Hey you,

Yeah, it’s me. I’m about 3 months away from celebrating our 2nd annual 39th birthday. Yes, I’m calling it that…mostly because our 39th birthday was pretty frickin’ lame. There’s nothing you can do about it though, so start planning now to celebrate 39 a second time and try to do it up big.

With that said, I’m not sure what to say to you. I keep having flashes of Diane Court in Say Anything giving her valedictorian speech saying, “I’ve glimpsed our future and all I can say is, GO BACK.”  I’m not saying it sucks here on the brink of a new decade of life, but from where you are to where I am now, it’s hard. Really, really hard. I don’t want to scare you, it’s not just 20 years of suck. There are amazing things ahead, but for each amazing thing, it seems you’ve got to endure some serious shit.  I’m sorry. None of it is any of your doing. It’s just what life throws at you. There’s nothing you can do to change any of it so just accept it and keep going. Sure there are some things I’d like to tell you to avoid, but those things are what makes me who I am now. I’m OK with who I am right now. OK, maybe you should drink more water, and try to save more money. But aside from that, things are what they are; you’ve got to take the bad if you want the good.

Keep in mind you don’t have to shoulder everything all alone. You don’t have to be the strong one all the time. You can ask for help, there’s nothing weak about asking for help. And speaking of weak, it’s OK to cry. Really. You aren’t a cry baby, you aren’t going to be laughed at, and you will be able to stop. I know you think it makes you look weak, but there’s nothing weak about crying. There will come a day, when the shit really hits the fan and you won’t be able to control it any longer. You will cry with such pain, the sound will terrify you. But don’t worry; you will be able to stop. You’ll pull yourself together and you will be able to move on. I just wonder if you cried more in the past if that moment wouldn’t have been so terrifying.

You are amazing at finding and keeping friends. It may not feel like it, but it’s true. Keep treating people right and learn to lean on them. You have collected the most amazing group of friends. You will surround yourself with people who care about you, who love you and want the best for you. Sometimes it won’t sound like it, but really, they do. Those people are telling you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear, that’s what makes them your friend. No matter how far away these people are, keep them close to your heart. Even if they are people you haven’t met in person, they are all important, and you will eventually meet them in person. (I know this sounds odd to be friends with someone you haven’t met, but roll with me here, it’ll be clear to you soon enough.)

Oh, and when you’re writing in your journal, could you try writing about the good things as well as all the bad stuff? Reading those journals now, you sound like some kind of whiny, angst ridden teenager. Seriously, life wasn’t ALL bad. Celebrate the good by writing it down. I know that you work out the crap by writing about it. But share the good too would you?

In the end what I want to say is, be good to yourself. You deserve happiness, love, and to be treated well. You are beautiful inside and out. Yes, you ARE, don’t fight with me. I’m an old woman who knows more than you do. Enjoy the next 20 years of living, go crazy, do all kinds of things. You have no regrets so, live it up. Have fun. I’ll see you when you get here.

The episode I caught is about Sarah Jackson, a woman from England who was living a big party lifestyle of drugs, etc and found herself three thousand pounds in debt to a loan shark. In order to pay off her debt he gives her the only option of going to Peru and smuggling “a few kilos” of cocaine back into the country. The catch is, he wants her to take a friend. It looks less suspicious if you’re not traveling alone when you smuggle. She gets a friend, Simon Burke, to go with her. She tells him it’s just a holiday to check out Machu Pichu and all the beauty therein. He asks about money, she tells him she got money from her Grandmother so it’s all good.

As the departure date looms, Sarah has second thoughts and tries to get out of it by telling the loan shark she can’t find her passport. No problem, he has one, but the picture looks NOTHING like her, well, OK the girl in the picture also has short hair, but it’s not the right color… But it seems it’s very easy to get out of the UK with a passport that looks nothing like you, and it’s really easy to get into Peru as well. The only problem they had was the airline losing Simon’s luggage. She and Simon have a lovely time in Peru seeing the sites. She lets nothing slip to Simon about why they are really there.

She ditches Simon for an afternoon to get the goods that are already concealed in a suitcase. All she has to do is pack it and bring it back to the UK. Simon is totally clueless about what’s going on. They fly from the Machu Pichu area to Lima where they will switch planes back to the UK. All is well when they land in Lima. They claim the bags and then head to check in for the next leg of the flight. Sarah doesn’t want Simon around when she checks the bag in because she’s trying to keep him out of it. She tells him to go check on his lost bag from the beginning of their trip.

She checks in and everything seems totally OK, until a worker questions her passport, then her luggage is X-rayed and that’s not going well either. But right when she thinks she’s finally made it, they pull her aside and have her open her luggage. They cut into the bag and find the drugs. She’s brought back into a holding area and they discover she’s not traveling alone. The police go out into the airport to find Simon. These two are a man and woman traveling together, obviously they’re working together. They are interrogated. The police find 10kg of cocaine in the suitcase. They find Sarah’s real passport and a wig.

This all went down in 2007. Both Simon and Sarah were put in jail since Peru’s justice system is nothing like the US or the UK. After 18 days together in some sort of holding cell they are sent to separate prisons. The whole time Sarah is trying to tell anyone who will listen that Simon is innocent. However, no one in the Peruvian justice system cares if your innocent or how long it takes to prove that you are.

Sarah, the guilty party, is sent to what looks like a luxury resort. Simon, the innocent one, is sent to hell. The disgusting filth of the men’s prison in Peru where he is stuck for 10 months, is enough to make you lose all faith in humanity. Once the Peruvian officials accept Sarah’s guilty plea they let Simon leave prison, but he can’t leave the country. He has to wait until Sarah is sentenced before he can go home. Again this could take forever because they don’t care about due process or speedy trial in Peru. Now he’s living in equally squalid conditions.

I searched a bit online to try to learn more, I found the blog of Adam Sweet. He saw the Banged Up Abroad episode when it first aired on Channel 5 in the UK. Simon was staying in the spare room of a Peruvian family. He was trapped there for over 2 years. It cost his family twenty thousand pounds because Simon had no means to earn an income while stranded in Peru pending the court case and the prosecution’s appeal of an earlier acquittal. Simon was finally allowed to get home in October of 2009. If I remember correctly (as no online sources say) Sarah was sentenced to 7 years in prison. From what Adam Sweet says on his blog, there wasn’t a lot of mainstream press coverage about Simon and what was happening to him. His family and friends started a few Facebook groups to help raise awareness and pressure the British government into doing something. They also took donations for his living expenses. This poor guy’s life was ruined, and ruined by a friend.

So… let this be a warning to you, just because you’re innocent that doesn’t mean you wont get fucked over in another country. Peru’s law is lock you up and sort it all out later, even if that takes years. If going to Peru, make sure you’re a woman because the women’s prison is so much nicer. But also, don’t get involved in drug smuggling. You WILL get caught and it WILL be nasty, because you’ll get caught in a foreign country. I think I may continue to remain holed up in my cave.