Lately I’ve had a hard time sleeping. This is due to both loads of work and to high amounts of stress, but there’s another reason behind this.
There are many things I’m blessed to have and feel thankful for in my life, but my past is also full of grief and I still struggle with heartache from past experiences. Usually it’s not that bad because my life constantly has great things going on but I think that I also had a hard time letting myself grieve when it was the right time to grieve. So now there’s a lot of it coming out at night, when I’m allowed to finally have a break to think and just have time to my own being.
I thought that maybe writing out my next article about this would help me to feel better and to also help people out there to understand me better. I’m not writing this so I can have people tell me they’re sorry for me, rather because I think it’s important for people to share things like this with one another so we can all remember that we’re just human and none of our lives are perfect.
When I was a sophomore, my dad was indicted and put on trial for a crime he didn’t commit. Because the system is so messed up and flawed and corrupt, we lost our case and he had to go to jail. He’s been there ever since. From age fifteen until now, almost at age twenty, I haven’t really had a father. The first six months to a year he was being kept in a prison about an hour from us and we were only allowed to see him for thirty minutes a week. This was also only behind a glass wall, talking through a phone.
Eventually he was moved to a different prison with lower security, which is good. But he was also moved eight and a half hours away from where we lived. He’s still there and I see my dad maybe three or four times a year. Being at college makes it difficult because I only have time to see him on breaks and the trip is so hard on all of us that it’s painful to have to do it. When we go, we’re able to visit with him for most of the day, which is good, and there’s no glass separating us anymore but we aren’t allowed to touch him except for when we first see him. We’re allowed to hug him but then we can’t touch him for the rest of the time and vice versa.
When all of this happened, I was devastated. We all were. What’s worse is that it was broadcasted all over the news, so everyone in my school knew. I was only fifteen and I already had to grow up. My mother, being the strong woman that she is, took on his whole business by herself even though she basically killed herself working for it. My brother was able to go off to college that year, but I still had another two years left. One of the hardest parts is that I became the person my mother leaned on. I love her dearly and I will always be here for her and I can always count on her also, but it was a lot of extra stress for me to have to try and handle her emotions along with my own. I also had to deal with her feeling broken. It hurt me worse than anything to see her hurt.
Dealing with this has gotten better over time, but I also don’t open up to anyone about it besides my mother so I had to let it out somehow. I just get uncomfortable talking about stuff like this and trying to handle my emotions, and I don’t want people to feel sorry for me. But I needed to write about it because I can’t be afraid of it. It’s my life and it’s a part of me. I just hope everyone out there remembers that there’s nothing wrong with feeling sad about these things. Also don’t feel ashamed to try and talk about them with people.
