April 2, 2025

All I am allowed to do is absolutely nothing. Inmates yell and scream non-stop 24 x 7. Factions form along generational boundaries, and the elderly are abused. I wish I could go to a recovery meeting, attend a vocational class, or even volunteer to clean something. I feel entirely useless, and no one is explaining to me what is going to happen to me. If there was at least any little thing I could be doing to make even the slightest progress toward preparing for my eventual release, it would greatly improve my outlook on life.

I get contact information for a few family and friends. I send out letters and receive only one response—from an old college acquaintance. My old friends, colleagues, and family certainly must have committed a crime or two in their lives, so what gives them the right to stand in judgment of me?

All this means is that I’d already lost these people long before my arrest.

I finish my first novel. It has 27 chapters and will be around 400 pages when typed double space. I include interesting life anecdotes between chapters about my mom. For example:

Mom and I meet Ruth at the Mexican restaurant near the smelter cliffs in Globe, Arizona when I am five years old. I’m convinced she was my former self before I was reincarnated. She wears her watch with the clock face below, rather than on top of, her wrist. She has big, bushy eyelashes and the deepest ruby red lipstick. Ruth clearly recognizes this connection because she’s paying me a great deal of attention. Mom merely says to me, ‘Never lose this memory, sweetie. You can remember this because you are so young. Once you’re older, the memory will quickly fade. I just want you to know that I believe you.’

I use two dozen rolls of toilet paper on the first novel, and I neatly place the rolled-up balls of writing into little baggies that the jail gives us at breakfast for crumb cake.