It’s safe to say that the former The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City star turned convicted felon Jen Shah is not having a “shah-mazing” time in federal prison.
In July, Shah was sentenced to 78 months (six and a half years) in prison for her role in a nationwide telemarketing scheme that defrauded hundreds of victims, many of them elderly.
Last month, the former reality star began serving her time at the Federal Prison Camp in Bryan, Texas, a minimum-security women’s prison two hours north of Houston.
In a lengthy statement posted to her Instagram Thursday, Shah shed some light on the “nightmare” of her new life behind bars.
Recalling the “horrible” day she reported to prison, Shah recounted her tearful final moments with her husband and son and the “anxiety attack” she experienced on having to leave them behind.
“I don’t know how I am going to do this,” the Bravo alum wrote.
Jen Shah recounts ‘desperate’ last moments of freedom
In her Instagram statement, Shah recalled the “surreal” morning of Friday, February 17, when she reported to FPC Bryan to start her prison sentence.
Two miles away from the prison, Shah wrote that she “could not breathe” and her hands went numb. “I knew I was having an anxiety attack.”
“My worst fear and the unimaginable was about to happen,” the former Housewife wrote.
Video footage from the day captured Shah’s entourage pulling up to the prison in a white SUV.
The former Housewife could be seen embracing her husband, University of Utah football coach Sharrieff Shah, and her youngest son Omar, 19, in the prison’s parking lot before she was escorted away.
Recalling those moments, Shah wrote that she wanted to remember her husband’s “embrace, his smell, his touch.”
“As we hug and tears fall, we desperately clutch on to this last moment,” the Bravo alum wrote.
Inside Jen Shah’s ‘nightmare’ new life behind bars
Presumably written from prison, Shah’s statement described her new life behind bars as a waking “nightmare.”
“I feel like I don’t belong here,” the former Housewife wrote. “I thought I could do this but I’ve decided I can’t.”
A handbook for inmates at FPC Bryan offers some insights into Shah’s decidedly unglamorous new life as a ward of the state.
As well as giving up her designer clothes and jewelry for a khaki prison uniform, the former Housewife must now start every morning with a 6 AM wakeup call.
The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City is currently on hiatus.