Confessions of a Prisoner's Wife

1

WE THE JURY FIND THE DEFENDANT GUILTY

We, the Jury, find the defendant Gary Austin Worrell guilty of child abuse in the lesser offense, negligence, on or about the date of August 03, 2017. We, the Jury, find the defendant Gary Austin Worrell guilty of child abuse on or about the date of November 12, 2017. My husband was wrongly convicted of child abuse against our son on July 29, 2019, and sentenced to twelve years in prison for those crimes he did not commit. Whether or not your loved one has been wrongly convicted or has been convicted from a mistake that they made, it does not make a difference in the trauma you experience when you hear the guilty verdict. The words sink in and settle into your soul, giving you a feeling that no other phrase can provide you. When the court convicts someone, they not only sentence that person to prison, but they condemn their closest loved ones as well.

There I sat, surrounded by friends and family in the front row of the courtroom, facing the back of my husband, who had just been convicted. Every ounce of my soul was screaming and crying at the pain I felt from the words that the judge announced, but I remained silent. My body shook with fear of the future as I grasped my belly that carried our second child. I felt hands from around me gripping my shoulder in support, but I could not feel the comfort at all. I was numb.

I watched the prosecutor smile in joy at the conviction that he had just won. I witnessed the detective who coerced a false confession from my husband chuckle when he looked at all of our defeated faces. I watched as the bailiff forced my husband from his chair as they handcuffed him and escorted him to an officer. I then watched the officer shove my husband against the wall to search him as if he was putting on a show for all of his loved ones to watch. My world was destroyed at that moment, and they were all happy to set the remains on fire just to make sure it was all burned.

As if the show they put on wasn't enough, the officer came and handed me his wedding ring and wallet. I slipped his ring on my thumb as a single tear landed on and rolled down from the ring. Defeated, I slid his wallet into my purse, where it has since remained. I looked up at him with tear-filled eyes as he mouthed, I love you. I mouthed it back, hoping that he would know that this verdict did not change the way I felt for him. Even with the twelve long years that remained ahead of us if his appeals failed, I knew at that moment that it did not and would not change my love for him. No matter how hard the distance and time would be, I would remain strong and fight for him because he was worth it.

I had no idea of the upcoming obstacles and pain that I would come to know as a prison wife, but even after the shockwaves started to hit, my thoughts from that day still remained true. Because when you truly love someone, you would do anything for that person. You would do anything to make them feel safe, even if it meant putting yourself in harm's way.

Just as civilians will never know what it is like to experience being a prisoner, they will never know what it is like to be a prisoner's wife. Although we are not locked up and isolated in cages as they are, we are held captive by another vicious and cruel captor that is just as hard to escape from.

The mental turmoil that your mind goes through daily with your loved one gone is a prison in itself. You can be surrounded by friends, family, or even your own children, and yet somehow, the pain is so overwhelming in your mind that you cannot achieve the same happiness as you did before. A moment that would usually fill your heart with joy does not have the same effect on you. You want so desperately to feel that happiness again, but something stops you every time.

You find yourself sobbing in a locked bathroom door for the allotted four minutes you have set aside to pull yourself together while you hear your family in the next room laughing and enjoying their time with each other. You look into the mirror while gripping the counter, trying to see if your family will be able to tell you've been crying. The four minutes pass, so you splash some water on your face, wipe your tears, and prepare a fake smile to put on when you go out the door.

There are moments in your life where you can be surrounded by people you love, yet you feel like the only person in the room. Everyone else fades out, and you are left there alone and trapped within the razor-wire fence, your mindsets up around you. You can't penetrate the wall to escape, and you're too weak to even attempt to climb them.

Despite having your freedom, unlike your partner, you constantly feel like it was taken from you. You are surrounded by emotions that affect your quality of life in every aspect of it. You can no longer fully participate in a conversation because your mind often wanders when someone else is speaking. Words affect you differently than they usually would. An utterly innocent comment from a family member turns into a threat just because your mind has been wired differently from the trauma.

Suddenly every part of your system becomes overwhelmed with damage that often insights moments of anger, fear, and frustration. But within that damage, tucked away, is still the person you were before, that tries to hold back those feelings to protect the ones you love from your reactions.

This constant battle that is fought in your mind is tiring. It takes a toll on your mental health. Your strength diminishes a little bit more each day until you feel like you have nothing left to offer. But somehow, each day, you wake up and fight the battle again. Somehow, each day you have just enough fuel to keep going. That fuel is the light at the end of the tunnel that always remains. That fuel is your loved one's anticipated return.

This is the life of a prison wife. You find yourself bound with this overwhelming feeling of depression because you would rather get scorched walking through the fire with your person than to let them walk through the fire alone. This is the life you choose to live because you know that living without your person would lead to even more pain than the separation brings. In this choice, you find yourself trapped in the same reality as your loved one, depressed and feeling alone.

However, within the tragedy of it all, there are moments of clarity. In these moments, you realize this time in your life is not all bad. You know that with the desolation that happened in your life, there is now an opportunity to rebuild. The rebuilding process is not easy, and it is not for the faint of heart. This process will take up an amount of energy and strength that you are not even sure that you have. But when you keep pushing through, and you finally start to see the progress you have created, it will motivate you to go on, and more importantly, it will give you something to look forward to.

During this rebuilding process, you will have a better insight into what you want to build your foundation with. You have the knowledge to discern what is essential to include in your life and what needs to go. Because when you are faced with rebuilding from the ashes, you can recognize what you lost. You can mourn and regret the times where you did not appreciate it before it was gone. From this loss, you realize what you truly valued in your life and build from there.

This is the life of a prison wife. You rise from the destruction and rebuild what you can to repair your family's loss. You endure the pain and brush off the urge to give up, and you rebuild. You fix what is broken and put the pieces of your life back together one day at a time. You become the backbone of your family even when you feel your own strength is depleting. You become the contractor to clean up the damage and make way for the new.

2

SURVIVOR’S GUILT

Do you know when something becomes second nature to you? You do it so often that you almost forget that you are doing it. When you have driven so long that it becomes a reflex, and halfway through your journey home, you don't even remember how you got to where you were. That is how the pain was for me. It had become second nature. It had become something that I went through each day, and at the end of it, I did not know how I survived through it.

Most of the time, when this sort of thing happens, you continue on with your day, and you don't go back to evaluate precisely what happened throughout your journey home. But this was not something I could shrug off. I needed help, and I had to seek it somewhere because living through pain should never get to the point where dealing with it becomes second nature.

I had been so used to relying on my husband in every pain-filled moment. Even if I had pain, it was okay because my person was there to help me get through it. I wasn't sure how to cope with pain myself, so I just learned how to get my body acclimated to it until it became second nature to live with it.

That is when I knew I needed help. I did not know what I would walk into seeing a therapist since I knew there was a lot of trauma to consider and piece together to figure out where my problems arose from and how to cope with the pain. However, I did not know just how much work was involved in the healing process once the pieces were