My experience leading to prison
Discussion
I’ve learnt sometimes writing things down can be cathartic and helpful and in the interest of learning and growing, this is a brief overview of my path to prison. I only have 7 days before being sentenced and each day is passing by in a blink of an eye. The wonder of freedom, walking out the door, seeing the ocean, the comfort of your own bed are soon to be gone.
If anyone has any questions, I’ll be happy to answer without doxxing myself.
5 years have passed and the end of the beginning is finally here. 5 years ago from the outside it seemed I had a idyllic life, a beautiful wife, 2 amazing children and a wonderful family home. However, from my perspective, I was imploding and killing myself. I was hiding a secret I knew would devastate my family and those I had involved. I look back and I genuinely wonder how I was able to function on a day to day basis and looking at pictures shows I probably wasn’t hiding it as well as I thought I was. My eyes were the giveaway and my weight. I eat when I’m stressed and I’d put on over 13kg in a year.
Whilst I knew I had a massive problem, I always thought I could fix it, should fix it. I never asked for help and that is my one huge regret. Too proud? Too scared of being a failure? Letting people down? A long list of excuses really. By the end I knew my only way out was to end my life and let everyone be better off with me gone. A particular set of circumstances happened that eventful day meant I was found in time and the very long journey began. A particular dark memory was being in the mental health ward and seeing people smashing their heads against the dispensary for their medication, it was such a raw experience and seemed to hammer home the extent to what can happen.
By that point I really thought I’d hit rock bottom but that was still to come a year later when I left the family home after destroying my wife’s trust for the final time. From there, I spent 6 months in an absolute tornado of despair and self hate and I was edging closer to seeking a way out again. A chance browsing of jobs in North Queensland on a sunny winter Tuesday changed everything for me. 2 days later I was boarding a train for an 18 hr journey to Ayr to begin work as a farm hand on a pumpkin farm.
I arrived at 7am on a Thursday and the boss immediately put me to work and by 2pm I was absolutely broken, my back was aching like never before and I was exhausted. That first night in my room, I cried. I thought I’d made a huge mistake leaving the kids to come and live in a shed with no windows and no air conditioning. However, over a period of weeks, I began to adjust to farm life and throughly enjoyed it. The manual labour, being out in the sun, the extremely simple life did me a world of good. I had a very set routine and began to regain some sort of normality.
I knew I wanted to go back after the season had finished to be closer to the children and by this point I still hadn’t heard from the police. I had this idea that my ex and I could remain friends and be a cohesive unit for the children but what has transpired over the last 2.5 years couldn’t be anything further from that. I am all but a stranger to the children now, I’m lucky if I get a response to my messages and when I do, they’re one word replies.
I have continued to make questionable decisions in some fantasy hope of fixing my situation, yet the reality is, I have often made things worse. My self loathing, self hate seems never ending. I day dream about ending things and escaping.
In 7 days time, I will enter court and be sentenced to a custodial term. How long I don’t know, I am expecting anywhere from 4-8 years with the likelihood of serving half. I will miss my daughter finishing high school, I will miss my son turning a teenager, I will miss their lives a huge amount.
Will prison rehabilitate me? I already know I’ll never put myself in this position again, the pain is far too much. The pain of losing my family, the guilt of failing my parents. I do hope to continue my journey of fitness and to get into the best shape of my life and I’m determined to continue to understand the emotions and decisions I made to get here, for ultimately I want to help people avoid the path I’ve taken.
I’m going to keep a diary over the next few years and when I’m released, I’ll come back and update this post.
If anyone has any questions, I’ll be happy to answer without doxxing myself.
5 years have passed and the end of the beginning is finally here. 5 years ago from the outside it seemed I had a idyllic life, a beautiful wife, 2 amazing children and a wonderful family home. However, from my perspective, I was imploding and killing myself. I was hiding a secret I knew would devastate my family and those I had involved. I look back and I genuinely wonder how I was able to function on a day to day basis and looking at pictures shows I probably wasn’t hiding it as well as I thought I was. My eyes were the giveaway and my weight. I eat when I’m stressed and I’d put on over 13kg in a year.
Whilst I knew I had a massive problem, I always thought I could fix it, should fix it. I never asked for help and that is my one huge regret. Too proud? Too scared of being a failure? Letting people down? A long list of excuses really. By the end I knew my only way out was to end my life and let everyone be better off with me gone. A particular set of circumstances happened that eventful day meant I was found in time and the very long journey began. A particular dark memory was being in the mental health ward and seeing people smashing their heads against the dispensary for their medication, it was such a raw experience and seemed to hammer home the extent to what can happen.
By that point I really thought I’d hit rock bottom but that was still to come a year later when I left the family home after destroying my wife’s trust for the final time. From there, I spent 6 months in an absolute tornado of despair and self hate and I was edging closer to seeking a way out again. A chance browsing of jobs in North Queensland on a sunny winter Tuesday changed everything for me. 2 days later I was boarding a train for an 18 hr journey to Ayr to begin work as a farm hand on a pumpkin farm.
I arrived at 7am on a Thursday and the boss immediately put me to work and by 2pm I was absolutely broken, my back was aching like never before and I was exhausted. That first night in my room, I cried. I thought I’d made a huge mistake leaving the kids to come and live in a shed with no windows and no air conditioning. However, over a period of weeks, I began to adjust to farm life and throughly enjoyed it. The manual labour, being out in the sun, the extremely simple life did me a world of good. I had a very set routine and began to regain some sort of normality.
I knew I wanted to go back after the season had finished to be closer to the children and by this point I still hadn’t heard from the police. I had this idea that my ex and I could remain friends and be a cohesive unit for the children but what has transpired over the last 2.5 years couldn’t be anything further from that. I am all but a stranger to the children now, I’m lucky if I get a response to my messages and when I do, they’re one word replies.
I have continued to make questionable decisions in some fantasy hope of fixing my situation, yet the reality is, I have often made things worse. My self loathing, self hate seems never ending. I day dream about ending things and escaping.
In 7 days time, I will enter court and be sentenced to a custodial term. How long I don’t know, I am expecting anywhere from 4-8 years with the likelihood of serving half. I will miss my daughter finishing high school, I will miss my son turning a teenager, I will miss their lives a huge amount.
Will prison rehabilitate me? I already know I’ll never put myself in this position again, the pain is far too much. The pain of losing my family, the guilt of failing my parents. I do hope to continue my journey of fitness and to get into the best shape of my life and I’m determined to continue to understand the emotions and decisions I made to get here, for ultimately I want to help people avoid the path I’ve taken.
I’m going to keep a diary over the next few years and when I’m released, I’ll come back and update this post.
From someone who works in the prison system, I hope you end up in a good establishment (hopefully public sector not private) with some good staff who will help you through your time inside. Just do yourself a favour and stay away from trouble: No drugs, and it's better to take a slap from someone than get bullied into holding their illicit items for them. Work with the staff, not against them, and you'll be okay.
Ekona said:
From someone who works in the prison system, I hope you end up in a good establishment (hopefully public sector not private) with some good staff who will help you through your time inside. Just do yourself a favour and stay away from trouble: No drugs, and it's better to take a slap from someone than get bullied into holding their illicit items for them. Work with the staff, not against them, and you'll be okay.
Appreciate this. I’ll definitely be keeping my head down and thankfully never had a problem with drugs or smoking and don’t intend or starting inside. In Australia, I’m pretty sure all prisons are publicly run, although I could be wrong. After a period in the main prison, I’ll be categorised as low risk and sent to what we call a prison farm, usually quite some way from civilisation but with a lot less restrictions.
OP's earlier thread here - https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...
Hopefully the OP can find the help he needs. All the best.
Hopefully the OP can find the help he needs. All the best.
Hope you can get though your sentence. As Ekona said, today @ 8.35 AVOID trouble.
Many years ago a PH poster, 10PS, really staggered all of us on the site - I think his experiences opened a few eyes in PH world.
There had been a case of imprisonment for driving offences and all the PH 'experts' came back with how easy prison life is..... 10PS posted his experiences and it made a few of us think about just how badly things can go wrong.
https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...
Follow 10PS's from page 3, 20 September 2007
You can read Dan's Prison Diary here https://dansprisondiary.blogspot.com/
Many years ago a PH poster, 10PS, really staggered all of us on the site - I think his experiences opened a few eyes in PH world.
There had been a case of imprisonment for driving offences and all the PH 'experts' came back with how easy prison life is..... 10PS posted his experiences and it made a few of us think about just how badly things can go wrong.
https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...
Follow 10PS's from page 3, 20 September 2007
You can read Dan's Prison Diary here https://dansprisondiary.blogspot.com/
Just keep busy, get off the wing as soon as possible, get a kitchen job or a decent workshop. Hopefully your new residence will have a woodshop, hit the gym and apply for open university.
The big thing is getting a decent padmate, get social asap, work out who's not a complete dick and move in together, nothing worse than being stuck with some
who needs the TV on until midnight and beyond or worse a spicehead.
it's easy to avoid trouble if you're sensible. NEVER tell the screws anything about anyones business, if you get a rep as a screwboy you're fked.
The big thing is getting a decent padmate, get social asap, work out who's not a complete dick and move in together, nothing worse than being stuck with some
who needs the TV on until midnight and beyond or worse a spicehead.it's easy to avoid trouble if you're sensible. NEVER tell the screws anything about anyones business, if you get a rep as a screwboy you're f
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