9-4-2012

Hey :), I'm sorry I don't write regularly, you know, I guess I should just make you part of my weekly letters. Every week a letter goes out to my mother, my daughter and my grandmother. I'll make it four letters. For some reason I connect things with numbers pretty well. Like going to the grocery store, if I count how many items I'd like to purchase I am much more likely to remember all of them. Compared to trying to remember the list as itself. So I commit to writing four letters a week.

My ADHD has been hard to deal with lately. Now that I understand my disorder, reflection, self examination and reasoning is possible. But knowing that I have a disorder doesn't make the problems go away. It is still very hard to complete a task without getting distracted. It is still hard to sit still without fidgeting or falling asleep. Odd, I know, sometimes I just don't get my mind at all. NOW, I really want to focus on preparing for my appeal and study some books about becoming a paralegal but it is almost impossible to stay on task. Even if I had a quiet place to concentrate it would be difficult for me. But I do not have a quiet place.

I live in a warehouse with showers, toilets, a TV, four telephones, thirty-five bunk beds and for some reason one single bed, totalling seventy-one beds that are for the most part occupied. It is very loud in here. I wish for quiet every day. I wish I had earlids to go with my eyelids. But the noise comes right through my skull anyway. There is no getting away from it. At our law library it is just as loud because it is also the regular library. Right now it is just becoming 9-5-12 :), it is seven minutes past midnight. The whole dorm is asleep but for a few women reading. It IS quiet right now. I try to work out some type of a nap schedule so that I can stay up late and keep my mind running WELL. That's hard to do. There's no way to have a regular sleep schedule and quiet time. But for just this minute it is quiet (except for the periodic slamming doors by the officers - which just happened :) ). I can write you and read and study for a little while. Then nap before I walk to breakfast at about 0600. I admit I want to go home. Even though I don't have a home, or a job, or any clothes or food. I want to leave here anyway.

If you don't know, my early release date is 4-3-2020. I have a long way to go. I know, I know I must be grateful that I HAVE a release date. And grateful for many things.

The average sentence for women here seems to be 1 yr - 2.5 yrs. I see a lot of women come and go. They all count the days till they return to their different forms of freedom. A woman sleeping above me is snoring right now. She will go home right after Thanksgiving this year. She tells me about it every day. I get tired to listening to her talk about freedom but I'm able to be polite and respectful. I've decided that being positive to other women here is pretty important.

I was at the law library today. I found cases I like to reinforce a ground in my appeal. Something that I've been wondering about is count times. Here at this facility in Florida we are counted eight times a day. While we sleep the officer walks through and counts us in our beds (therefore we must be on our bunk). One time at midnight, then again at three-thirty, five a.m., seven-thirty am, twelve p.m., four-thirty p.m., seven-thirty p.m., and finally a master count (we each hold up our nametag and call out our name and number) at ten p.m. Now, after the five am count clears at five-thirty we are allowed to shower before we walk to the chow hall for breakfast at six am. That takes about twenty minutes THEN we wait in the dorm (warehouse) to be counted at seven-thirty am. This count we must all be dressed, and everything must be put away that isn't uniform (no pictures out, books out, clothes out, cups - nothing). We sit on our beds and face the officers' station till two officers count us and then we wait on our beds until it is verified that we are all where we should be. We sit until about eight, this happens again at twelve, four, seven-thirty and ten. This totals a minimum of two and half hours of sitting on our beds doing nothing.

Writing this down and looking at it makes me feel like I am complaining about something I should not complain about. That is not my intent in writing this. I have considered the different reasons for this procedure. We are kept safe from assault on each other by counting us and seeing that we are each safe and secure on our bunks. We have not escaped, we have not passed out and been missed somewhere for an extended period of time. There are probably more reasons - for all these count times - that I am unaware of (I am pretty new to this system). I just wish I were allowed to read, or study, or write a letter to you while I sit on my bunk and get counted. I guess this isn't something I should put too much into. For instance IF I wanted to make some improvement in my conditions of incarceration, the noise level in this dorm and in the room my family comes to - to visit me - would be a much more important matter.

If you have any thoughts on my noise dilemma or the number of counts in Florida please let me know. I want to know about the number of counts in other states and learn more about this security measure in its entirety.

On the noise; from writing to groups like Prison Fellowship, Human Kindness Foundation and others, noise seems to be an acceptable consequence of being locked up. As the officers would say "if you don't like it, don't come to prison" :).

I think it is detrimental in ways we do not understand. But because we are prisoners it is not a priority. I contemplate that beyond the hearing loss there is damage to my mental capability and mental stability. The quote from Tolstoy runs through my mind often. "There are no conditions of life to which a man cannot get accustomed, especially if he sees them accepted by everyone around him."

Peace,

Heather Dison