Today Is a Day for Despair

I visited Tom today. It was the third time I've gotten to visit. Each time is a thrill to get to see him, but the leaving is so difficult that it's almost not worth going, except I wouldn't miss it for the world. Visiting is no touching. Wear a mask. Sit in a chair with a big plexiglass barrier between us. Can't converse without sitting with our faces pressed up to a gap between the barriers. Even then it's very difficult to hear. Other inmates with their visitors all around us talking loud so they can be heard through the barrier.

The two previous times I visited, I was scheduled for noon. Today I was scheduled for 8:30. I had to be there at 8:00. My drive time is three and a half hours, so I got out of bed at 3:00 after having not slept more than a couple of fitful hours. I left at 4:00 so I'd have time for a couple of bathroom breaks and to get some breakfast - not that I wanted to eat, but so that I wouldn't be weak and sick.

I arrived home around 1:50. I need to be taking a nap.

This is what despair feels like. I'm exhausted, but can't sleep. I'm starving, but can't eat. I want to be strong and have a can-do attitude, but I'm not, I don't. I don't even know what my body wants or needs at this point. It doesn't do what's normal. I'm weak and shaky from not eating, but sick when I eat. I'm dropping from exhaustion, but can't shut my mind off so I can rest.

Yesterday a fellow Christian posted something on FaceBook about Christians not wanting to be submissive to government authority because it's too hard. It goes against our nature as Americans. The message that came across to me was that we're bad Christians if we don't meekly submit to every evil whim of the government. I shouldn't have read it. My response was that my husband is currently a political prisoner in a federal prison. He submitted to the authorities even though he committed no crime, as did I when I was indicted, arrested, and jailed. So I don't think I need a lesson in submission today.