From Guard to Wife: My Journey in the Shadows of the Justice System

-by Ryan  I’m tired of fake family love. The kind that only shows up when I’m pissed off. The kind that only wants to check in when I’ve finally had enough and let the anger spill out. Where were you when I was silently breaking? Where were you when I wrote long messages trying to be honest, trying to tell the truth about how I feel —about my pain, my past, about being locked in a system that’s designed to chew people up and spit out what’s left? You ignored it. Or worse—you filtered it. Didn’t share it. Didn’t want to “stir the pot.” You didn’t protect me. You silenced me. And then, when the weight gets too heavy and I finally speak up in anger? Suddenly, everyone wants to care. Everyone wants to talk. Everyone wants to remind me how much they “still love me.” Stop. That’s not love. That’s guilt. That’s convenience. You want to say I’m angry? Damn right I am. Because every time I open up, somebody decides my truth is too much —too raw, too messy, too inconvenient...

  -by Ryan  Let’s talk about what it really means to be a recovering addict inside a prison system that runs on contradiction, corruption, and control. You’d think this would be the safest place to get clean, right? No drugs. No temptation. No street. Just time to think, get right, and prepare for something better. Wrong. Let me break it to you straight: Prison is one of the worst places to try to get clean. Because in here, drugs don’t just exist—they thrive. And 9 times outta 10? They’re not coming in through inmates. They’re coming in through the people wearing the keys. Yep. The officers. The ones paid to protect and rehabilitate? They’re the ones flooding these yards with poison. Daily. I'm not talking once a week or a rare drop here and there. I'm talking daily drops , daily sales, and drugs flying off the shelves like it's a damn commissary item. Crank, K2, strips, pills—you name it, someone’s pushing it, and someone’s profiting off it. And those “...

  When my mugshot hit the news, I found out exactly who my friends and family really were. Spoiler alert: most of them weren’t who I thought they were. Instead of picking up the phone and asking, “DeAnna, what really happened?” they ran with whatever the news threw out. Overnight I went from being “the one who had her life together” to “DeAnna screwed up her life. DeAnna married a convict. DeAnna’s a drug addict. A dealer. We told her so.” No one wanted the truth. They wanted gossip. And they fed on it. The Betrayal Hits Different I can live with strangers talking. What gutted me were the people I loved—the ones who claimed to love me. I had a man I carried on an off-and-on affair with. A man who couldn’t come clean to save his soul, but still had the nerve to call himself my “best friend.” He was buddy-buddy with my ex-husband, even called him “family.” And then he turned around and told me I was a fool. Why? Because I chose to marry someone incarcerated. Because according...