A friend of mine shared a letter she wrote to someone. I was incredibly honored that she feels she can trust me with such a private thing. I’ve written so many letters since I started keeping a journal. As much as I wanted to share them with people (and not just the person I was writing to) I always held back. I haven’t even read any of them to my therapist, I always seem to “forget” to have the journal with me.

You don’t have to restrict yourself to just a letter. Try writing a dialog with the person where you speak not only for yourself but for him/her as well. This helps me get a better handle on both sides of the story. You can also try to rewrite the way the story ends for you. I find it empowering to have control over a situation that previously left me feeling helpless. I’ve also incorporated some people as characters into stories I was working on. This helped me to take out some aggression, get some sense of satisfaction, and move my plot along when I was all worked up over something that was distracting me from writing.

Remember, the unsent letter is just that – a letter you don’t have to send. If after a period of time has passed, and you feel this letter NEEDS to be sent, that’s up to you. But just because you wrote the letter, that doesn’t mean it has to be put in and envelope or copy/pasted into an email or anything.  You can tear it up, burn it or bury it. Hell, you can even mail it off to Santa if you want. If you really want you can write that letter over and over and over, writing it once doesn’t mean you can’t do it again.

If you’re interested in reading some unsent letters, all you have to do is type it into Google and you’ll get plenty of blogs, tumblrs etc on the topic. Just skip over the stuff with World of Warcraft, apparently it’s also the name of an old quest.

I find it rather amusing though that if my car were to have some sort of issue I’d be more careful and certainly more likely to take it to a mechanic. But when it comes to my body having problems, I’ve got the attitude of, “walk it off!” Hoping this problem will just go away. It does make me wonder if this attitude is based on my weight. Everyone is so quick to blame health problems on being over weight when in fact it could very well be something else. “If I move more I’ll feel better because this pain is really just because I’m so horribly fat,” seems to be a very popular thought to any ache or pain I experience. However, I’ve managed to maintain this weight (give or take a few pounds each direction) for the past 5+ years. I’ve never experienced knee pain like this, ever in my life. I’m not so sure this is a “OMGURFAT” problem.

Don’t worry though, my doctors have offices down the road from my office and my personal doctor has Saturday hours. So I’ve asked for an appointment via the website. And if I get my insurance card before an appointment is confirmed through the website, I’ll be calling for an appointment. Although I dread the diagnosis (websites give me everything from gout to arthritis to bursitis and torn meniscus) I know the only way to fix this pain is to see a professional.

Stay tuned… eventually I’ll be able to go to the doctor again. In the meantime I need to try and take it easy. This evening trying to sit with my knee elevated and the ice pack on it was so uncomfortable. Nothing seems to help, I’m open to suggestions.

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.

What to do with a now activated $100 Visa gift card? Buy yarn? Buy books? clothes? Shoes? music? movies? food? save it for a rainy day?

Decisions, decisions…