A story by anonymous from 2024
After my father was incarcerated a story was written about me and my mom for the Bangor Daily News. “Survivors of Domestic Abuse” was part of the headline and that story was very different from the reality of my story. My father struggled with addiction. He had been doing drugs since he was twelve. He probably did a lot of things I was never aware of, but he was a good person. He was very high functioning and we never worried about money. We always had food on the table. He always showed up for work and took us to church every Sunday. He was very active in our church community.
My dad worked for a funeral home. His job was to drive around the state and collect the bodies of those who had just passed and deliver them to the mortician. He would work seventy-two hour long shifts and was responsible for the bodies of anyone who died during that time. It took an emotional toll on him. He had to work with people at their most vulnerable time, collecting the body of their loved one and absorbing that emotion.
I was 21 when my father was incarcerated. I don’t fully remember what happened. There was a situation in our home and things escalated. It was the first time my mom felt she needed to call for help. She dialed 911 and my father ripped the phone out of the wall. I could see a shift, almost like there was another person inside him. I looked at him and said, “Dad, you need to leave.” He lifted his shirt and showed he had a gun on him. Because of that he was charged with domestic terrorizing. He can’t really remember what happened that night and I’ve chosen not to tell him too many details because I know how much it would hurt him to know. He was sentenced to six months at Two Bridges.
He wasn’t allowed to come back to the house and we were to have no contact with him pretrial and much of the time he was incarcerated. The judge wanted it to be longer, but I went before the judge and told him how much I love my dad. I asked him to please not do this, to please let me see my dad and eventually I was allowed to visit him in jail.
I wish more people knew how heartbreaking it is to see a loved one in that situation. One thing that stands out in my memory is being on the other side of the glass and pressing our hands up. That separation made it feel like there were worlds between us. My father was only incarcerated for six months, I can’t imagine the emotional toll of somebody whose loved one is incarcerated for a vast amount of time. People who haven’t been in that situation may think it’s easy to forget to visit, but it’s so easy for a person incarcerated to lose connection to the outside world. That shouldn’t be overlooked. There was a point where I was able to sit across from him in the visitor room. He touched me and when I saw the guards' response I grew fearful. He knew he wasn’t supposed to touch me, but my dad had always hugged me goodnight every night. Being there and not being able to touch him was heartbreaking. I knew he was a good person but he was being treated like an animal. The dehumanization scared me.
What’s really scary is to see someone twenty years incarcerated just getting dumped on the street with the expectation they’re going to reintegrate.
Prior to my father becoming incarcerated, my friend shot another person in our friend group when he was nineteen. He was incarcerated for ten years. I think about how much changed during that time. His girlfriend got married, technology advanced, people moved away and went to college. One day I ran into him at Walmart after his release. I was doing my own thing, turned a corner and there he was. I knew the day would come, but I expected some kind of warning. When I saw him it was heartbreaking. I had done so much internal work as to what happened and all I felt for him was sorry. People would ask me, if I could ask him one question, what would it be? It would be, “how are you doing?” The “why” doesn’t matter anymore. He lost the entirety of his twenties and then got dumped back out into a world he didn’t know anymore. He lost everything. He didn’t have any family or friends. He was somebody who already showed signs of antisocial personality disorder. You can’t tell me he’s doing any better because of the time he spent in prison.
We all had a feeling our friend, the shooter, needed help and that something wasn’t right. But who do you talk to? It felt beyond the scope of a guidance counselor but you can’t go to the police without some kind of evidence. Unfortunately, the evidence came in the form of him shooting our friend. Our friend was killed two weeks before he was supposed to leave for boot camp.
I was eighteen when my friend was shot. I looked for answers. I wanted answers. I took an EMS course wondering if my friend could have been saved. I went to college to study Criminal Justice and Psychology. I got into Restorative Justice because I liked the idea of being able to sit in a room with the person who caused you harm and hash it out.
I don’t believe in coincidences. When I started studying criminal justice, I opened my Intro to Criminal Justice textbook and there was a story about Waldo County under the chapter about recklessness and I realized it was the story of my friends. Seeing a story from my own life in the textbook made me feel like I was supposed to be there in that class. I learned a lot about myself, my dad and why people turn out the way they do. I think one of the most important takeaways of my story is the recognition that things aren’t always the way they are framed in the media. When I read articles related to both my dad and my friend, knowing the people and events firsthand, they were represented as being very different from what I knew to be true.
I want to mention the value in showing up for the people in your community. Showing up and speaking out can make a difference. One thing I never realized is that when something goes to court it becomes the person who committed the crime versus the state and takes away the identity of the victim. I think that’s wrong. I also think it’s important to acknowledge the perpetrators in these situations are often victims themselves, and that often goes unacknowledged.
We didn’t have any support while we were processing these events. It was a very lonely experience, which is why I’m an advocate of Restorative Justice. Restorative Justice pulls communities together. So many people are stuck going through these things alone. It’s very isolating and there's a lot of shame that arises in seemingly small, everyday moments. For example, the person who plowed our driveway would no longer plow for us after he found out about my dad. The church community treated us differently and we suddenly felt like outsiders. When I lost my friend, it was the most isolating experience of my life. All of my friends went their separate ways and we never spoke again. If there were any services available for help or support I was never made aware of them. Once it hits the court system the survivors don’t even matter anymore. A lot of people never get the help that they need. If someone had reached out to me, my story would have been a lot different. I suffered for years with somatic symptoms related to the grief. I would go to the ER and they would give me pills to manage my feelings of overwhelm. I would joke they were my “impending doom pills” but never once was I referred for therapy.
Because of my experience being the loved one of somebody incarcerated, I see this world through a different lens. Before, it had all been so foreign to me because it didn't involve me. When these issues become personal it really changes everything. I want to remind people to see their community, the good and the bad. The people that are overlooked are the ones who need to be seen the most. The best way to change the issues with our criminal justice system is to involve the community and change the way we see each other. People think there’s a huge margin between offenders and the rest of the community but there’s not. The only thing that separates us from them is trauma and life experiences.
