I worked at a Maximun Security prison for 2 years. This is the feelings and thoughts that I picked up from the convicts.
Locked up
I’m trapped! There is no escape, no release, no way out. All there is here is solid concrete walls, fences, and the smallest of a window. The window is my only connection to the outside world. I hate this window! It mocks me! It laughs at my scorn; at my punishment. It does nothing more than give me small glimpses of a world I once knew but am now no part of. It makes me long for the past, as well as for the future. I long for any time but the present; any place but this cell.
I am no longer a part of that world out there and I know it. I’m nothing more than a caged animal. Always pacing, always longing for better times. I’m shut away in this hole. I feel like a dark, dirty secret that everyone wants to hide. Perhaps that’s all that I am. I’m secret to be locked in a small, dark closet so everyone will forget me.
My routine; it rarely changes. It is the same always. It is always monotonous, rarely interesting, and barely tolerable. Who cares though right? I’m just a convict, nothing more and nothing less. That is what everyone has told me these past years so it must be true, right? No one cares about you when you are a convict. Even the guards don’t care. They’re just here to make money and go home. Some are here to make your life a living hell while they are at it.
The public doesn’t care, because in their eyes you are a monster or at least a very bad person. Who cares what happens to those kinds of people? No one, that’s who! Everyone out in the public has made mistakes too. This fact doesn’t cross their minds as they pass judgment on me and those like me though. It never does.
Contrary to popular belief, I am not a monster, or even a really bad person. I am a person just like everyone else in this world. That’s what a long to be treated like, a human being. Now, I’m not saying that there are not those kinds of people here as well, but not all of us are like that. No one wants to hear that though. No one wants to put forth the effort to find out who is and who is not. I don’t really blame them for this I guess. It is the safer way to go.
I’ve made mistakes. I’ll be the first to admit that. Some were small and well some….some mistakes of mine got me where I am today. I don’t want sympathy, and I’m not looking for mercy. But what I do want; what I am desperately seeking is human decency! That is all. I just want to be treated like a human. I don’t want to be treated like a monster or like an animal. Is that to much to ask for? I am starting to think so.
Every once in a while you find an officer that not only does their job, but treats you like a human. They treat you like your life still matters. They don’t usually last long though. Either someone runs them off, or they get burned out. Sometimes they leave on their own accord, going off to better jobs. Sometimes it is these people who make you realize that you are still human, not a worthless piece of shit. What a feeling; to feel like you matter again! It usually doesn’t last long though. How could it? Everyone else still treats you bad. You’re existence is still barely tolerable and you wake up every morning knowing where you are and that there is nothing that you can do to change it.
Sometimes your family comes to see you. Sometimes they send pictures, writes, that kind of stuff, but it is not the same. It’s heartbreaking not to be able to hold your lover every night, protect them, and love them the way that they deserve. It is unbearable to watch children grow up through pictures. You can’t hold them, tuck them in at night, help them with school, you know….simple things that everyone else takes for granted. I used to too until I came here. Now I don’t take anything for granted.
Every small privilege that I get I hold onto like it was gold. I don’t want to lose any of them. They are few and far between as is. You pretty much have to fight to get them so you really understand how special they are and you don’t want to lose them. Even things as simple as showers are priceless in here.
My every move is dictated by some rule or some officer. I can’t do anything without permission. It is not like out in the free world. But, then again I obviously didn’t function well in the free world or I wouldn’t be here. Prison is not about helping and rehabilitation. It is about punishment and retribution. To be rehabilitative it would have to show you how to function properly in the real world. It doesn’t happen. Perhaps that is why there is such a high turn over rate in prisons. It could be because they are not teaching us how to be a part of that world out there. They just turn us lose and say good luck. How do you go from having every step, every move, dictated to complete freedom? You can’t properly without help, without training. You don’t get these here, trust me. It keeps them in a job though I guess.
When I get out, if I ever get out, I want to function properly in that world out there. I don’t know if I will be able to though. I think that I will just hide. Live in the middle of no where, in the woods, by a lake, any place that is away from everyone else. I think that I like that idea. It seems like a good and safe idea to me. I long for that day. It is in my dreams at night, always just out of reach. Perhaps one day I will get it. Only time will tell.
As I said before, this is not a plea for sympathy. It is just a cry for human decency. I wanted you to realize that just because I am in this cell does not mean that I am an animal. I am a person, a living, breathing human being. I have feelings just like you and everyone else in the world. Please, never forget that! Just treat me like a human being, like my life still matters. That is all that I wish from this letter. And perhaps, to open your eyes to a small glimpse of what I live everyday. If I have accomplished any of these two things then this letter was not in vain.
Alicia Carden
