Day to Day

Prison is different than what you fear it will be like. Every day you experience a new depravity, every night your soul dries out even more.

Given the choice - I would have taken the slow torture over the instant impact of a bullet to the head, or the convulsing of an electric chair. But after a taste of what seemed to be easier - a violent death would be much more humane and tolerable.

As you wake every morning, your reality is like being thrown overboard into an Arctic ocean as dark as it is cold. Just moments before - Your mind had you fooled: within a dream world, filled with dream people, a place vastly better than the real world you live in.

It takes a moment for it to sink in. You sit up in your 'bed', a plastic foam mat stuck to cold concrete and steel. You never get comfortable on it, just numb enough to nod off late at night.

Your first thoughts are of all the people you love.  When you start doing time - you feel sad for them, because you are gone. But as the calendar pages fly off the wall, you start to feel sad for yourself, because you are gone, as they begin to forget that you ever were.

Every voice you hear or conversation you have is with someone as infected with despair as you are. You eat near rapists, sleep near murderers, live amongst thieves. The guards hired to maintain order, prey on you with equal parts contempt and hostility. Prison is a boiling cauldron of evil, violence, shame, fear, filth and then death.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result. Prison is doing the same thing over and over, knowing nothing will ever change.

At the end of the day as you try to fall asleep, alone, every night - you are haunted by the most numbing part of the whole experience. This was the meal you ordered.