Fighting tooth and nail
Nobody else will understand except y'all.
I've been out of prison for two years, one month and eleven days.
I feel like I have been fighting uphill, in the mud, in the dark. I fought to get out of prison early, fought to get out of the halfway house, fought to get off of the ankle monitor. Every single one of those steps was hard, harder than it should be. It feels like the system is set up to ensnare you and put you back in a cage.
I fought to be able to afford my own place and not have to live with my mother. She's an absolute saint btw, that's not why I moved out, I moved out because I'm a mom too and a grown adult and shouldn't be living in my mom's house.
I've got my own place and I'm trying to build a life for my kids and myself. I work full time. My first job when I got out was telemarketing, it was awful work. I fought to get a better job, then got promoted then left that job snd got an even better job. I'm still barely making it as a single mom with three kids.
My car died on me last fall and I didn't have the funds to replace it. I still don't. I rideshare with strangers I met on Facebook to my corporate job an hour each way. At night I come home and feed the kids, then I do homework. I'm in college, one semester away from finishing my associates degree in business. I'll be done this summer.
Here's the thing: I still feel like a failure, like a loser. Everything is so fucking hard. Oh I'm going to make it, I don't have a choice. I'll get my bachelor's, work my ass off, buy us a house, send my kids to college all of it.
I just need another human being to know that it is taking absolutely everything that I have in me to dig out of the hole that prison left in my life. I take full responsibility. This is not a sob story. It's just me baring my soul because I can't do it anywhere else. Thanks for reading 🙏