I ended my last post with a quote;
“Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.”
~ Bryan Stevenson
When it happens to you, you do look at it differently. Certainly when it happens to someone close who you love. When what happens is done by someone you love, you still look at it differently. I think you discover who you truly are in that reality. Maybe even who you have been all along and then wonder, why wasn’t I vocal about this earlier. Not just because it’s there in front of you now, but maybe because it doesn’t actually do what it is supposed to do, justice. While not exactly, but kind of like what is said in the face of of the tragedy or sadness, why did “this” have to happen to bring us together, why did we wait? Then the question, does it really bring you together?
Regardless of what it was or is, there are layers. There are parts that not everyone knows about. Or may ever know about. There are parts that because of how we let others tell the story based on others stories, the story our story is rarely told in truth and often lost because it’s something no one wants to touch. Or because of the story, told as is potentially while true, again isn’t the whole story and creates a shadow. A shadow that without further analysis, is extreme.
This is the weekend our lives changed. Easter weekend. Easter used to mean something when I was a kid. I think? Now, it’s an annual reminder of an arrest. A shift in our fabric, in our comfort. A shift that still years later, has no real resolution. No real answers except the judgement of one man of another who decided that 360 months was the answer. No help, no therapy, no rehabilitation, 360 months.
Some will say it is just. Some, maybe me, think it extreme. I will fully admit that is based on what I know, who I know and not the whole story. The whole truth. Yet I still believe that it is extreme. Incarceration, more often that not doesn’t solve what the real issue or trouble is that lies within. It feels the easy way out, lazy. Quick answer, done, next.
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Why do we avoid conversation or the person with an indiscretion? Or those close to that person? Is it fear? Guilt? Thinking, am I like them? Guilt by association? Not knowing what to say? Believe me, I don’t know what to say either. The impact of silence and isolation pile on to an already enormous mountain of fear, question and guilt in itself. And the silence is … can’t find the words yet to describe.
It is an enormous loss.
The impact is enormous on everyone on all sides.
Three hundred and sixty.
Thirty years.
Thirty.