My Story & 2020 Reflection

This difficult year, 2020, has been challenging at its best times but, it has been far from the worst year of my life. This time last year I began writing a book about my life with a working title of “Art & Incarceration: And All The Fantasies & Fires In Between.” Which in one word, is about resilience. In a longer explanation, it’s about how in 2016 my partner, the person I sought to spend the rest of my life with, engaged in activities that resulted in our home being raided by the DEA, how after the fact that he decided to put risk over my safety came to a head, I sold all of my belongings aside from my art supplies and my cat, and in 4 days I left behind the home I had built the past 5 years in Asheville, NC and I limped back to the state of Florida. It’s about my difficult time adjusting to life on the edge of the Everglades which at most times felt like the edge of the world. It’s about my path to becoming a beloved public middle/high school arts teacher and how I lost that career when I was pulled over and when I asked to record the incident was ripped from my car, my body dragged across concrete. It’s about being charged with 5 felonies I did not commit, about being labeled as violent after I was a victim. It’s about my own mistakes, my own human folly and the consequences. It’s about how I wasn’t allowed to say goodbye to my students or talk to them if they contacted me, how the great meaning their growth brought to my life was brought to an end, how much it hurt knowing I had let all of them down. It’s about shitty lawyers, and 3 officers lying under oath in depositions, about how they sought to have me prosecuted to the full extent of the law even though I had no priors on record. It’s about asking for dash and body camera footage where there was none. It’s about becoming infantilized as I had no choice but to rely on my family once again to carry me through, to save me. It’s about how while I was trying to paint and heal from all this I was swarmed in my driveway by 4 police officers, arrested without being told my charges, and taken to Orange County Jail where I would sit for the next 29 days before being extradited to Buncombe County Jail in Asheville, NC. It’s about how the system decided to open up a case 2 YEARS LATER involving the person who hurt me worst, a person, in which it caused so much pain to remove from my life, and put me face to face with them in a courtroom. It’s about how the system had followed him and myself years ago, they knew where I worked, where my studio was, they even had the names of my extended family members and ex-boyfriends and KNEW I wasn’t involved and had NO evidence, and how they dragged me from my life and stripped me down anyway, both literally and figuratively. It’s about how having 30 days stolen from me was just the beginning of what I lost, about how for 30 days I didn’t have a name, I was just a number. It’s about the people I spent those days with, that I ate, showered, and shat next to, how so many of them were just hurt, who were born with so little chance at freedom, who needed help, not to be yelled at day in and day out and treated with no semblance of humanity. It’s about how after my parents rescued me in North Carolina, I still tried to make it in the world and got a job at an art gallery after being honest about the charges against me and getting the green light. It’s about being called in a month later to be banned from the property because once they saw all the stacked felonies on paper, even though there were 0 convictions, I was untouchable. It’s about how the world really broke me that day, how a dark chasm opened up in front of me, not in a cell or a state-issued jumpsuit but in my designer heels, my styled hair, my perfectly applied red lipstick, my best, the light that was me went out. 

It’s about how even more than ever, I isolated myself from the world, how I became a hermit, how I no longer had the ability to reach out to my friends who all lived in other cities anyway. It’s about how without my family providing me with bail, lawyer fees, and a studio apartment and a friend who found me illustration work, I would be destitute. It’s about the constant, crippling fear between court dates, the fear of having enough felonies stacked against me to put me behind bars for up to 30 years, the fear that left me paralyzed more times than I like to admit. BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY, it’s about how when I could through the pain, I painted, and I painted, and much like it always has, art healed me. It’s about how stroke by stroke of my brush, I started to become whole again and the light that was me was slowly relit. 

I got as far as the forward of my book before coming to the conclusion that one, my painting career comes first, and that I wanted a positive ending, a grand finale: a great success in career and love. And so, at the beginning of 2020, when the dust was finally settling, I decided to try to live again, not just survive. I was going to get back out in the world, apply for grants, make new friends, go on dates and live my happy ending! 

… well we all know how that went… 

It started out well, my body of work was coming together and it impressed even me, and I have always been my own toughest critic. I met someone who I was able to open my heart to in a way I hadn’t been able to in 4 years, I was meeting new people, going to art openings and seeing live music…… And then the pandemic hit, I didn’t hear back from galleries, the red flags and obsessive behavior and the disrespect in my relationship came to a head and when I took my exit I was told they hoped I die alone amongst other terrible things, I hadn’t gotten any closer to finding a community, I didn’t get chosen for a competition I had gone against my own rule and got my hopes up for… and then the last in a string of disappointments cracked me open again. I could see that darkness start to come back through. In plain, I felt weak; that I was a failure. 

So, I unstacked all my paintings I’ve made over the last couple years, and looked upon them as I wrote down my story. I’m not as far along in my journey as I’d like but if I get all those false voices out of my head, I’m extremely proud of myself. Through all of the adversity I’ve been through, I have remained soft in such a hard world. I have showed up through all of it, to every event, to just about every interaction with warmth, understanding, honesty, humor, compassion and kindness. There is not a single person which I harbor hatred towards, even those who have physically, emotionally, and financially caused me pain. I wish them all the best and hope they find true understanding and happiness. And that’s not me up on some high horse, that’s not some attempt at a karmic grab. After everything I’ve been through, belief in karma is a hard sell. That’s the honest truth because the way I see it, we all bleed the same; we are all searching for the same things; we all possess the same desires and even for those most fortunate, the world is a cruel place. I never want to contribute to its hardness. I’ve made mistakes and I’m no where near perfect but, this year failed me, not the other way around. This year, I saw MY true colors, and ya know what?

I’m a fucking delight. 

I think the only way I could really fail this year is if I were to remain silent in my story. I have written my story a hundred times in my head, and gone over the scenario of sharing it just as often. It’s terrifying. Sharing this in a public way is truly daunting but it’s what I must do now because this is a time in which we need stories of resilience the most and because I honestly have nothing left to lose. Sharing this is the beginning to my happy ending, and it’s exciting that the big grand finale hasn’t happened yet. Where I failed this year was by getting distracted from my true purpose. The way the system ripped through my life isn’t unique to me, as well we all know from tuning in to the world. I am a privileged, educated, white woman, and the amount of doors that have been closed to me for crimes I didn’t commit are outrageous, and if it happened to me just imagine what communities of color and hardship are experiencing. One of the most difficult things I experienced when getting out of jail was survivor’s guilt. I have a family that showed up, drove and flew with checkbooks open across state lines, whose resources kept me from living as a felon or worse, spending years behind bars. But I met so many along the way that don’t have any support, that were alone in their fight for justice in a system they could never win against. 

I want to let go of the fear of sharing my story for them; for the pregnant woman who shared the bunk next to me because she was arrested in her home for allegedly stealing a pair of sunglasses and being picked up because her name came up on facial recognition software, for the woman who called the police for domestic violence and ended up being the one arrested and not having a soul in the world to pay her $300 bail, for the woman I shared an inhumanly small, cold, dark box with in the back of a van, who I worked together with while we were both shackled at our wrists and ankles to get my socks over her arms for some warmth. She was a nurse that was arrested at her work and was being transported from wherever we were in North Carolina to South Florida for an alleged fraud check less than $1000. I was told I was fortunate that my extradition trip was only 30 hours… she was looking at about a week in that dark, impossibly small, cold box. I am sharing my story for the woman I showered next to with track marks, for the one who had just given birth to have her baby taken away 8 days later. For everyone who has or hasn’t committed crimes and is being systematically taken apart piece by piece. I don’t know what my story, my voice has to add yet, but I will no longer be silent about it. To all the people who showed up for BLM, for George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, to rise up in a non-violent way against police brutality and justice reform, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Up until now, the fear and pain was too fresh to join you in any other way than my vote, which in my heart I know was only the better choice of two wrong sides. I am here now, ready to share and help in the cause in what small way I can while I’m still trying to secure the life mask to my own face. 

If my story has helped one, single person to feel a little stronger, to feel like they aren’t alone, it was worth facing the fear, and doing it anyway. And if there is one thing I’d like you to take away from my story, it is to have the courage to remain soft, to have true compassion, in a hard, hard world. 

If you’d like to share my story, or point me in the right direction on how to share in meaningful ways, or just help me find the best ways to show up, it is greatly welcomed. In the meantime I will be resting, recuperating, researching, and painting my way back to the light. Thank you for listening. 

amandaseckingtonart@gmail.com