01
THE FIRST
HOURS
Arrival. Processing. Confusion. Realizing where I was and that I wasn't leaving whenever I wanted.
JOURNAL ENTRY →BIPOLAR SOBER / PERSPECTIVES / ON THE INSIDE
ON THE FUCKING INSIDE.
JAIL JOURNALS.
WHAT HAPPENED. WHAT I WROTE.
WHAT I DON'T WANT TO FORGET.
01 / ON THE INSIDE
I WROTE
IT DOWN.
These are pieces of my journals from jail.
Not the cleaned-up version. Not the version where everything gets turned into a neat recovery lesson after the fact.
These are the things I noticed when I was actually there: the waiting, the noise, the boredom, the routines, the loss of privacy, the people, the thoughts, and the strange little details that suddenly became my entire fucking world.
Some of it makes more sense to me now. Some of it still doesn't.
THIS ISN'T WHAT I THINK
JAIL WAS LIKE.
THIS IS WHAT I WROTE
WHILE I WAS FUCKING THERE.
JAIL WAS LIKE.
THIS IS WHAT I WROTE
WHILE I WAS FUCKING THERE.
02 / THEN + NOW
TWO VERSIONS
OF THE SAME
STORY.
There are really two voices in these pages.
THEN
ME ON
ME ON
THE INSIDE.
What I was thinking while it was happening. Angry. Bored. Scared. Irritated. Restless. Observant. Sometimes numb. Sometimes completely overwhelmed by shit that would normally seem tiny.
NOW
ME LOOKING
ME LOOKING
BACK.
What I notice now that I'm outside of it. Patterns I couldn't see. Things I understand differently. Things I still disagree with. Things I never want to experience again.
I don't want the person I am now to rewrite the person who actually lived it.
Both perspectives belong here.
03 / THE LITTLE SHIT
YOUR WORLD
GETS REALLY
FUCKING SMALL.
When most of your normal life disappears, little things become enormous.
THE CLOCK.
THE DOOR.
THE LIGHTS.
THE FOOD.
THE NOISE.
THE BED.
THE PHONE.
THE WAITING.
THE COUNT.
THE NEXT FUCKING HOUR.
That's one reason I want the details here.
Memory likes to compress an experience into a sentence: "I was in jail."
A journal doesn't let it disappear that easily.
04 / WAITING
WAIT.
THEN WAIT
SOME MORE.
Waiting became its own activity.
Waiting for food. Waiting for a door. Waiting for information. Waiting for somebody to answer a question. Waiting to make a call. Waiting for the next part of the day.
When you don't control the schedule, time feels different.
YOU'RE NOT DECIDING
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT.
YOU'RE WAITING TO FIND OUT.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT.
YOU'RE WAITING TO FIND OUT.
05 / FREEDOM
YOU NOTICE IT
WHEN IT'S
FUCKING GONE.
Freedom usually doesn't feel dramatic when you have it.
You open a door. You make food. You go outside. You take a shower. You turn off a light. You call somebody. You decide you're tired and go to bed.
They're ordinary choices.
Until they aren't yours anymore.
I DIDN'T UNDERSTAND HOW MANY TINY FREEDOMS
MADE UP MY LIFE UNTIL SOMEBODY ELSE CONTROLLED THEM.
06 / FROM THE JOURNALS
THE SHIT
I ACTUALLY
WROTE.
Pieces from the journals, organized by what was happening and what was going through my head.
THE FIRST
02
THE
WAITING
What happens to your brain when there is almost nothing to do except wait for the next thing to happen.
JOURNAL ENTRY →03
THE
PEOPLE
The people around me, the conversations, the personalities, and what happens when strangers suddenly share a tiny world.
JOURNAL ENTRY →04
THE LITTLE
THINGS
Food. Sleep. Noise. Clothes. Phones. Showers. Doors. Rules. All the shit you normally never think about.
JOURNAL ENTRY →05
INSIDE
MY HEAD
Fear, anger, boredom, regret, mental health, addiction, and whatever else my brain decided to throw at me while I couldn't leave.
JOURNAL ENTRY →06
LOOKING
BACK
What I see differently now — and what I absolutely fucking don't.
REFLECTION →07 / WHY KEEP THIS?
BECAUSE MEMORY
IS A FUCKING
LIAR.
Time softens things.
That's useful sometimes.
It's also dangerous when my brain starts editing out the parts of the story that are inconvenient.
Especially when addiction starts negotiating.
"IT WASN'T THAT BAD."
Yeah.
That's exactly why I fucking wrote it down.
08 / NOT A MORAL
I'M NOT HERE
TO TURN IT
INTO A FABLE.
I don't need every shitty thing that's happened to me to secretly be a beautiful gift.
Some experiences suck.
I can learn from something without becoming grateful that it happened.
I can change because of something without pretending the thing itself was good.
SOMETIMES THE LESSON ISN'T
"EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON."
SOMETIMES IT'S
"I DON'T WANT TO FUCKING GO BACK."
"EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON."
SOMETIMES IT'S
"I DON'T WANT TO FUCKING GO BACK."
I WAS THERE.
I WROTE IT DOWN.
I GOT OUT.
DON'T
FUCKING
FORGET.
The journals stay because the person who wrote them deserves to be remembered accurately.
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