For the love of my husband

Well it's been a while since I've posted so I thought now would be a good time. For the last week or so I haven't really known where my husband has been on any given day. He has been transferred 3 times in the last 4 days. He is taking what they call "The Texas Tour" - bouncing around from prison to prison and the only ones that really know why are TDCJ. They don't tell my husband, or any other inmate for that matter, where they are going. They are simply told "roll out" and at 3:00am they are handcuffed and shackled and loaded up onto a bus headed to god knows where.

While he is moving around from unit to unit, he isn't allowed to make any phone calls so the one comfort I had in knowing that he could always call his best friend who would relay a message to me has been taken away. I cannot fully describe the stress, the desperation, the anxiety that I feel not knowing where my husband might be and why.

The image of my husband in prison whites shackled to another human being is almost too much to take. All I have right now are questions and the answers that I struggle to find will only come in 6-10 days when today's letters from my husband are delivered. You would think that after doing this for a year I'd be used to not knowing things and that I could just deal with whatever comes but I have to wonder if you ever get used to not knowing where your spouse is and how they are doing. I think that if you stop wondering and worrying you become less than you are.

I sometimes find the hardest part of all of this is going to work every day and pretending that everything is fine. I can't let it show just how distressed I really am. There are days when I am so overwhelmed with missing my husband that the mere thought of him brings tears to my eyes. I can't very well sit in my little cubby and cry so I get up and go to the ladies room and break down in a stall for a few minutes, pull myself together and get back to work. And then there times when I miss my husband so much that it takes every ounce of Irish strength I have to put one foot in front of the other and face another day without him.

Some may say, well this is the life you chose. You chose to love an inmate and so you get what you get. If you ask any prison wife if they want sympathy they will undoubtedly say "hell no" but do we want compassion and kindness and maybe a little understanding? "Hell yes". Yes, I chose this life. Yes, I chose to love my husband for better or for worse and for the love of my husband I will get through this. There is no one more perfect for me than him. We are connected. We are committed. We are "we" and I wouldn't have it any other way.

http://www.change.org/petitions/stop-discriminating-and-allow-international-calls-from-tdcj
http://prison.livesinfocus.org/2011/09/06/couple-struggles-to-stay-in-touch-across-border/