[archived] arrest record

inmate: [redacted] year: 2014 age: 23

The night I was arrested, it was raining. The kind of rain that feels like an afterthought, a slow drizzle that doesn’t quite cleanse the streets, only making them slick and dangerous. I was strung out, the heroin still swimming through my veins like a dark, familiar comfort. My boyfriend’s house was a crumbling relic, a forgotten place on a forgotten street. I thought I was hidden. I thought I was safe.

The U.S. Marshals didn’t knock.

They waited, shadows behind the walls, eyes on the doors. I was too far gone to notice. When I finally stumbled outside, feeling the night air slap against my skin, they were there. I remember the cold steel of the handcuffs, the way they bit into my wrists, the echo of my dog’s bark from inside the house as they dragged me away. I had to give him to my father—my last connection to something pure and untainted.

Withdrawal was a horror, a descent into a pit with no bottom. My body revolted, as if every cell had been betrayed. The sweat, the shaking, the endless waves of nausea—it felt like I was dying, but I was only just beginning to live in a new kind of hell. And when they told me I was going to prison, the words were like a slap across the face. I had been floating in a haze for so long that reality felt alien, sharp, and cruel.

I remember the day I finally mustered enough courage to take a shower. My skin wasn’t used to feeling, and my brain wasn’t used to caring. Those first few moments under the county jail shower felt like I was standing under acid rain. Each drop connected with my skin, leaving behind a new sensation of discomfort and pain, as if the water was washing away not just the dirt but the layers of numbness I had built up over the years.

When I stepped out, putting on my blues felt like wrapping myself in punishment. The starch and stiffness of the material bit into me with every step, a constant reminder of where I was and who I had become. The world outside that shower was harsh, unforgiving—but at least I was starting to feel it.

Prison wasn’t the harshest part. No, the harshest part was the mirror they held up to my life, the way the fluorescent lights flickered on the things I had done, the people I had hurt. I adapted because there was no other choice. I learned the rhythm of the place, the unspoken rules, the currency of respect. But I was always an outsider, a ghost drifting through the motions, trying to make sense of a world I had lost touch with long before those gates closed.

I began to write again, to pour the poison out of my mind and onto paper. I learned to be alone without being lonely, to confront the darkness without letting it consume me.

When they finally let me out, I thought I was ready. The world outside the prison walls was still as sharp, still as unforgiving as I remembered, but I had convinced myself that I was different, that I had changed. I walked away from those gates with the weight of my past still whispering in my ear, but I was determined. I could shape what came next, couldn’t I?

For a while, I managed to stay clean. I kept my head down, avoided the old haunts and the old faces. But the ghosts of my addiction lingered, always just out of sight, always just within reach. It wasn’t long before the cravings started again, that familiar, insidious pull. I told myself it would just be once, just enough to take the edge off. But “just once” is a lie we tell ourselves when we’re already lost.

The pit inside me grew hungrier with every passing day, an insatiable void growing more desperate. It gnawed at me, this deep desire to escape from everything, even myself. The feeling of emptiness yet a head full of logic left me feeling clinical. I clung to the insanity and reveled in appearing normal. Deep down, I knew I was a fraud.

But that little glimmer of light, that stubborn sliver of hope, wouldn’t let me give in completely. It was a quiet, persistent reminder that maybe, just maybe, I could find my way back to the person I used to be, or at least, to someone who didn’t have to live in the darkness anymore. The darkness had other plans.

I relapsed. The heroin came rushing back into my veins like a dark tide, pulling me under. It didn’t take long for the authorities to find me again. This time, I didn’t fight. I knew where I was headed. The cell felt colder the second time around, the walls more suffocating. I was back where I had started, and the bitter irony of it all tasted like ash.

But something in me wouldn’t let go of that little glimmer of light, the fragile hope that one day I’d wake up and not need heroin to get through the day. It was a small, flickering thing, but it was there, reminding me that this wasn’t the life I had to choose. I remembered the girl I used to be—the one who dreamt of fairytales and princesses, who scraped her knees and laughed at silly things. Where had that love in my heart gone? When had I started finding comfort in the emptiness?