Tell me about prison....
Often
times I get this request when I join a group online, but never in
person. That's because I don't talk about my incarceration much unless
it is through the magic of the internet.
I have been asked to
actually speak at a couple of prison support meetings, I have certainly
been asked to join numerous prison support groups, and I get emails
quite often about people asking about prison.
Tell me about prison...
How do you answer that in 5 minutes or less? You can't.
That's
because there is just too much to talk about. And prison itself isn't
one long term, it often can be broken up into many phases. For example,
to me the time I spent wasn't just a long stretch at one place, I
bounced around to about 7 different prisons, many of those because I
was kicked out of one....
That still sounds weird, saying I was
kicked out of a prison. I guess it prepared me for being kicked out of
so any prison support groups. But in any case, because I had been
around a few prisons, the scenes changed. Some places were better than
others, some were nightmares. Then there is the mental aspect of it,
which for any person can change from one day to the next.
There
were days I really felt like I could make it, even days where I
welcomed the hell hole called prison...it was my home, for better or
worse.
But then there were days I felt either near insanity, or
suicidal. I wrote many journals about my time, and have shared lots of
it on many sites, if you are aware of my writings.
How can I
tell you about prison if I can't describe it? The easiest comment might
be something like, "it's hell". It's something that if asked, you would
try to degrade your experience so that you will convince people that
prison is NOT for anyone. Whether you are looking for pity or telling
the truth, that is likely what most would say.
If you are waiting for me to counter that, keep waiting......
Still,
in worst case scenarios, in order to survive you have to accept where
you are, and find someplace for comfort. If you don't then every day
will indeed be pure hell. This still won't change some people's day,
because let's face it, some prisons are absolutely horrible, and the
word "humanity" has nothing to do with that place.
For me to
tell you about prison would take far too long to explain. But let me
put it this way, if I was to go back and collect everything I wrote
about prison or my experiences while in jail or prison, it would be a
moundful of papers.
In my 15 months in county jail, I wrote
probably about 300-400 pages, whether journals, letters to ministries,
short stories, and poems. At LEAST 300-400 pages.
From the time
I entered the NC DOC system until I was released, I probably wrote
about 1000 pages. And some of you might laugh, or call me a liar. I
kept a decent journal, wrote tons of letters, and also made some money
writing poems for guys.
From the time of my release until now,
all my writing has been online. Because I can type much faster than I
can write, I know I wrote much more. On one site alone I have about
1100 posts, nearly all about a page long at least, many longer. Some
sites I have written as few as 2-5, most about 20-50.
Add on
to that my previous 3 projects of "Grades of Honor", all the documents
of prison issues I have written, the cards I have made, the blogs I
previously had, that might total to about 3000 pages, give or take a
hundred.
So, if I added it all up, I might have written about 4500 pages. And that only covers a part of my incarceration.
I
regret me throwing away my jail writings, but at that time I was
suicidal, and life was not pleasant. Some days felt good, others I
wanted to die. Maybe writing kept my sanity.
So be careful if you ask me to tell you about prison, you might get a novel.
Ciao,
AH