The Workhouse (Franklin County, Ohio)

I'll never forget my first trip to the workhouse to visit Dale, his girlfriend at the time came with me (that was a nightmare)! It was September 2009 and I was still in shock from the entire arrest, the place was/is dirty and you can only talk through glass on this filthy little phone.
I remember sitting there listening to him tell me what was going on and looking at how awful he looked (he was detoxing from heroin. The girlfriend was giving me the evil eye because Dale was talking to me more than her (she knew the story though, I didn't and our 4 year old son was there). I told him he could call the house and all hell broke loose, obviously she was worried of us talking to much, even though at the time getting back together was the LAST thing on my mind.
As the weeks past he started calling me everyday sometimes twice, we talked about everything from how sick he was to how he almost stabbed someone in the eye over a meat stick. No one else was taking his calls. (Was it going to stay like that? Who would
help him with money and food and clothes?) I made the decision to stand by him after he broke down on the phone and told me me was sorry for everything that had happened in our past. (after-all I had always loved him, although this wasn't how I had pictured us getting back together).
The girlfriend was having her own issues and word had gotten back to him that she was on the streets selling her ass for crack and pills, I again was shocked because I didn't know who she really was either. (Had Dale kept me in some kind of bubble? Who were these people that my son had spent weekends with?) So many questions ran through my mind but it became crystal clear very fast that if I didn't help him he would be doing these next four years all alone.
That's when my life changed, even though I was still in the middle of a break-up with my ex I decided to be there for Dale no matter what was about to happen. Then he got sentenced to Noble Correctional institute in Caldwell, Ohio a 5 hour drive roundtrip from my house. He better realize how much I love him. (I still say that to myself three years and two prisons later)......NEXT STOP NCI.

360 TILL DALE COMES HOME

I don’t know why I didn’t start this when he first went in three years ago, I have always loved to write but in the last several years it has gotton hard to get my thoughts out on paper. I guess I should start at the beginning which really makes me wish I had blogged all along but since I didn’t …..We will have to go back three years to the beginning of the story to really get an understanding of how I am now “A Prison Wifey”.  (although we are not legally married, saying girlfriend doesn’t really fit the situation).

So I guess I should start with the court date…..Have you ever felt like your heart literally stopped beating and the entire room was silent?  That’s how I felt that day in court, I’ll never forgot because I was there with his attorney and his girlfriend at the time and for a few seconds I honestly couldn’t hear or see anyone when the Judge started to read the verdict.

The hardest part was that I was snowballed by the entire event because I didn’t know everything that was going on.  I didn’t know about the heroin or the robberies.  The first time I noticed things didn’t quite seen right was at our sons fourth birthday party when Dale showed up weighing 140lbs and his eyes were sunken into his head.

So here I am in this court room a few weeks later listening to the charges and hearing them read this many years for this count and etc… It all seems to add up to a total of 8 years but the charges were all ran together to it ended up being 4 but like I said in my head I just heard the years going up and up and I kept thinking that’s the end, my 4 year old son just lost his father for his entire life.  Not to mention the attorney had talked like he was getting probation, I don’t know where that idea came from because this sure hasn’t been probation! So I can finally breath and the attorney comes over and says something because I still can’t really think and his girlfriend is on the floor crying and I honestly wanted to choke her right there in the court room because she was just as messed up with the drugs as he was and my son just lost his father so why is she freaking out. It was all really pathetic but I got myself together and her to calm down then we left.  Mostly you feel really numb after this and then as the days and years go on you get angry and sad all sorts of emotions.  Unless you have had someone taken out of your life this way its really hard to understand because its like their a missing person except you know where they are.  TO BE CONTINUED….NEXT STOP…THE WORK HOUSE (where I found out that his well being was about to basically all be on my shoulders)