Four days.

That is what is left.

Four days until I walk through prison gates; not as the correctional officer I once was, not as the prison wife who has spent years fighting this system from the outside, not as the advocate who knows policies, procedures, inmate numbers, classifications, grievances, disciplinary reports, and all the bureaucratic bullshit that comes with incarceration.

In four days, I walk through those gates as an inmate.

And I am fucking terrified.

There. I said it.

I am terrified.

Six days ago, I wrote a blog called This Isn't Goodbye. It's the Chapter Before I Come Home.

I wrote about faith.

I wrote about trusting God.

I wrote about believing that He would go with me.

I wrote about trusting the Author even though I couldn't skip ahead and read the ending.

Today?

Today I cursed at that Author.

Today I told God I fucking hate Him.

Those exact words.

Not a cleaned-up Christian version of anger.

Not, “Lord, I'm struggling to understand Your plan.”

Not, “Father, please give me peace in this difficult season.”

No.

I was angry.

I was hurt.

I was exhausted.

And I said:

“I fucking hate You.”

Then I asked Him the question that has been screaming inside of me:

“What the fuck did I do to deserve all of this?”

What did I do to deserve this much pain?

This much trauma?

This much loss?

How many times is one person supposed to get knocked down before she is allowed to look toward Heaven and ask what the hell is going on?

Because I am there.

I am absolutely there.

I know that sentence will make some Christians uncomfortable.

Good.

Imagine living it.

Because I don't have the emotional energy anymore to package my pain into something pretty enough for other people to digest.

I don't need another person telling me that “everything happens for a reason.”

I don't need another Bible verse tossed at my pain like a spiritual Band-Aid.

I know the Bible.

I know the verses.

I know what faith is supposed to sound like.

I have been the woman quoting those verses.

I have been the woman telling other people to trust God.

I have been the woman saying God has a plan even when we don't understand it.

I have journaled those words.

Prayed those words.

Written those words.

Believed those words.

But right now?

I don't know what I believe.

And I refuse to lie about that.

In four days, on Monday, August 24, 2026, my life changes.

For approximately the next two and a half years, someone else gets to decide when I wake up.

When I eat.

When I shower.

When I use the phone.

When I can communicate with the people I love.

Where I sleep.

Where I stand.

Where I walk.

What I wear.

What I own.

What I can touch.

When a door opens.

When a door closes.

I've heard those doors before.

That's the mindfuck of all of this.

Prison isn't completely unknown to me.

I worked inside one.

I have stood on the other side of those gates wearing a uniform.

I've heard the locks.

I've heard the radios.

I've watched movement.

I've watched count.

I've watched women and men on the outside talk about inmates as if incarceration somehow removes their humanity.

I know how institutions operate.

I know the difference between the world people imagine prison to be and the world that actually exists behind the fences.

But knowing prison as an officer does not mean I know prison as an inmate.

I knew what it felt like to hear a gate close behind me when I still possessed the absolute certainty that, at the end of my shift, someone would open it again and I would go home.

This time, I don't go home at the end of the shift.

That's the difference.

That's the part my brain cannot quite process yet.

I'm walking into a world I know from completely the wrong side.

I know what those fences look like.

I just don't know what they feel like when you're the person who can't walk back through them.

And before anyone decides to simplify my story into some neat little moral lesson, let me say something very clearly.

I made the choice to love Ryan.

I did.

Nobody forced me.

Nobody held a gun to my head and made me love him.

Nobody made me marry him.

I chose him.

I chose to believe there was a man underneath the addiction, the trauma, the inmate number, the mistakes, and all the shit that came with them.

And even right now, in one of the angriest and most emotionally disconnected places I have ever been in our marriage, somewhere underneath all of it, I still love him.

But loving someone does not mean you chose everything that came attached to their choices.

I did not choose drugs.

I did not choose addiction.

I did not choose the chaos drugs created.

I did not choose the lies addiction breeds.

I did not choose the trauma.

I did not choose the destruction.

I did not choose the ripple effects that eventually reached so far into my life that now I am the one packing what little I can take with me before surrendering my freedom.

People love to say, “Well, you made your choices too.”

And yes.

I did.

I'm not writing a legal argument today.

I'm not claiming I floated through life without ever making a bad decision.

I am human.

I made decisions.

I accepted consequences.

I signed my name.

I know exactly where I am going Monday.

But there is an emotional truth underneath all of that which I am finally allowing myself to say out loud:

I am fucking angry that another person's addiction detonated inside my life and I am the one walking into prison too.

There.

That's the ugly truth.

I loved someone who was hurting.

I loved someone who was addicted.

I loved someone through relapse and incarceration and promises and disappointment and growth and setbacks and apologies and hope.

And there have been days when I have been so focused on understanding his trauma that I forgot I was accumulating trauma of my own.

That matters.

My pain matters too.

And right now, four days before I surrender myself, I don't have enough room left inside me to carry everybody else's pain while pretending mine weighs nothing.

I'm tired.

Not sleepy tired.

Soul tired.

I'm angry.

I'm numb.

And those two things shouldn't make sense together, but somehow they do.

I can feel rage burning through me while simultaneously feeling absolutely fucking nothing.

One minute I want to scream.

The next I stare at something I need to pack and can't even make myself move.

There are a thousand things I should be doing.

People I should be calling.

Things I should be preparing.

Loose ends I should be tying together.

Memories I should supposedly be soaking up because I'm about to lose my freedom.

And part of me is simply...

gone.

Maybe that's my brain protecting me.

Maybe my body has finally said, Enough. We cannot feel all of this at the same time.

Because this isn't the first unbearable thing I have survived.

And maybe that's part of why I am so angry with God.

I've had this fight with Him before.

There was another time in my life when I looked toward Heaven and felt nothing but hatred.

The day He took my one and only son away from me.

That kind of grief changes something inside a person permanently.

There are pieces of me that died when my son died.

There are questions I asked God then that have never been answered.

There are places in my heart where the scar tissue is so thick I usually don't touch them.

I eventually found my way back to faith.

Somehow.

I found my way back to prayer.

I found my way back to believing there might still be purpose left for me.

I found my way back to God after believing there was absolutely no universe in which I could forgive Him for allowing me to experience the kind of pain a mother should never have to survive.

And now here I am again.

Looking up.

Angry.

Except this time I don't feel like begging Him to help me understand.

Right now, I'm too pissed off to understand.

Right now, I'm asking:

Haven't I had enough?

Seriously, God.

Haven't I?

Was losing my son not enough?

Was everything that came after that not enough?

Was the trauma not enough?

Was loving someone through addiction not enough?

Was watching my husband disappear behind prison walls not enough?

Was fighting a system I once worked for not enough?

Was having my entire understanding of justice ripped apart not enough?

Was losing pieces of myself along the way not enough?

Now I have to lose my freedom too?

What exactly am I supposed to learn that required this?

Because today I don't see the lesson.

Today I don't see the beautiful testimony forming somewhere in the distance.

Today I don't see the inspirational ending.

Today, quite frankly, I don't give a shit about being inspirational.

I am a woman who is scared.

I am a mother who still misses her son.

I am a wife whose marriage has been pushed beyond limits I didn't even know existed.

I am a former correctional officer preparing to become an inmate.

I am a human being staring at two and a half years of my life being taken out of my hands.

And today I am furious with God.

Maybe someone reading this thinks I shouldn't say that.

Maybe you're thinking I should fear God too much to speak to Him that way.

Here's the thing.

If God is who I have spent years believing He is, then He already knows.

He knew what was in my heart before I screamed it.

So why would I stand in my kitchen and say, “Lord, I trust Your perfect plan,” when the truth burning inside me is:

I hate You for letting this happen.

That's not faith.

That's performance.

And I don't have the strength left for performative Christianity.

If my relationship with God survives this - and I don't know what that relationship is going to look like when I come home - then I want it to survive because it was real.

Not because I pretended.

Maybe faith isn't always saying, “I trust You.”

Maybe sometimes the only relationship you can manage with God is still talking to Him while you're furious.

Maybe screaming I hate You in His direction is still, in some twisted way, refusing to completely stop talking to Him.

I don't know.

Ask me again someday.

Maybe Prison Wife 103 DeAnna will have an answer.

Because August 20, 2026 DeAnna sure as hell doesn't.

She is scared.

She is pissed.

She is tired.

She is grieving.

She is numb.

She is looking around at the pieces of a life she has four more days to touch whenever she wants and wondering how the hell she got here.

And no, right now I am not walking through those prison gates as the God-fearing woman I used to be.

I am not walking in carrying some beautiful certainty that God has this.

I am not walking in whispering scripture with a peaceful smile on my face.

I may walk through those gates angry as hell.

I may walk through them feeling completely abandoned by Him.

I may walk through them wanting absolutely nothing to do with Him.

And maybe that changes.

Maybe somewhere inside those walls, after the noise of my current life finally becomes quiet, He and I are going to have one hell of a conversation.

Maybe I will scream at Him some more.

Maybe I will cry.

Maybe I will refuse to speak to Him for months.

Maybe eventually I'll pick up a Bible again.

Maybe one day I'll find myself praying without realizing I've started.

Maybe I'll understand something I cannot possibly understand from where I'm standing today.

Or maybe my faith will never look the way it did before.

I don't know.

And for once, I'm going to allow “I don't know” to be enough.

I don't know what prison is going to do to me.

I don't know what two and a half years is going to do to my marriage.

I don't know who will still be standing beside me when I come home.

I don't know what parts of myself I'll lose.

I don't know what parts I'll discover.

I don't know whether I will find God behind those walls.

And I don't know whether He and I are going to make peace with each other anytime soon.

But I know this:

In four days, I am walking through those gates.

Me.

Not the officer.

Not Ryan's wife.

Not the advocate.

Not the author.

Not the woman with all the answers.

Just DeAnna.

Terrified.

Angry.

Numb.

Human.

And whatever comes next, I am going to have to live it before I can write the ending.

Six days ago, I wrote that I trusted the Author.

Today I'm furious with Him.

Maybe both things can exist in the same story.

Maybe that's what an actual relationship with God looks like; not unwavering certainty, but love and rage and questions and silence and screaming and eventually, perhaps, finding your way back to each other.

I don't know yet.

Today, there is no pretty ending to this blog.

No inspirational bow.

No verse telling you everything is going to be okay.

No promise that I suddenly feel peaceful after writing all of this.

I don't.

I'm still angry.

I'm still numb.

I'm still scared.

I still don't understand why so much pain has been allowed to exist in one life.

I still miss my son.

I still wish addiction had never entered my marriage.

I still wish I could somehow rewind all of this and make different choices at a hundred different intersections.

And I still have four days.

Four days of freedom.

Four days until the woman who once stood inside prison wearing a badge walks back through prison gates wearing an inmate number.

I don't know who she will be when she comes home.

I don't know what she will believe.

I don't know whether she will look back at this post and cringe, cry, laugh, or whisper, You had absolutely no idea what was coming.

But I want her to remember this woman.

The woman standing four days from the gates.

The woman who was scared shitless and walked through them anyway.

The woman who finally stopped carrying everyone else's pain long enough to admit that she was hurting too.

The woman who loved deeply and paid prices she never imagined love could cost.

The woman who looked toward Heaven and screamed exactly what was in her heart instead of saying what Christians are supposed to say.

The woman who didn't have faith neatly tied around her shoulders when she walked into prison.

She just had herself.

And maybe - for now - that has to be enough.

So no.

Today I am not going to tell you that I trust God's plan.

Today I'm not even going to tell you I like Him very much.

Today I told Him I fucking hate Him.

And He and I are just going to have to sit with that for a while.

Because if He really is the God I've spent all these years believing He is...

then He is big enough to handle my anger.

And if He is still there when I finally stop screaming...

He knows where to find me.

Four days.

~ DeAnna