HOW WE SURVIVE OUR LONG DISTANCE RELATIONSHIP

It has been 10 years that Jason and I have been doing the "prison" relationship.  Of course we wouldn't wish it on anyone, but I would rather be with him in this terrible situation than be in a normal situation with someone else.  So we do what we have to in order to make it work.  I have boxes and boxes of letters. They won't let him keep all the letters I have sent him, so periodically he sends mine back to me.  Being able to talk helps, too, and I think our weekly visits have saved our sanity.  It makes everything seem more day-to-day, although we know it's not.

During visitation we are always in our own little bubble, and I'm very good at blocking out everything around us.  Unfortunately, Jason  has ADD, so it's not as easy for him, but he does pretty well given the circumstances.  We will sit and talk and laugh for hours, the only difficulty for me being the constant reminder that we are not allowed to touch each other.  Neither of us get enough hugs every day.  I think you're supposed to get 12 or some random number like that.  But I did read that if you hug someone for 20 seconds or more, the "love potion" oxytocin is released from the brain.  Jason is a hugger, so after I told him that, he was always sure to hug me for at least 20 seconds at the end of visitation.

We are both writers, although I would say he is the best story-teller.  We use our talents to keep things exciting.  Sometimes we write stories back and forth, where one person begins the story (and we are always the main characters) and sends it in the mail, then the other person will write the next scene, and send it back.  Our stories always have sex in them--hey, it's our only outlet!  It's fun to see where the story goes based on who is writing the scene.  Or sometimes we will assign each other a topic to write about.  My favorite was called FIRST DAY PASS.  We had hoped that he would be put into a transitional program where the inmates are allowed day passes, and I wrote a very detailed story of what I imagined that would be like for us.  Seeing his first moments of freedom is what I am living for!  And food...that's a major source of longing for Jason.  The food there is so terrible that it's usually inedible.  He misses simple things that we take for granted like salads and fresh fruit.

We've bonded every way that we can, with him even joining my business!  He has sold a few Origami Owl lockets for me (inmates wanting to buy for their mothers, daughters, or significant others), and now I am trying to get an It Works! business going for him so that when he gets home, he will already have a job in place.  My ultimate goal is for us to work together and have tons of free time to make up for all the time that we have missed together.

Finally, as strange as this might sound to you, we try to meet each other in dreams every night.  I didn't know this was possible before I met Jason, but brain waves travel for miles when you're asleep and dreaming, and you can share lucid dreams.  It has taken me a while to get the hang of it, but we have tested it and know that it's not just our imaginations but that we are actually able to interact in our dreams.  For example, I won't tell him what "sign" I put into the dream so that he can tell it's really me and not just his subconscious version of me.  I chose wearing a green wig, something that he would not coincidentally dream of, and then he told me he had a dream about me the night before, and that I was wearing a green wig!  Fascinating stuff...I still don't know how all of that works, but it does.  We have a meeting place where we try to find each other in dreams, and then I usually let him take over the dream from there.  I don't care what we do, as long as we are together.  Most days I just wish that we could be in the pillow pool, pictured here.