i've been had!

For some reason, this week is just going by really slowly for me. I can’t believe it’s only Tuesday! Maybe I just didn’t get enough sleep over the weekend, but I feel exhausted. I suppose part of it could have to do with the fact that I’m doing pastoral care for eight hours of the day…

Despite being tired, today was a good day. I met with several women one-on-one, including two weekly scheduled meetings. It’s really nice getting to know the weekly women better, and I can tell I’m already forming a good strong relationship with each of them. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to meet either of the women that I will be doing re-entry work with, but it’s on my list of things to do this week, so I hope to get to that in the next couple of days.

Today I felt I got taken advantage of by one of the women I met. She hadn’t heard from her daughter in a long time and was hoping she could get a phone call from me. I’m still learning when to say yes and when to say no, and it was hard to know what to do. She’d been asking me for about a week, and she’s been really good about talking to me about how she’s doing and asking me to pray for her, so I decided to let her make the call. Before I dialed the number and handed her the phone, I let her know the two rules our supervisor has regarding phone calls: don’t ask for or talk about money, and get off the phone when I ask her to. She agreed and had what sounded like a good conversation with her daughter. Since I had to be in the room with her, I couldn’t help but here her side of the conversation. Toward the end, she said something along the lines of, “Well, I’ll give you a call on Friday and check in with you again. I just need to find the chaplain, so it will probably be Friday morning.”

Excuse me?? I didn’t remember saying I’d let her make another phone call! To be honest, I don’t think I was supposed to give her the phone call in the first place; there was no emergency that she knew of. She’s been here a while, and she knows phone calls granted by the chaplains are few and far between, so for her to just confidently tell her daughter that she’s call again later in the week made me kind of mad. Who knows, she probably didn’t mean anything by it, but here I felt like I had done such a nice thing for her by giving her the phone call, and she was kind of using me and assuming I’d go on and give her another.

Once she hung up the phone, I let her know that I wasn’t really supposed to give her another phone call, at least not for a while, and she seemed like she understood, so that was good. I hope that she will continue to come talk to me because I think she might have a lot to say, and she is very nice and friendly.

After lunch, I went to DA to check on the woman who has been there for nearly 60 days – I think I mentioned her in my last post. When I saw her papers in the holder outside her door, meaning she was still there, I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I guessed I would find her in a similar state as yesterday. On the contrary, she was really happy. She told me she had found out for sure that she would be leaving today or tomorrow and getting moved into a general population building. She was packing up her few belongings in preparation for the move. I’m really happy she’ll finally be getting out, and I really do hope it happens, though it will make my visits to DA a little less fun. Wherever she gets moved, though, I’ll make sure to continue visiting her. She really is a character, and I think I’d miss talking to her.

On my way out the gate when the day was done, the security officer there told me my skirt was a bit too short. He hadn’t said anything on the way in, so I wasn’t expecting it. I personally didn’t think it was all that short, and I’ve seen plenty of women wearing skirts of similar length. Also, MANY women are wearing the forbidden capris, and I’d try wearing them too, but I know I’d be the one to get yelled at. I wanted to ask the officer if he, being a fair man, had also talked to the deputy warden about breaking the dress code, but instead I just held my tongue, said I was sorry, I got the heck out of there. To be fair, the officer was just doing his job, and he’s always one of the friendlier officers that work security at the gate, but still… the inconsistencies at this prison just get to me! I can’t even imagine what it’s like for the women who live here all the time.