One Day at a Time

So, it’s been a minute since I sat down to write.  The reason?  It’s hard to explain, but let me take a shot at it.  On the surface, it’s just that I’ve been keeping myself busy – organizing Spanish language classes and such – and while that’s an excuse, there’s more to it.

Really it’s because when you sit down to write a blog post about life in prison, you have to open your eyes to the reality of being here, and sometimes what you prefer to do is just slog through your day like the whole experience is just a bad dream and not think about anything too much.  There are times when you just don’t have it in you to get smacked in the face by the harshness of your situation.

So you stay busy and engaged in activity, you sleep when you can, get up and do it again.  Before you know it, another day, another week, another month has passed.  That works for awhile, until one day you reach the point where enough is enough, you put on your headphones, head out to the yard, stand there looking around at the concrete block walls and admit to yourself, “Yep, I’m still in Fucking Prison!”

That’s when things get rough.  Now you dwell on your captivity, you try to walk your way through it, but every step it’s just the guilt, the shame, the embarrassment, the pain.  You put on sunglasses to hide the tears (much like Baseball, there is no crying in prison).  It’s all just one more way you punish yourself.

And I’ve learned that eventually you cycle out of that funk too.  Yes, you’re still in prison, man.  Nothing has changed (nothing ever changes).  You can’t control much in here, but you can control your own behavior.  You face up to the negative feelings, you respect them for their power, and you move on.  You lie down to sleep and understand that you’ve made it through another day.  One day closer to freedom.

Because the main thrust of it all is that you cannot, you will not, let it break you.  You lie there and find a way to forgive yourself one more time, for the millionth time, and eventually it sinks in.  You can do this.  You dust yourself off and get back in the fight.

An old man here who is nearing the end of a lengthy sentence often comes to the track to jog.  He can do 3-4 miles with that old man shuffle.  He’s in great physical shape for his age.  One day I asked him, “How many laps do you plan to do today?”

He answered, “One.”

“What do you mean, one?  I’ve seen you do 10, 12, 15 laps before.”

“Yeah.  Well you see I do one lap.  Then if I make it, I do another lap.  Eventually, one lap at a time, I’ve run three miles.”

He was trying to tell me something from his deep wisdom as an old-timer.  “It’s like life in lock up,” he said.  “You do one day.  Then, if you make it, you do another day.  And then one day you’ll be home.”

So here I am, back to writing.  Got one day to get through….