Somebody PLEASE Make This Make Sense For Me....

 

My husband is locked in a cage for seven years.

Seven. Years.

Why?

Because he did drugs to himself.

Let me slow that down for anyone still clinging to the idea that this system is about justice.

He harmed no one else.
He didn’t touch a child.
He didn’t steal a body, a childhood, or a soul.

He destroyed himself.

And for that, the State decided he deserved a number, a cell, and years of his life erased.

But it doesn’t stop there. I am now facing three years in prison too.

Not because I used. Not because I sold. Not because I hurt anyone. But because I was in the car that night.

That’s it. That’s the crime.

A crystal-clean record. No priors. No violence. No drugs.

Just proximity. Just guilt by association. Just being a woman who loved someone in the wrong moment.

So let’s tally this up:

My husband: 7 years for hurting himself.
Me: 3 years for being present.

Meanwhile…

My step-father molested me for sixteen years.

Sixteen years of stolen childhood.
Sixteen years of silence, fear, grooming, and survival.
Sixteen years of learning how to disappear inside my own body just to make it through the day.

And what did he get?

Nothing.

No cuffs. No charges. No courtroom. No sentence.

He walks free. Breathes free air. Sleeps in a real bed. Lives a full life untouched by consequences.

MAKE. THIS. MAKE. SENSE.

Because here’s what I’ve learned the hard way:

This system does not protect children. It protects predators who know how to hide. It protects abusers who rely on silence, shame, and time to do their work for them.

People love to say, “Drugs are a choice.”
Fine. Let’s talk about choices.

People ask for drugs. No child asks to be molested. People consent to what goes into their bodies. Children do not consent to having their bodies violated. Addiction is often born from trauma. Child sexual abuse creates trauma.

So why is the man who numbed his pain punished harder than the man who caused it? Why am I facing prison time for sitting in a car, while the man who sat on my childhood walks free?

Because addicts are easy targets. Because proximity is easier to prosecute than predators. Because locking up the broken is cheaper than dismantling the systems that break them.

This isn’t justice.

Justice would have protected the little girl I was. Justice would have put my abuser behind bars before I ever learned how to dissociate to survive. Justice would have recognized that addiction is the smoke — not the fire.

Instead, we cage the wounded. We threaten the innocent. And we excuse the monsters.

So don’t talk to me about law and order.

Talk to me about why my family is being erased while my abuser gets to live untouched.

Save the children.

But maybe start by actually believing them — and stop punishing the people who survived.

If this is justice, then don’t ask why people stop believing in the law — ask why the law keeps protecting monsters and punishing survivors.