Jail Bird

so i wrote my friend who's in prison. She stole a bunch of money from immigrants through her legal practice--charging them extensive fees and then dropping out of site without providing the work. Horrible. She definitely belongs in jail. But still I worry about her, and don't want her to feel alone, and so I wrote her. She hasn't written me back--I wrote her a week ago and sent her some money--I wonder if she will write me back.

I think about her a lot lately. There's an option to buy an inmate a tablet, a cheap version I'm sure, and then they can write you letters and play games and listen to music.  If I got her that tablet I wonder what kind of music she'd listen to. When I went to see her once we were listening to the same album. And while we can find areas we intersect, we are intrinsically different. Not just in that she has no patience for harder music whereas I love it, but in other ways. Like how she thought it was horrible/cheap/low-class to build your own things (bookcases, furniture, whatever) and I strive to learn as much as I can in that department. Anyways, she used to say how alike we were, and was offended when I said we were very different. Differences aren't bad, I would tell her.

Before jail, years ago, I went to see her a few times. Once she called me out of the blue and asked me to come babysit for a weekend. She had a deposition and hiring a babysitter for 2 days was the same price as flying me out there. And she was moving. She basically just needed support and was insanely stressed. She bought me a 1-way ticket and I flew from Portland (where I couldn't find work) to her home. We attended mommy & me Yoga, took the dogs to the dog park, ate Mexican food, and went on long walks. As I helped her pack up her old place I noticed that every towel had baby shit on them. Every single towel. I was using them to wrap up fragile things and at first it didn't register. Because who blatantly leaves out towels with huge shit marks on them? But that's what it was. During the process of moving she was cruel to the movers, and honestly she's lucky they didn't accidentally break all of her things.We went to coffee and the baby got just slightly fussy and so people looked. No one judging, just glancing. One young college girl stared too long (she was spacing out, unfortunate for her) and my friend snapped "And what are you looking at?!?" at the poor girl. Everyone was out to get her. She described her insides as full of bouncing balls. I stayed with her for a week and then hightailed it out of there as soon as I could. I'm lucky my other friend had a travel pass, or I would've been stranded.

 I know she needed help, but so did I at that point and I couldn't provide her with all she needed. It felt like I was being sucked dry.

I wonder now if she feels better, or if she's clawing at the walls without her daughter. Perhaps she can calm down in prison, where she knows her needs will be met and there's a routine to each day. Perhaps not, and those bouncing balls inside of her are just getting more intense.

I like to think of her as calmer. I like to think if I bought her that tablet that she'd download Joni Mitchell songs and listen to them with her hands over her ears, eyes closed, and head tilted slightly back.

In the end we cannot save anyone. Those years ago I waffled between trying to convince her to go to therapy and calling DCFS. But DCFS would have been destructive (her daughter wasn't in physical danger, it would have been a preventative measure but that seemed too far.) and recommending therapy would've caused her to cut me off. She wanted me to save her, that much was clear, but wouldn't have accepted any of the ways I would have chosen to go about it.

So many people are this way. We look for a savior, someone we can rely on and use and use and use until we suck them dry. We are restless and needy, grasping at whatever we can reach. But it will never be enough.