Breaking Free: A Mother Son Journey From Addiction, To Prison, To Redemption

By Vincent Maertz and Anne Maertz

A heartbreaking and heroic detail of a son's journey through a life of addiction and prison, with a mother's perspective from the outside.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vincent Maertz
• Release date: Nov 22, 2018

Book preview

Breaking Free

Copyright, ©2014 Vincent Maertz, Anne Maertz 

Foreword

I met Vince Maertz during the most chaotic time of my life. I was strung out, full of hate, and hovering on the line between despondency and apathy. Vince and I were rivals, co-conspirators, and friends. The night he was arrested, I remember feeling outraged for the stupidity that caused him to be put in chains. But in the meth world, out of sight is out of mind and when Vince went inside, my life continued to spiral and our friendship became a fond memory to occasionally revisit.

Eventually, I went to a 13-month treatment program and engaged the opportunity I was blessed with to change my life. I wasn't allowed to access social media during that time, so when I got out and made the transition to ministry school, I looked Vince up and saw that he had been prolifically writing alongside his mother on the blog Breaking Free.

Imagine my surprise when I saw that my angry friend Vince had the soul of a poet, and the story-telling (and grammar) skills to display it.

This book, based on the blog, is significant in that it vividly portrays the daily life of a prisoner and teaches that rarely is a prisoner doing his time alone. In the following pages you will see that redemption is not an immediate process, nor is it a process that costs nothing. The following pages will reveal to you the raw heart of a hurting mother, the thawing soul of an addicted son, and the journey they took hand in hand towards what is, in my opinion, one of the great stories of transfiguration to be told to date.

There is hope to be had for those brave enough to engage the journey to find it.

Anthony Byrne. November 2018

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Introduction

This book represents collected entries from Breaking Free, originally published in blog format. In general, the posts alternate between mother and son as authors. They chronicle observations on daily life in prison, the Prison Industrial Complex, mandatory minimum drug sentencing, what led one man to prison, what it’s like being his mom on the outside, the family disease of addiction. It conjectures on the causes of, solutions to, and meaning of it all. Besides the obvious prison reference, the title Breaking Free refers to the suggestion that anyone can find contentment and even happiness, even someone in prison, even someone whose kid is in prison. Anne would say she has lived life to the max. Vince will avoid that reference.

About the Authors

Anne Maertz lives in St. Paul, Minnesota and works for an international human rights organization. Vince Maertz was incarcerated in a state prison, also in Minnesota. They began co-blogging as a project they could work on together, to give themselves a voice, and to provide an outlet through which they could vent their fears, hopes, shame, amusement, and bemusement.

Thanks and Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank their copy editor, Erin Kessler; their technical advisor, Farhad Anklesaria; and the many readers who have followed them on their journey from addiction, to prison, to redemption.

Selected Comments on the Blog

I sit down every day at my computer and can’t wait to read the next post and feel ashamed of myself for pre judging and assuming that Vince wouldn’t be able to write so well. This is an amazing story and so well written. - Jane

I want to say something smart, but this is all I can come up with … I read all that you’ve shared with gratitude that you’re not silent. Thank-you for your blog. I read every post. Your and Vince’s insight keeps me thinking, on my toes, and hopeful. - Sarah

For months I have been reading your blog~sometimes reading posts more than once so I knew I wasn’t missing anything. Thank you for providing insight to prison. (my fiancé is there also) It has helped me tremendously. - Becky

I’m hooked—can’t wait to read the next post! - Andrew

What a great project and what courage to be real on the internet with such a painful real life situation. - Debbie

You are an amazing story teller. You should continue to write. - Connie

Just made time to read the most recent entries on your blog & wanted to write how much hope, humility, inspiration & love shone out of your entries. - Rachel

I was beyond moved while reading what you and Vince have written. You have owned your stories—as individuals and as a family—in a way that most of us aspire to. The cycle of abuse is nearly impossible to break, yet you did it. - Kristi

Both mother and son are insightful and relentlessly honest. Kudos to both of you. - Debra

You are living an authentic life. Wish more people could share the realness of their true life experiences. There would a lot less shame, and more answers on how to manage through trauma. - Joni

St Cloud

My Name is Vince

-Vince-

My name is Vincent.

What the fuck is a Blog? Since nobody here knows the answer to that, I’m going to assume it’s yet another internet based form of impersonal communication. I can get down with that.

As I sit here contemplating exactly what to write, I notice my roommate out of the corner of my eye punch his towel repeatedly, exhaling through his teeth to make a noise like you might hear in a movie or a video game. He’s super pissed that he missed the bake sale so the towel gets punished. It’s ok. I thought I heard the towel talkin’ shit earlier anyhow.

This is prison life. Live from St. Cloud Men’s Reformatorium, B House North, Galley 11, Cell #167. I am Vincent 244296.

Phone Calls of Shame

-Anne-

Editor’s … er, mom’s note: I don’t know what the bake sale is. Was there really a bake sale in St. Cloud state prison? Or is it code for something? Is Vince delusional? Or is it just his sense of humor? There’s no way to ask him. I can’t call him. I could ask him in an email, which he would receive in a couple days. He can’t email me back, and the chances of either of us remembering to discuss this in one of our infrequent 10-minute phones call is slim. And it’s just not that important. So you will have to live with some lack of clarity, just as I have for years.

****

When I found out Vince would be going to prison, I thought the obvious way to avoid the dreaded collect calls would be to move to another country.

The calls go like this: An unknown number shows up on my phone. When I answer, a cheery computerized female voice begins, You have a collect call from… then my son’s voice would interject his name, Vince. Then a different, condemning, shaming voice would say, …an inmate in the Ramsey County Adult Detention Center, or Woodbury Workhouse, or Crow Wing County Jail, or wherever he was.

OK, you might not hear the shaming tone but I do.

The cheerful voice returns and informs me that I will be charged $9.99 for 10 minutes, that the call will be monitored, and that this service is provided by Prison Corporation of America. As if it was some patriotic public service, not a scam to rake in billions from a (literally) captive audience and their desperate loved ones. To accept this call, press 1. To refuse this call, press 2. To permanently block calls from this number, press 3.

Vince hadn’t been incarcerated for over 10 years, he had reminded me a few months before. While in his late teens and early 20s, he had been locked up multiple times so that’s how I knew what to expect with the phone calls. But the earlier experiences had been short stints for minor offenses, and the calls then had come from jails. Now he was looking at up to five years in a prison. A prison. That sounded so much worse than a jail. My expectations had been steadily going downhill for years, but this was different; big.

He hadn’t been incarcerated for 10 years, but he had hit the skids every couple of years. The last time, about two years earlier, he had lost his job and, since he lived so close to the edge of subsistence, quickly lost his apartment and all his possessions—right down to his underwear and toothbrush.

Fortunately, I had been 9,000 miles away, working for a human rights organization in Nairobi, Kenya. I was concerned about him, but there was nothing I could do —and being surrounded by people who were risking their lives by confronting corrupt police, or organizing LGBT activists, or just trying to avoid being kidnapped by El Shabab on their way home from work, put things in perspective.

So this time, when he was facing four charges of selling heroin, meth, cocaine, and marijuana with a potential 11-year sentence, I immediately applied for a job in Turkey with an organization based in Los Angeles. I figured if I played my cards right I could work in Turkey for four years, travel all over Europe and Asia from there and send Vince a lot of cool postcards, then return to work in L.A. I had it all figured out.

So when I got back to my desk after a meeting and saw I had a call from an L.A. number, I thought Hurrah! it was them calling for an interview. For a moment I thought things would actually pan out as I had planned. I was floating toward the emergency exit.

But instead it was You have a collect call from…

Bob Barker World

-Vince-

Day 1. Nearly 13 days after my pronounced sentence of 50 months is handed down to me, I am finally chained up, put into an Olmsted County Sheriff's van, and driven through Shakopee to St. Cloud. About a four-hour trip (we stopped to drop of female prisoners at Shakopee Correctional Facility).

I’ll skip the intake procedure. But it is nowhere near as invasive as I thought it would be.

An hour after my arrival I’m in my new home. A 6×10 foot combo of cold steel and concrete. I unpack my pillow case which holds everything I need to survive, kind of.

3 pair state-issued stretch pants that resemble blue jeans

6 pair tighty whities

6 pair socks

5 white Ts

3 blue button-up long-sleeve shirts

3 white towels

1 washcloth

Sheet and blanket

And the following Bob Barker products:

Maximum Security Brand 3-in-1 shampoo, shave, and body wash - My advice: don’t use it for anything I just mentioned. I can’t believe it doesn’t say, Made with real pine!

Deodorant, a size so small I’ve never even seen in it a Dollar Store. No scent.

A 4.4 ounce tube of something labeled Mint Paste. I’ll assume it’s for teeth because it’s next to the Safety Brush, which is 4 inches long and flexible so you can’t sharpen it and stab somebody, or brush your teeth.

A 3 inch flexible pen. Take your standard Bic pen. Throw away everything except the very middle, then cut that in half. Here we pick paint off the walls and wrap it around that until it becomes useful for writing.

All set up now. My first move, grab the 3-in-1 and a razor (forgot that) and go to town on my month-old beard.

Half an hour later, my wash cloth is covered in blood and hair. And I’m not done. I’ve left a patch of hair on my chin because that’s what all the kids are doing these days. That’s when it hits me. I look in the safety mirror and for the first time in my life, I see age. And I realize how much time I’ve wasted. I’m not a kid anymore. I’m a beat up, 35-year-old con, washed up unsuccessful drug dealer and addict. And I cry. Fuck my life.

The last time I cried was about 7 months ago. It happened about a week and a half after I was arrested. I had slept off the drugs, something struck me funny and I laughed out loud. And I wondered if I could remember the last time I had done that. Then everything came flooding out.

****

I don’t meet my first roommate until the next day because he is gone on a writ of Corpus Christi, or something like that. (It’s actually called a writ of habeas corpus, Latin for You may have the body. Creepy, right?) He’s exactly my age, fairly down to earth, and in for 5 years on a DUI. We talk. We get along. My first big hurdle. He gives me the rundown on how things work in E House, the intake unit.

Basically, imagine prison, and then don’t change anything. That’s what you can expect for your first 30 days. That goes for every male in the State of Minnesota; everybody goes to E House in St. Cloud for classification and orientation.

Locked in my cell for the entire day except for three 15-minute meals (3,300 calories per day), and maybe a flag period of no more than 50 minutes where we scramble to use the phone, shower, and try to communicate with the Corrections Officers. The C.O.s have a tough job, that’s why they’re assholes.

The only other times we get out are for passes, i.e. going to the infirmary, dentist, or caseworker.

He teaches me how to make dominoes, dice, and chess pieces, all from toilet paper. They’re actually quite functional. He has been stuck in E House for 45 miserable days when he’s finally called to move. Lucky bastard.

****

-Anne-

When I tell my therapist that Vince is in his cell 23 hours a day, she says, But, on TV they show prisoners sitting around in a big common area, watching TV and hatching their schemes. I have always avoided watching TV shows about prisons and drug dealers. I think a TV show about a guy sitting in a cell 23 hours a day would make for pretty poor drama, was my analysis.

Feeling Like Florida

-Anne-

Would I really move to Turkey just to avoid the shame factor of phone calls from prison? There’s more to it, of course.

Once you are actually talking to your loved one, the call is of such poor quality and they speak so softly, that you can barely make out what they’re saying. Why the poor quality? Shouldn’t $1 a minute buy you some top-notch connection, considering that I can call England for 1 cent a minute, or free with Skype, and it sounds like I’m in the room with my friend? A great deal of time is wasted by me asking Vince, What ? I can’t hear you–say that again!

They speak softly, or at least my son does, because he is surrounded by men he wouldn’t want thinking he’s a pussy if they overheard him expressing some real emotion.

Then, the call is fraught with tension because you’re keenly aware that you’ve got to say everything in 10 minutes, and you’ve got no idea when you might be able to talk again. There’s all the baggage from the past, the urge to say, You idiot! and I’m so scared for you! and My heart is breaking and You’d better fucking figure it out this time! all at once.

There are the logistical questions you need to cover, like what is the actual sentence, when you’ll be eligible for parole, is this the facility where you’ll be for the duration or will they move you?

And of course you are aware that some redneck cop-wanna-be prison guard may be listening to the call.

On this first call he actually had some things to say that I’d been waiting seven years to hear.

It feels like a dream now, that conversation. Like he was under water, his voice so low I only caught half the words. I know he said, Mom, I know I’m done. I’m done with all those things I was doing that got me in here. He went on, and from the tone of his voice I could tell he was confiding something big…but I couldn’t make out his words.

He had been sober for five years, then relapsed seven years before now. Since his plunge from sobriety he had held me at arms’ length, saying things like, You’re going to have to accept my lifestyle, mom, or you just won’t see me. His lifestyle: drinking a case of beer and bottle of whiskey a day and—this was clear to me now—using all the drugs he’s been charged with possess ing: meth, heroin, pot, and cocaine.

I could only make out a handful of his words. Then I caught a whole sentence, I haven’t felt this way since Florida. Florida, where he had lived in a halfway house for a year after four months at Hazelden, his third shot at treatment. Where he had been on medication for bipolar disorder. I just want to get back to Florida. It was like Florida was a state of mind as much as a place.

You can! I exclaimed, You can go anywhere because you’re a cook and you can get a job in 5 minutes.

I don’t know if I want to be a cook any more, Mom.

I had a thought but bit my mom-tongue from saying, You could finish your degree in prison! You could become a lawyer! I also didn’t ask, Are you going to AA, Have you seen a psychiatrist? or Do they have a good library there? or any other mom-like questions.

I wanted answers but asking could annoy and alienate him, I knew from experience. The 10 minutes were up. We said our I love yous.

I almost wished he’d never call again.

Katie

-Vince-

December 2013

I had just come into contact with an old acquaintance I’ll call Katie after several years of no communication. We used to get high together back when she was still in high school. That and the fact that her father is/was a priest always made me smile.

Although we were never romantically involved, I spent time with her, teaching her the proper ways of my little-known side job. There used to be only two ways to do things. The right way, or the way that could get you killed by Mexicans or bikers. I taught her the right way. Little did I know that would all come into play 8 years later.

Katie had recently cut off her ankle bracelet and become a fugitive. My kind of girl. We hooked up on Facebook and started talking on the phone. I wasn’t interested in hiring at the time so I kept my business hidden, but she was fun to get high with.

I was bouncing around from hotel to hotel because I could afford to, and because it wasn’t safe to stay in one place more than 2 nights.

December 19, 2013, sometime just before midnight

As evidenced by the fact that Katie had called for a ride from a boyfriend, I came to the conclusion that she still had no desire to sleep with me. What I didn’t know, was how her ride would change everything in our lives forever.

December 20, 2013, just after midnight

Katie says her ride is outside the hotel. We say goodbye. Thirty seconds later, pounding on my door. She’s back. The car and occupants that came to pick her up are surrounded by police, she tells me. I turn on the police scanner I have downloaded on my phone. First thing I hear is, …at the Super 8 South. Shit, that was here. I knew I had all the shite hidden from view but that was all I remember thinking about.

Katie gets a call. It’s her ride. He says he’s been pulled over. What we don’t know is that he had told the officers that Katie had a D.O.C. warrant, was in Room 141, and she had meth.

Five minutes pass.

KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK!

****

-Anne-

I did the math and reckoned Katie was around 10 years younger than Vince. No saint, but I hoped I’d never run into her parents. Not for the first time, I counted myself lucky to not have a daughter, because she probably would have turned out like Katie, with all the additional perils that come with being a young woman.

Filling Space

-Vince-

August 3, 2014, 8:40 p.m.

My roommate has aspirations to become a M.M.A. fighter. Would you like to know how I can tell? Well. Yesterday after a short flag, he came back in the cell and yelled, You call that a workout?! and promptly punched the wall. Then the poor towel.

He’s an angry man. Every time he hears someone breathing heavily on the weights that are just below us on the bottom tier, he rushes the 6 feet over to the bars to see what’s going on. Always shirtless, he picks them apart. Much like I’m doing right now, to avoid talking about my problems. Yep, he’s a fuckin’ douche bag.

9:30 p.m.

Another weekend of boredom done. With minimal staff, we have no work, no school, recreation, or activities. Plenty of church available, though! So I spend my weekends reading. I have read quite a lot since I arrived in St. Cloud. I have not gone much further than Tim Dorsey and Dean Koontz, but that is much broader a selection for me than before I got to prison. I am almost to an average of a book a day at an average of 300 pages. I think that’s pretty damn good.

Busted

-Vince-

I talked to an investigator for the Olmsted County Public Defender ’s Office last week. Now that I have been sentenced, Katie and I are no longer banned from communicating with each other. Part of my plan. This also means that I am allowed to testify on her behalf during her trial. D.A. didn’t see me coming! I plead down to 2nd degree possession, which means technically that I’m not a drug dealer. Since she is charged with the same crimes as me, and double jeopardy can’t apply to me, I can finally take the rap for all of the dope. Something I probably should have done back in December, but, we don’t talk to cops. If they want to put people away, make ’em work for it.

COPS, technically an acronym, Constable on Patrol. I don’t know if cop has become an actual word in the English language yet.

KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK!

Katie ____, open up! R.P.D!

Katie and I stare at each other with blank expressions. She’s not ready. But there’s little choice. She has a D.O.C. warrant. She has to go if I stand a chance. We say our goodbyes. She opens the door and shuts it behind her. Two minutes later, more knocking.

Pissed off, I open the door. I say, What?

Can you step outside and talk with me, please? says the officer. I should have said no. I don’t know why I did a lot of things the way I did that night. But I stepped out. Big mistake. With my back turned, Katie asks if she can go in the room and get her purse. A cop says, yeah. Flashlight searching high and low for the purse on the bed, a cop spots a tiny bag of weed on the floor I had dropped earlier. Fuck! The other cop comes out and asks for my consent to search the room. And for whatever reason I will never know, I say, Go ahead and search. Ugh.

For fuck sake, who ever would look up in a light fixture when looking for dope? Everybody. Especially the cops. Out in the lobby I am casually chatting with officer Lou, who had pulled me over the week before for speeding and let me go, and the officers come out and say, Who wants to go to jail? I raise my hand. The cuffs go on. Booked in for 1st degree sale of methamphetamine.

Only murder is higher up in our state as far as sentencing. That’s right. Selling more than 10 grams of meth within 90 days in the State of Minnesota is punishable by up to 30 years in prison. Most first-time sex offenders are given probation. Granted, 30 years is for the most extreme meth cases, but all 1st degree controlled substance crimes carry mandatory minimum sentences. Fuck my life.

****

Dear Vince:

I am looking through old photos of you—having a water fight with your auntie in grandma’s backyard, at the lake, at your Montessori preschool, you and your little friends in that subsidized housing project we were living in that had a million kids your age, me spinning you on one of those twirling rides at a playground, birthday parties with my terrible lumpy cakes (but I did try!), a seder at the Levine’s, religious school (and you are smiling!), camping, birthday pinatas, your Big Brother, weddings, playing in the snow, doing your homework, you doing your volunteer dog walking at the humane society, at Paul Bunyan Land feeding a tame deer, another birthday cake decorated like a baseball (by me, the least sporty person I know!), Halloween costumes, you feeding your new cousin a bottle, our trips to Chicago and New York and Seattle, pet cats, Disney World, posing with your uncle for Boy Scouts, your aunt dressed in a gorilla suit for your 15th birthday surprise party.

And then the photos stop, until you came back from Hazelden and Florida when you were … 21?

You would think I would just stop caring by now, or as grandma says, Just don’t think about it. She’s always said that, about anything unpleasant, not necessarily about you. I wish I could.

I think I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t ask myself, What was I missing in all those photos? He looks healthy. He’s smiling in a lot of them. Should I have seen some signs—gotten him to a shrink? Should I have been more strict? Less strict? Was it because we were broke for so long and lived on Ramen and went to food shelves? Was it because I was depressed for so many years—would a child take that as neglect and think it was his fault? Was it the whole awful chapter with [abusive alcoholic but filthy rich ex boyfriend I’ll call Kermit]? I take complete responsibility, being desperate to get married and have more kids, at the expense of exposing you to domestic abuse and all sorts of inappropriate shit? Was it how I stupidly told you about the brother you didn’t know you had, thinking it would cheer you up, which backfired? God, what an idiot I was!

Maybe I should have never told you how I smoked pot and drank in high school, trying to warn you against them. Again, my parenting backfired, when later you told me you took that as a sign that you could drink and smoke, since I had turned out ok. (Ha!)

I know you’ve said you were over not having a father but maybe you really aren’t? I think you tell me what you think I want to hear.

Or is your addiction mostly genetics? Me passing down my alcoholic/addict father’s genes to you, loaded with your father’s alcoholic/addict genes?

Do you really have Bipolar Disorder, as Hazelden diagnosed you? Are the drugs and booze medication?

I can hear you saying, Oh, mom. You’ve rarely talked to me about any of this, so I don’t know if you’ve ever given it a thought or if you even think you have a problem.

I hope it is not too awful there. I hope you’ll take advantage of whatever resources they offer. I hope you know that I love you, no matter what—always will, always have. You have dug your way out of some very deep pits and you’ll do it again. You probably don’t feel young anymore but from my perspective you are so you’ve got time to rebuild.

I Love you,

Mom

Boy of Summer

-Vince-

August 4, 2014

Twenty-eight full days in St. Cloud prison. I don’t feel cured yet. But I’m working on it. I have applied for every available job, college class, and early release program. No reply. But I have a lot of time. I am clearly going to need to work on patience. If I try to make things move faster than they do, I will become frustrated and I need to work on letting others make my decisions for a while. See if that makes me better. I hope it does. Twenty-eight days down, 1,472 to go. Yep, I’ve got time.

Another Monday, another day without mail. Mail is the high point of the day for any offender. Our link to the outside world. No matter. Today, and two more times this week, I get to go to the ball diamond. To elaborate, it’s more than a ball diamond. The outdoor rec area consists of the diamond, a football field, a soccer field, a ropes course, two handball courts, two full length basketball courts, and a perimeter track.

Turns out the ropes course is actually just a bunch of razor wire to prevent escape. None of the guards laugh when I ask if I can try it out. Oh, there’s the standard goose-shit-filled pond too.

As it turns out, I’m not as limber, fast, strong, or accurate as I used to be. However, I’ve always had a pretty easy time with base/softball. Today I went 2 for 3 with two triples that went all the way to the fence. I had four putouts, and recorded 1 throwing error. I’ve done quite well in one way or another, every time I go out there. Every time gaining strength and agility. I’ll be in shape in no time. Something has to burn off the 3,300 calories we get here. We won 13-12.

Best part of today. I was bored over at 3rd base. I looked