In the resolution of my crime against my family, I was offered mercy in the form of a diversion program. I was to plead guilty to a misdemeanor and complete an intense program of individual, group and family therapy. Most of my six-month sentence would be suspended so long as I cooperated fully in the program. However, for at least a couple of important reasons, they never suspend the entire sentence.
First of all, the changes to one's life that are required to recover from being an abuser are always more drastic than the abuser understands when entering therapy. We tend to think that we have this one broken part of our life that we need to fix, and almost never understand that abuse never happens in a vacuum, that we are going to need to make changes in almost our entire life. Too, many abusers minimize the severity of their crimes, the terrible impact we have on our victims. Not finally, there are also painful and scary elements of our own past that formed us in a way that makes our abusive choices possible, and successful healing of our lives requires that we face this history before we complete our program of therapy. Because there are so many painful obstacles that we might want to avoid along the road to healing, it is important that we have a strong reason to hold fast to our commitment. A taste of the consequences of failing to stay the course of our therapy program is an important motivator, and the only way to really get that is by spending a few days in jail.
Equally importantly, by the end of a successful treatment program we have a better understanding of the harm that we have done than people do whose lives have not been touched by abuse. To not have experienced at least a minimal punishment for our actions can contribute to a lack of resolution.
In this diversion program, one of the goals is to keep the negative impact on the family to a minimum. Because it would be very negative for the primary breadwinner (in most families) to lose their job, they try to schedule the required jail time over the course of several weekends. In my case, I was required to serve three consecutive weekends. My lawyer advised me, in a general sense, that it wouldn't be wise to share with my fellow inmates why I was serving time. I apparently didn't manage that very well, as one inmate who I met while in-processing on Friday spent our entire out-processing time on Sunday making sure I knew that my remaining weekends wouldn't be so easy as this first one was.
By the time I got out of there, I was more afraid than I'd ever been before, so much so that I didn't see how I could possibly go back to serve my remaining non-suspended time. It was obvious that I wasn't especially contributing to my family, and I just figured that if I had a fatal accident they would be well provided for through my insurance policies. On the way to work that morning, I picked out an unprotected bridge support that would serve well as a place for me to end my life on the way home.
In retrospect, I think that I likely wouldn't have been able to go through with it. There have been a number of times in the intervening years that I have begun to wrench the steering wheel toward a potentially fatal hazard, or slide a sharpened blade along the skin of my wrist, only to decide against such a path for one reason or another. But I have never again tasted the level of despair that gripped me that day. I already had an appointment for the Sacrament of Reconciliation scheduled for lunch time, just to deal with the sin I'd committed against my family. Now it was going to be a sort of "last rights" sacrament for me. My quandary was deep: attempting suicide was considered a violation of the program, so an unsuccessful attempt was going to bring worse consequences; if I tried to kill myself I was determined to succeed. My options for help seemed limited: my counselor was on vacation that week, and we had not covered the contingency that I might encounter any sort of crisis in which I would need to speak with someone in her absence. I had a previous counselor with whom I'd started working prior to the determination that my crime had to be reported. I felt we'd worked together well, but she was not an expert on my issues and I was now directed to work only with my assigned counseling team; I also didn't have any extra money to go see her at my own expense. In any case, I didn't consider her an option.
After concluding my confession, Fr. Paul asked me how I was doing. He knew what a tough road we were on, and had referred me to my original counselor. When he asked so sincerely, my defensive wall immediately crumbled and I began to cry as my fear overwhelmed me. He insisted that I simply had to turn to whatever resources I had available at that point regardless of how the new counseling team might feel about it, and further explained that he had some resources available to provide emergency financial help in a situation like mine. So I called my former counselor and made an emergency appointment, by the end of which we had a plan of action that seemed better than the one I'd decided on earlier.
It still ended up being a hard road, but that story isn't for this post. Our pastor was reassigned about nine years ago, and yesterday I saw him for the first time since his Parkinson's diagnosis. We didn't get to talk much, as he was very much in demand among the attendees of the parish picnic. Still, it was good to connect with him again. Perhaps we should visit him again at his current parish soon.
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