What follows is a mind-dump, the result of days, hell, of months, trying to fight an uphill battle and feeling awfully alone and lonely while I'm doing it. Now, nearing an end of sorts, I am bashing against high stone walls with no idea where to turn or what to do, battering myself to pieces inside a maze with no egress built to confuse, hurt, and eventually force one to give up entirely and turn to dust.
I do not give up easily, despite evidence to the contrary...but I am reaching my breaking point and feel entirely alone in this regard: I care for and love deeply someone I think is better than the man he has shown the world, and I can count on one finger the people who see him as I do.
~~~~~
The law says they can hold him no more than 90 days without bond, indictment, or dropping charges. They held him 115 days before finally holding a hearing to set bond, as no indictment has been handed down and they are reluctant to drop the charges - every prisoner held on drug charges is money from the federal government, dontcha know?
He is disintegrating in jail.
Bond was set - $15,000, which is an enormous amount when we have no money, no savings, no property, nothing of any value to sell, pawn, use for collateral. It's the lowest bond they could set, though, and I'm grateful for that. They also lifted the restriction that said he couldn't come home, and I am grateful for that, too. If...when...I can get him out, he can see his daughter again, we can touch again, we can try to repair the damage done to our family by his actions, drinking, and anger and by the system that seems more interested in sucking us dry than doing any real and lasting good. Perhaps I am a little bitter about all of this.
The judge seems more compassionate than not. The prosecutor was kind and spoke nicely to me despite clearly wondering about my sanity.
He has work waiting for him, if the people offering it haven't changed their minds, if the people offering it were in earnest. I can only hope that they were not simply speaking empty words.
Now all I have to do is find $15,000 to give to the court to keep until his trial as a surety that he will BE at trial. When he appears in court, the money will be returned. I do no have that kind of money, let alone that kind of money to let sit in a figurative envelope for untold days, weeks, months, years, until trial releases is back to me. I could use property for the surety, if it is worth the amount or more, if I had property, with the same conditions as above. I could pay a bondsman to get him out, 20% of the bond for their fee and it is non-refundable, but even that is beyond my means right now. I wonder if I can mortgage a kidney...
He has burned bridges with many people, and so I find myself feeling as though there is no one I can turn to in dealing with this. It feels as though I am the only person in all the world that cares that he is in jail, wants him out, cries constantly at the futility of all the effort I've made to garner his release. It feels as if there are quite a few people who think I should simply end our relationship and let him rot in there. Feels? Yes...and it is true, because the words have been said by more than one person. Well meaning words, but no less painful, cutting to the quick, leaving me feeling more isolated, as if I must be silent about him and everything connected to this mess. No one wants to hear it. No one wants to know about my tears or our daughter's constant ache for her Papa. So many people have rushed to tell me they cannot help, they won't help, without my even asking...I am taking down the fundraiser I started for him because I get it, no one wants to see it, hear it, share it, and I am so very tired of begging. Pissing up a rope would likely get me more and better results.
Strangers have done more, offered more wisdom, more comfort, than the people who are connected to him by blood. His family owes me nothing, but I ache for HIM, knowing that HE knows all but two of them have not answered my phone calls, my texts, my messages on Facebook, his letters, are content to write him off and get on with their lives as if he did not exist, this embarrassment of a brother, father, son, uncle, cousin, man. So much easier to ignore him, to ignore us, to let us slide into the back corners of their minds and finally be forgotten, and I am too damned exhausted to try and keep them from doing it.
I don't blame my friends for wanting to be shed of this. Like I said, he's burned bridges, and they're MY friends, not his. They owe him nothing.
My family? He alienated Mum, and the rest of my family is too distant or honestly couldn't care less about me or my drama as long as it doesn't involve them. I am the family fuck-up, the negative example to be given to the next generations, "Don't do that or you'll end up like HER!" and "You don't want to wind up like she did, do you?". Anyway, they don't owe him, or me, anything either.
Here, in this Blue Nowhere, at least I can put the words down, shout into the maelstrom and know that anyone reading this far has chosen to do so. In the mundane world? I am tired of seeing, of feeling, the impatience for me to just shut up, just get over it, just move on already. Move on...as if I could shrug off our small history, our connection through our daughter, our love (flawed as we are, as it is, our love is no less powerful to us), ignore an integral part of my essential Self by abandoning him and walking away.
Oh, I suppose I should not be writing of this. I suppose it is awkward. I suppose it is unpleasant. I suppose it could look like begging or blaming. It isn't meant to be. It's meant to be a sort of release, for me, a way to take it out of my head and perhaps let it go.
Tomorrow or the next day I will write something nice to read and let this shit get buried.
Meanwhile, I won't give up, but maybe I can set these spiky feeling somewhere they will grow dull with time and free me from this quagmire of feeling useless and burdensome, unwanted and unwelcome, and let me get him out of there before he is lost to me entirely.
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