“But when it matters, no one is watching….All the futility, the small cruelties, the refusal to see us as fully human-it was not a flaw in the system. Sure, there is a rulebook and there are things you cannot do,” she writes. Her habit continued until her senior year at Cornell, when she was arrested for possessing what was falsely reported as “$150,000 of smack.” Following her arrest, Blakinger spent years in the prison system, where she not only got sober, but also received a firsthand education in the savage inhumanity of the American carceral system. When her figure-skating partner abruptly quit their doubles team, her skating career collapsed, plunging her into persistent depression, which she tried to address with drugs, eventually turning to heroin. However, her academics and athleticism concealed darker truths: an eating disorder and suicidal tendencies. Growing up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Blakinger was a good student and promising figure skater who had dreams of competing at the highest level. An investigative reporter reflects on the time she spent in the prison system for a drug crime.
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