It started when I lost my job. It was my dream job, and losing it at 17 crushed me. Due to losing my job, I started partying. Experimentation led to full-blown addiction, thanks to my bloodline.
I turned 18 and was pregnant and facing felony charges for an armed robbery. I faced the judge virtually some time later and was convicted during the COVID-19 pandemic. “10 months County Jail with three years of probation,” I heard as I held my newborn baby. I was never going to fix this mistake. All I could do was cry and apologize to a baby for having to leave them.
When that pandemic hit, this remand ended up being the longest wait of my life. I got to celebrate my son’s first birthday by throwing a party and got presents for Christmas. I was so grateful, but my mental health steadily deteriorated. I couldn’t drive my son without thinking I was going to get pulled over and taken to jail. Everything I did filled me with paranoia and anxiety even though I was soberly law abiding.
I turned myself in on November 15, 2021. I got to hold my son until the last second, remembering that everything I do is showing him who to be. I felt like I was dying, but I smiled and told him his mommy will be back soon as I turned and walked in to begin completing paperwork and the search process.
I stayed in isolation for the first two weeks in order to protect the rest of the jail from Covid, though I ended up getting that as a gift later too. Then we transitioned into the general population where I ended up taking on a compassionate shoulder and sisterly-type role.
I never thought about the way that people like me were ending up in jail. We are all one mistake away from ruining our lives, but once you do and you get labeled a criminal, you can’t escape it.
The chaplain was the one to ask me about my past and goals for the future. No one else seemed to care about the fact that everyone would be released one day. If someone isn’t working on realigning their core values, they aren’t rehabilitating anything. She helped me understand that my life was not over and that I needed to just be patient and take the time to focus on myself, my child and my sobriety. And that was the best advice I could’ve ever asked for.
It was my job to rehabilitate myself and those around me. I had worked every day that I possibly could and had become a trustee working in the higher class buildings, doing various things like cleaning, cooking, delivering supplies, trash runs, and just about anything else they needed. I got the Omicron variant and was isolated for a few weeks and then was able to get back to it. I wrote in journals, went to Alcoholics Anonymous, read books, met with a counselor and made a circle of people who were there to get better and started supporting each other to do it!
I was released on April 11, 2022, just weeks before my son‘s third birthday. It came as a surprise that morning. I woke up with depression and had decided to go back to sleep as everyone joked that the best way to get through your jail sentence was to sleep it away. I was awoken to the sweet, sweet sound of an officer yelling, “Inmate Corder, roll it up!” And I was gone!
That happiness lasted me less than 24 hours, however, because I got home and realized very quickly that I was now a felon and could not return to the job that I thought I was gonna return to. I was about to get promoted at Pizza Place before I went to jail, but now I don’t even qualify to be their dishwasher.
Rejection and denial were not things I had been used to before. I had so much potential and was headed in such a great direction. Now that was painful because getting rejected meant I had to tell my son that Mommy failed. Now I was having anxiety that I was going to have CPS intervene in my own family. I was nervous, irritable and mad at the world. So how am I supposed to parent if I can’t get a job?! We ended up losing our home and living in Travelodge. There were times I didn’t know what to do but cry.
No one could’ve told me that ages 18 through 24 would be the hardest years of my life. But what they should’ve done was equip me better with skills to deal with a variety of things, and help me develop and nurture a healthy community that can support me to thrive during my transition-aged years. Looking back at my own life, there were signs of my emotional distress from losing that job at 17, and I just wish someone had seen them for me. I would have been better prepared to handle the situation without turning to a life of drugs and crime.
