Tag: prison love

Q+S: The Second Year

August 14th marked our second trip around the sun together, and we wanted to take some time and think about all we’ve been through, and how the love still grows. We each took a step back separately and reflected on it. Pictured, is the beautiful drawing in the card that Q made for S.

Q:

It has been 730 days since S and I decided that we would act on our feelings and move out on the rest of our lives together. Ever since then we have experienced joys as well as sorrows, laughter as well as tears, but overall, we’ve experienced the depth of our love and its inability to fade.

We were only 7 months into our newly re-established relationship before the pandemic hit. Before then, she came to visit me 2-3 times a month before they stopped visitations well over a year ago. So, a majority of our time as a couple has been under the strain of no contact… And what a strain it has been. But it is evident that it cannot defeat us.

It is becoming more clear that there is no force in this world that can defeat us. Over 10 years, and the great love we possessed as teenagers has only become stronger through its perseverance. Time has not been able to stifle us and every once in a while our love seems to rebirth itself. We re-live feelings of the first day we locked eyes in the middle of a busy sidewalk, and our lives were recreated.

There has been 80 miles in between us every night for the past 2 years. But without a doubt, our prayers reach one another and fill our spirits and souls with presence. It makes the space in between us irrelevant at times.

The physical distance has actually prompted us to get creative and more in depth with our communication. Sure, trying to translate much of how we feel through word alone can be choppy at times. We even experienced our first impromptu ‘hang up’ during an argument on the day of our second anniversary. But I cannot deny that we are getting better and stronger with each obstacle we overcome. Don’t get me wrong, it’s hard. Really hard.

For the weekend of our anniversary, S traveled to attend my mother’s wedding. I could not foresee just how much it would affect me. Maybe because I was too worried about how much it would effect her, but the pain of knowing she was there without me, oddly enough drove me to anger. An anger that became irritation, that become stress and resulted in an argument that ended up with her hanging up on me.

Regardless of every difficulty we’ve faced, the truth is undeniable. S and I share a love that is unlike anything I’ve encountered before. After 2 years of fighting for our love everyday, I only look forward to living loving and growing throughout this life with her by my side. For better or worse, our love thrives. Here’s to two years and the rest of forever.

– Q

S:

While I couldn’t imagine myself here in April 2018, here we are. I’ve discovered the greatest love I’ve ever known in a man, and I can’t touch him, smell him, see him or talk to him without being monitored.

It hasn’t been easy at all. Through the pandemic and its daily struggles, my anxiety has gotten the best of me this summer. I’ve been trying to take it easy and take care of myself. More meditation and more management of work / life balance. Thinking positively.

I’ve found myself taking the daily churn out on him. When I work too hard or over do it in my personal chores/errands or stressing myself out trying to make sure I’m being a good mother, daughter, and friend. He’s on the recieving end of my stress. And it reminds us that he’s not here, which causes more confusion and frustration.

What’s amazing is that Q is always there for me, helping me and showing me alternatives. Coaching me and sharing his own experiences and understanding. And though he isn’t here physically, our spiritual relationship is the perfect solution. Just the other day he shared some wisdom on patience, one being: “Hone in on the desire of stillness – it’s already there inside of you.”

Focusing in on things like that and being open to universal love, reminds me that I’m okay. When anxiety strikes sometimes I think: “I am away from the man I love every day and I handle it with grace.” While it seems uncanny, I truly believe that Q and I have it all. We spend a lot of time building things together, sharing ideas and writing eachother poetry and haikus. Listening to music together, writing stories and singing and dancing together. And my favorite – talking about how we will change the world when it comes to criminal and social justice reform. Presently, we’re working on Brilliance and working with SIP to end mass incarceration in Virginia through awareness and law changes. In the future, we plan to continue that work and do even more on the ground together, as he wants to be a lawyer.

We are not perfect and we will never be perfect, but the way we work together each day, and the way we work to understand eachother: offering support and encouragement, is how I know we have forever locked down. He’s my soulmate.

– S

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Q: Bringing Love Into 2021

The start of 2021 is already two days in, and along with the rest of the world, S and I have experienced a lot of strain from the past year.

Unfortunately, we’ve had to experience the difficulties of love in 2020, alongside the already-hard-enough circumstance of my incarceration. Without the aid of face-to-face visit, we’ve had muster up more of that spiritual energy to keep us in a comfortable, constant contact. It’s funny to say we are quite dependent of each other… but in light of all that, we have always placed a lot of focus on the spiritual body of our relationship. It’s interesting to know just how much we can have a healthy and fruitful relationship, even with the serious lack of physical presence. It’s very beautiful and somewhat enlightening.

Being the optimist I am, I looked at this year as a great opportunity to keep increasing the strength of our spiritual foundation, in turn, our foundation overall. That opportunity did not come without its drawbacks. Our bickering increased slightly and the reality of our situation set in more and more over the time. We both had to deal with the worry of one of the other contracting the virus and not being able to be there if it happened… it was a real fear of mine… nevertheless, we’ve found new depths to our ability to work through struggles and find solutions.

I’m actually proud of our resilience and the way we are able to translate a lot of our love in its healing power through voice alone. Do not misconstrue, though – its not all rainbows and sunshine. S told me of a quote she saw on social media. It said something like: “In relationships and marriage, you have to choose love everyday…” and I take that quote as saying that… its a choice, and choices take a little mental effort, and effort entails work. So you have work at it… just like a muscle, working it out strengthens it. So we are working at it, and strengthening our love muscles, lol.

S and I also have come to find that love is creative, and she proved her mastery of that particular principle this holiday season. Normally, the holidays are hard for us, being the season for being with family and loved ones, its easy to get sucked into the fact that we don’t have the advantage of physically being with each other for that special time. However, keeping love in sight is like a lifesaving rope to pull you out of quicksand.

S set a theme for this season – Presence Over Presents. She created a series of letters, sent by mail, that focused on concepts like family, smiles, music, and home, that which we’ve found our relationship to be centered on. These letters had so much love and thought in them, I don’t think I read one without tearing up a bit. They definitely did their job and transported S’s spirit in full force to my side throughout that week and beyond…

My hope for this year is that we continue to grow together at the same light-speed momentum we’ve always had, even though a majority of our being together is physically at a distance for now. I find myself constantly thanking God that S returned to my life. Her love has always been transformative for me and remnant of a teenaged love we shared over a decade ago. No step missed, no spark lost…

I leave you with this… for anyone who has found themselves in a dark place, alone and wanting, I pray you can find a love that will inspire you to live like it matters. I believe God intended for love to be the motivator, and I’m happy I’ve found mine… and I pray you find yours…

Love is the light of a future unbound, one who possesses love possesses the key to life and its unlimited potential…

– Q, written 1/2/21

Feature photos illustrated by Q, 12/16/20

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S: Holiday Presence

Well, it’s the holidays again and as you all know, it’s a tough time for us, but more widely it’s a tough time for families of the incarcerated. Now, with a global pandemic, we can’t even go visit our loved ones at the facilities. To make it even worse, GTL and the DOC are cancelling video visits for many people, on Christmas. It’s truly tragic, especially for those people in prison who have spent well enough time in there and can come out and be a successful member of society; like my Q.

Sigh. Only time will tell if and when he will be released. But until that time, I like to think about the ring of presence we have built around us.

This Christmas, I’m surprising him with a series of letters dedicated to reminding him just how much can be done with creating our presence with each other no matter how far away we are. With a big restriction on mail, pictures and merchandise we can send to the prison. So I used a lot of my words and limited black and white copies of letters he can receive from me.

He’s gotten 2 out of 7 of them and has been absolutely elated to read the words and feel the love I put into them. We just had a conversation about how amazing it is to be able to love as hard as we want, because we were made for each-other and match each-others souls.

I’m so so grateful.

Happy holidays to all.

-S

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S: So Much for Physical Touch

Tough October indeed. Between my own personal life and how busy work has been for me… how we’ve seen no strides in our work for criminal justice reform for all, and no strides in Q’s personal paperwork for him to get out of prison… how we’ve been having small moments of miscommunicating… I miss him.

It’s been over 7 months since I’ve gotten to hold his hand. Just as long as the amount of time I had with him. I think about the pandemic and how some people have basically been trapped with their loved ones, their spouses, their other halves. But the community of prison significant others… we’ve gotten the complete opposite. The pandemic has taken what limited amount of time we got to spend hugging our men, holding their hand. Getting to be face to face and watching each other move. Getting to take each other in…. smell each other’s breaths and taste each other’s lips. Laugh together and have a snack together. Just being able to place one hand on his cheek and whisper, I love you.

It’s easy to take for granted having the love of your life next to you. It’s also easy to take for granted having one at all. Hold them close and tell them you love them today, if you can. And if you can’t, pray for them and thank God you have them in your life.

– S

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