed to hang out with Bob. Keep in mind the harassment lasted months. She’d call day and night with all types of crazy stories. She even went so far as to call on Christmas! Which was actually kind of funny because I was standing right next to my Grandpa, while she was claiming I was standing outside of her house! So the next step for Patty was to drag the police in. She would say I robbed her house or this and that. The police actually told me she was harassing them with stories. While all of this was going on, Bob was doing the same. Only he’d be begging my family to let him talk to me and apologizing for his mom’s rude and erratic behavior, etc etc. We also caught him sitting outside our home and creeping around at night several times..

      This is where I went to treatment. I came home feeling great, only to wake up to a police officer serving me a harassment/restraining order. The catch? It was from THEM against ME! My family and I were speechless! They’d been harassing us for months! How is this even possible?! I started doing some research and boy, was I in for a real treat. While I was in treatment, Patty was granted legal guardianship over Bob, then went out and got the restraining order against me. The things she created in order to receive this restraining order were absolutely ridiculous and I cannot believe no one did any investigating first! She claimed that I would pick Bob up, drive him hours away and drop him off in the middle of no where without a phone or ride.. I didn’t even have a vehicle! She also said that I would strap him down and inject him with drugs and many other unbelievable tales. I was a scrawny little girl while Bob was much taller and stronger than me.. This all came as a complete shock for many reasons including that I hadn’t even talked to Bob in months.. I guess she just wanted to be sure??

    I was thinking “No big deal, I’m done talking to Bob, moving on.” Bob continued to call and text me literally thousands of times a day. You see, he didn’t like the restraining order so much. He would leave hours of voicemails, crying and apologizing and begging me to just talk to him. “I wouldn’t get in trouble!” After about a month of not being able to use my phone because it was so blown up, I gave in. I couldn’t stand it anymore and sent a text asking him to please just leave me alone and we can’t be friends anymore because I’ll go to jail. Things like that.. Well I have an older phone and it ended up breaking the message into 4 or 5 separate messages. I received a phone call the next morning alerting me that I was being charged. Twice. I was going to court and trial for about 4 months when I was offered community service as a plea deal. The prosecutor saw the phone records and admitted that it was crazy that I was being charged in the first place, especially with all the calls Bob was making to me daily, but technically I violated the harassment order.

    Finally in August, it was all over with. I had moved, started an awesome full-time job and changed my phone number. I was finally really happy about where my life was. (From the time I got out of treatment until I started this job, I was full of negative energy being stressed out about court, about 8 months.) Then I received a letter from the county. I was being charged again. AGAIN! 9 months later and they missed a text message, so they just wanted to charge me again. This time, they were looking for 90 days jail time. Normally, I never stress or worry about anything, but this really bothered me. I moved on, I wasn’t doing anything wrong. For once, I was actually happy.. Anyways, I was completely stressed out for 3 months waiting for my court date, when it finally arrived. I ended up taking a plea deal with 14 days in the county workhouse and a bunch of crazy fines. Then I lost my job and ended up in the same rut I’d been in, many times before. I wasn’t using, but I was just in a bad place. Completely isolated from the world.

     Finally the time came to go to the workhouse. I was scared, like anyone would be, but I knew I’d be okay. I didn’t even realize how isolated and alone I really was, until I attended the bible studies and celebrate recovery groups. Most people come out of jail happy because it was so terrible being locked up. But I came out happy because of my experiences. I went in scared and came out feeling a thousand times better. I learned so much in the few days I was there, it’s unbelievable! Somebody called jail ‘God’s Hotel,’ and I’d have to say that sounds about right. I’ve become so much closer to God. I feel as though I’ve been awakened. I appreciate things so much more. I am so grateful that I even have food to eat or a comfy bed to sleep in. How many people in the world don’t even have food or a place to sleep? So much of my life I’ve yearned to be rich. I could really care less. I don’t have a dime to my name, but I am still living in luxury. People need to learn that luxury doesn’t mean being rich or owning clothes or big homes or nice cars. Luxury is being able to have the necessities. Luxury is love, family, faith, things like that. I’m not sure what it was that made this huge difference in me, but I just hope everyone has the wake up call someday. Where they realize it’s not about what they don’t have, it’s about appreciating the blessings God has given you. It’s about working with what you do have.

This was truly one of the best things that I’ve ever experienced! For the longest time, I didn’t understand why all of this was happening me. Especially after I’d turned my life around. I just figured it was karma. I’ve always thought everything happens for a reason, and after doing my time, it all makes sense. I had to go through all of that trouble in order to get sent to jail and learn what needed to be learned. And I’m glad.

God Bless :)