After my last post, I sat and brainstormed all the things I wish I would have known when I got out. All the things that I would need to learn, but no one could directly teach me. The list is long, really long, but I kept circling back to one thing that would have changed the entire trajectory of my life: Adult Interaction, more specifically, Dating.

Nobody can adequately prepare you for being handed your adulthood at 35.

I’ve often wondered, if could go back to the night before my release and tell myself anything, what would I say.

I went to prison at 17, when I was released at 35, every interaction I had with other adults, as an adult, was while incarcerated.

If you don’t know, let me tell you, adult interaction within the prison system is VERY different than in the free world. I was surrounded by hundreds of women steeped in their own incarceration traumas. Mothers separated from their children, women grappling with years of addiction and abuse, teenagers, like me, navigating the system for the first time.

There is nothing normal about any interaction inside a prison.

The administration and line staff pit the women against each other in their own macabre mental/emotional fight club. The staff prey on women’s emotional states and use objects and privileges as a form of extortion.

I liken women’s prison to a crab basket.

When you see a crab basket at a market, there is no lid, and that is because the crabs will pull each other down, keeping each other from escaping the basket to freedom. It’s the best analogy I have for my prison environment.

The administration and COs, instead of doing their job, rely on the women to “snitch” on each other. The women know who gets to slide and who doesn’t, who gets C.O. favors and extra privileges and how they got them, jealousy amongst the women runs high. In retrospect, it’s the only time in my life I have ever know a woman to be jealous of another woman’s rape. It’s sick and maddening, but this was my adult interaction, everyday for 17 1/2 years and that was just with women. I had no idea this was not how adult interaction works in the free world.

Men are a whole different story.

At 35, my experience with men was limited to the abusive, arrogant, egotistical men, employed by the DOC. I am not saying they are all like that, but the FEW that weren’t pretty much left the women alone. It takes a “special” kind of person to choose a career where their job is having complete control over the opposite sex.

Armed with all of these negative interaction experiences, I was not ready for the world and the world had no interest in me, but, four years ago, you couldn’t have told me that.

When I got out I hit the ground running at warp speed, within 72 hours I was working my first serving shift at a restaurant down the street from my parents. I got along with the other women I worked with, I avoided the men, they put me on edge. My boss was a sexist jerk, so dealing with him was old hat to me.

One day my coworkers were huddled around a phone staring at photos. They were on Tinder. I had no idea what Tinder was, I had never heard of it before, but there I was, 35, single, I couldn’t go to bars, I lived with my parents and I knew absolutely no one. I created a profile and all hell broke loose.

I had no idea how to interact with men. I was overly flirtatious; I thought I wasn’t anything special, so it was no big deal. I didn’t realize that Tinder doesn’t care and EVERYONE is special for their own reasons. Every time I swiped right, I matched; I started random conversations and would met with men anywhere.

For years, I was told that my body was property of the state, and that resonated with me, long-term. My body had no personal value to me, sex meant nothing to me, and it had always been a bartering chip and a method of survival. After a few dates, I realized that I held all the cards and that is A LOT of power to give a 35 year-old woman with a 17 year-old brain.

For awhile, I dated to get out of the house, to take back some sense of power while living in house where my parents were always watching me. They knew I needed help, but I wanted to do it on my own, and that attitude put me in danger.

The first time I was date raped, I was convinced it was my fault. I thought that because I didn’t know how to talk to men, because I was just “winging it,” that he misunderstood me. It was my fault, not his, I’m was stupid. I didn’t believe it was rape; I even went on a second date with the guy. I told him no, but he didn’t care and I didn’t fight back because I hadn’t yet learned that, now, in the free world, I could fight back.

When I think back on it now, I still get pissed at myself. I should have punched him, I should have reported it, but I was afraid I would go back to prison for police contact. I was afraid if I told; people would judge me and tell me I wasn’t ready to be on my own. They would have been right, but I wouldn’t have listened

It took me a year AFTER meeting my husband to realize, that man didn’t misunderstand me, he raped me.

I treated my body like a bouncy castle, I had no respect for myself, but I thought I was powerful and in control, when I really had no idea what I was doing. I repeatedly put myself in dangerous situations and degraded myself. When I look back, I am disappointed in my behavior and upset that I didn’t know better. Hindsight is a bitch.

Even how I met my husband was childish. Everyone thinks it’s just the “cutest story,” but really it was my 17 year-old brain putting me in another dangerous situation. He had sent me a direct message on Instagram. The message was simple, “I find you interesting and attractive, call me, (his number).” A normal, healthy woman would roll her eyes and hit delete. Not me, I messaged him back. I gave my number to a man with no photos of himself on his Instagram account, nothing to suggest he was a safe, rational individual. Hey, I was living with my best life, on a freight train, going so fast the wheels were falling off.

Bottom line, I lucked out. I got lucky that he isn’t a serial killer, a rapist, an abusive asshole. I got lucky. There are a lot of women for whom luck wasn’t on their side. I know dozens of women who were released after long sentences and immediately had babies they weren’t ready for, got into abusive relationships, or lost their brand new life to addiction, all in an effort to cope with an unrelenting world we had no clue how to control or navigate. It happens, because our teenage brains are not prepared to live adult lives, but prison doesn’t care about reentry and parole officers only care that your fees are paid and your UA is clean. Healthy adjustment is not a D.O.C issue.

You would never give your 17 year-old a wallet full of credit cards, a car, adult responsibilities, a Tinder account, a marriage, a house, an endless stream of debt and say, “Good Luck. Be sure to call your parole officer.” It’s like the movie BIG, but with prison; however, Josh Baskin couldn’t handle half the shit that I do. Okay, it’s nothing like BIG, but that’s the most layperson example I could think of right now.

Now, four years later, I have no idea who I am. Don’t get me wrong, I love the hubs, but I have never been alone long enough to figure out who I am and my marriage, along with many other aspects of my life, suffers for it. I married the first man that told me he loved me, who didn’t Google me prior to our first date and accepted me and my past, because I thought that was the “adult” thing to do, but I was wrong because in so many ways, I am still not an adult.

There are many things I would go back and tell myself. Maybe if I would have given myself time to learn who I am, I would have finished school, wrote that book everyone keeps bugging me about, or worked through my anxiety, instead of just living with it. The what ifs are endless, just like anybody else, but when you’re someone with a record, the possibilities behind those what if’s are few.

If only I could give advice to my 35 year-old self, today, right now, I would go back and say,

“Slow down, be alone for awhile, learn who you are, your body is yours again, cherish it.”

If only