Groundhog Day Part Two

Without a doubt, the Number One feeling repeated daily in prison is the sense of abandonment felt by inmates.  While some of the examples listed in my previous Groundhog Day post can be viewed in a comical light, it’s hard to do in this case.   I believe I can offer insight on this topic due to my job as prison librarian. 

Hmm, you may be thinking, there is a tenuous link at best between being a librarian and understanding inmates’ feelings.  The best way to explain is to think of the bartender at your favorite watering hole.  People will belly up to the bar and talk, pour out their hearts even.  We don’t have a bar in prison, so the library help desk serves the same purpose.  Guys just want someone to listen and I’m there every day, a sitting duck.  It’s probably easier to unburden yourself to a guy you barely know in the library than to your cubemate that you see every day.  It’s also confidential.  Just one of those unwritten prison rules.  Librarians, food service staff, orderlies – those of us who hear and see a lot – don’t talk about it unless we want to become outcasts.

So what have I learned while handing out books, magazines, and newspapers to my fellow inmates?  The main theme, a sense of abandonment, runs deep, and some of the stories I hear are heartbreaking.  You’d probably expect that, but what you might not anticipate is that most inmates understand.  It hurts, but they can make sense of the reasons why people on the outside have severed ties.  That doesn’t make it any easier for guys who have not seen their wives, children, parents or siblings in years.  They see others go out to the visitation room or receive letters or make phone calls, yet no one ever visits or writes or accepts a call from them.  They all remember someone that they thought would stand by them, but didn’t.   

Even so, nobody seems to blame that person; instead they tend to take out their anger on the government or society in general.  To a man (myself included), everyone seems to have the feeling that our society doesn’t care what happens to us.  All the prison rules and regulations seem designed to create impediments to rehabilitation.  It’s our country, we feel, that has really abandoned us.  As a result, you hear a lot of, “I’m going to make it in spite of THEM!”  “THEY can’t keep me down!” and “I’m not going to let THEM beat me!”  That attitude can become just one more aspect of our endless repetitive routine, the same angry words repeated day after day. 

But I’ve begun to realize that this same attitude may be the key to escaping our Groundhog Day existence.  If you can turn that sorrow, that frustration, that sense of abandonment into productive endeavors meant to improve yourself, if you can channel a combative US versus THEM mentality into some effort to grow despite all the obstacles of prison life, then there can seem to be an end in sight.  In prison language, “you gotta do your time, not let it do you!”  That is how we can escape while still behind bars, find some freedom in our captivity.  After all, whether we have support from the outside or not, inside all we have is the guy we see reflected in the stainless steel mirror.