My day – The first thing is dealing with my losses and acknowledging my losses and accepting the fact – as I get up each morning at 5:30AM – I jump down from my top bunk, use the toilet, wash my hands and then my face as I’m looking in the mirror.  I ask my self “Who am I? How did I get here? Why? How could this have happened to me?”  I feel lost, forgotten about, and non-existent.  Then I brush my teeth, pull my hair back for I know it’s going to be another long day of my life in prison. 

I live behind locked metal doors with locked door flaps, shut off from the entire outside world.  So I get on my hands and knees and I pray for God to give me strength to make it through just one more day.  I say “Lord, walk with me” then I get up and get dressed.  While I’m waiting for the doors to be unlocked about 6:00AM, I go make a cup of Joe.  At 7:00 to 7:30 we go eat chow which is a task in itself.  They say “No Talking”.  If one inmate talks we have to walk around the yard and tower several times.  As I walk towards the tower the CO’s give us killing stares and yell at us, using intimidation and harassment.

The chow hall serves food that’s not meant to feed a human being and their main ingredient is water.  Add lots of water to everything which makes mush.  If it’s too watery add lots of flour! Yuck!  So many trays get dumped more than half full for the hogs.  The hogs make them more money.  What we don’t eat they make a killing off of.

Now, for the scope and depth of loss for prisoners – it is enormous.  Just take a minute and think about some of the losses you have had in life.  When you’re in prison you lose all your rights, your freedom of speech, your freedom of choice, the loss of loved ones, the loss of freedom to go about your life, the loss of where you go or what you want to do, when or what you have to eat – not what you want to eat.  You lose the right to decide who you can talk to, who you can see, who you can call, if you’re allowed to take a shower, use the toilet or even if you’re allowed to talk, walk, smile, wave or sing praises to God!  You can get docked for saying God Bless You!  You don’t get to choose what job you have.  Prison women are made to work as hard as a man! You are disrespected, lashed out at irrationally by CO’s.  On weekends they want to lock you outside all day long or some make you wait 15 minutes per door.  So in my situation I have 4 locked doors to go through to go outdoors, which takes one hour (60 minutes). Plus you are told what you can wear each day and how to wear your clothes, which are so uncomfortable and you are issued these hard old black work boots to work in that hurt your feet so bad, so everything we wear is recycled over and over for years.  So, nobody can say “I haven’t walked a thousand miles in someone else’s boots because we ALL do here in prison.

You don’t realize how much you take for granted until you’re in prison – that’s the long timers. The short timers act like it’s a college campus which is very aggravating for us long timers and lifers.  I sit and watch inmates who are doing a year and a day, or 3 months sitting and crying about their time.  I look at them like “Are you for real? You’re crying about that?”  I get mad and say “Oh grow up! I’m doing 25 years!”  Us long timers have to put up with a lot – dealing with short timers makes it harder on us.  Then you got your snitches who think “Oh, I’ll just buddy up with the CO’s and get brownie points” but what you really get is brown crap all over your nose, plus, urine and feces all over your bed, plus when you snitch you get beat by a group of inmates with locks in their socks or worse – your hair set on fire, etc., etc., etc. - what ever they decide to do to you for being a brown noser snitch!

It’s a fact – prison life is no joke!  You better live by “I see nothing – I know nothing – I heard nothing” or you better watch you back because you’re going down for sure and this place goes through a lot of CO’s.

Getting in touch with the profound loss that results from being in prison is hard in a culture that has little if any compassion towards prisoners.  There are a lot of inmates dealing with anger, pain, suffering – dealing with the loss of family and friends that no longer keep in touch or have passed away or just don’t give a damn about you.  If you grew up in a dysfunctional family and felt unsafe, because you were abused by them all your life you already have tremendous losses in your life:
The loss of a happy childhood
The loss of innocence from abuse
The loss of good choices
The loss of being able to accomplish goals in life
The loss of trust for anybody
The loss of a clear thinking, stable mind

There are so many reasons women are in prison – abuse from family, abuse from spouses which led to drugs, drinking, etc.  You feel “what do I have left?” Then finally you just don’t care any more!

I grew up without real love.  I grew up with mental, verbal, sexual and physical abuse that was so awful I thought I’d never be alive to reach adulthood.  I grew up with such rejection – my mother never wanted me, but yet she had 6 more children and the abuse continued for years for us older children.  We put ourselves out there to protect the younger children because we didn’t want them to have to go through what we did.  We were abused by my mother, her brother, her sister, my grandmother, etc.  It just continued all through the generations from grandma on down the line on both sides of our family.  Our family is very psychotic.

I do thank God for the 7 years I’ve already done in prison.  It’s taught me a lot about myself.  I’m learning to grow and find out who Celeste really is and I like what I’m seeing now.  I’m beautiful, I’m sweet, I’m compassionate, I’m able to learn, grow up and to love others in a good way.  I am caring and I am learning to make better choices for myself.

I work in the horticulture program.  We grow Gaillardia Pulchellas – it’s a wildflower program.  I find solitude working on the garden.  I watch the butterflies, the birds and I say “thank you father God almighty!  I love you God!  Thank you for keeping me in the palm of your hand.”  I know God will also see me through this tribulation.  We are not all bad – we just made bad choices and I hope one day they will give us long timers another chance at life.

Here I sit for 25 years for a murder I did not commit, and that’s the hard part, dealing with so many questions – why?  I hop this will get me the representation I need to reopen my case, plus I want the world to know – prison is not easy at all.  I’m a fallen angel by situations out of my control who was falsely accused.  I am innocent and I hope I can help otheres from having to go through what I’m going through