Hopeless

(Originally Posted on August 9, 2016)

"Despair is the only cure for illusion.  Without despair we cannot transfer our allegiance to reality - it is a kind of mourning for our fantasies.  Some people do not survive this despair, but no major change within a person can occur without it." - Philip Slater 

There’s a friend in the next cell I’ll call Michael.  Michael is a fish, he’s done less than three months of a 60-year sentence, and everything is still new and appalling.  Like all fish in a Southern penitentiary, he alternates from horror to indignation because he still thinks like a human being.  I like Michael, he has a generous heart and a smile that flashes often and unselfconsciously.  It’s hard not to stare at Michael’s eyes sometimes, and I’ve noticed the other veteran prisoners do it too. His eyes still have some light, which makes them conspicuous in the dark existence.

Michael has countless photographs of his wife, Emily, and his five-year-old daughter, Lisa, whom he worships.  Completely blind to the boredom of others, Michael loves to show off his family pictures, each of which comes with a litany I’ve heard repeatedly, but with patience as I know it comforts Michael to relive moments of love.

I cannot help but to feel protective of Michael, he’s really just a kid, gullible and vulnerable.  I try to teach him how to carry himself, and how to avoid being raped or taken advantage of by inmates or victimized by vindictive guards.  To his credit he listens but he cannot seem to let go of his childish belief in fairness, or acquire the art of numbness.  Some lessons can only be learned through experience.

Like everyone else who comes to prison with a hopelessly long sentence, Michael seems convinced that it isn’t over.  He ingenuously believes he will win a court appeal, that his sentence will be reduced to some sane number, and that he will be reunited with Emily and Lisa, who’ve promised to wait for him no matter what. If it’s pointed out to Michael that the good ole boys in charge of the Texas Court of Appeals reverse their fellow judge’s rulings in less than one percent of all cases, he waves this fact away with the swipe of his hand hastily explaining why HIS appeal is different and how the merits of HIS appeal are superior.  Which is pretty much what all nascent lifers say.

I refuse to discuss Michael’s foolish faith in the court system anymore because it irritates me, saddens me.  I see Michael’s future as clearly as if it has already happened.  I’ve witnessed his story unfold a hundred times.  Michael is nothing but a statistic; he just doesn’t realize it yet.

Lifers are usually housed together and most of them share a propensity to fabricate hope where there is none.  They all know or have heard of someone who has overcome the appeals process and found their way back home.  They revisit these tales over and over, emphatically nodding their heads in agreement with unspoken amens, blithely ignoring reality and the astronomical odds against winning the judicial lottery.

It discombobulates me how differently I think compared to my fellow lifers.  It’s true that I too once harbored some unrealistic fantasies about the appeals process, and I knew, I just KNEW I had more right to hope than most, including Michael, because unlike him, I was innocent of any crime.  That delusion was murdered of course but even when my hope was at its apex I had sense enough to temper it.  Well, perhaps I’m being generous in saying that, but years later I’ve lived through enough to stifle hope altogether.  That makes me an extreme minority.  Somehow even after their appeals fantasies are destroyed, many lifers find some new optimistic fallacy to invest their faith in, and it strikes me as nuts.  Why do they insist on banging their heads against castles in the sky?

The incorrigible argue that anything, absolutely anything can happen.  Laws change, tough on crime political fads are fickle and every once in awhile, even the Texas parole board gives birth to new policies. There seems to be no end to the illusions these lost men create to avoid what’s painfully apparent: most of us will die here.  As a last ditch effort, some lifers find religion.  They commit to their new beliefs fervently, praying to Allah or Jesus for another chance to go home, ready to attack anyone who would question or doubt their new hope.

One particularly obscene hope that makes its way through the penitentiary every few years, especially when more U.S. troops are sent to the Middle East, is that the military will soon offer to suspend prison sentences in exchange for enlistment.  There’s absolutely zero chance of that ever happening, as anyone with a lick of sense would know, but such is the nature of hope.  Suddenly you see large groups of inmates doing extra calisthenics on the recreation yard to get in shape for the armed forces fitness test that’s sure to come.  A man I tremendously admired and loved once fell hard for this absurdity.  He was by no means stupid, yet his innate optimism was boundless.  I argued with him daily, citing my own military background and knowledge; I used analogies and logic, angry assertion, and finally soulful pleading, but my wonderful friend remained enamored.  So emotionally invested was I that it felt like it was me who faced the crushing disillusionment sure to follow, rather than him.  Years later as I think back about that special man and the indelible optimist he was, I believe it may have been his relentless pursuit of hope, however foolish, that made me admire him the most.

And maybe it’s Michael’s misguided enthusiasm that attracts me to him; like a moth to a flame.  Not that I envy his incandescence, not even a little.  The brighter the light, the colder the darkness that follows.

I don’t know why it drives me crazy when people I care about in prison embrace such unrealistic aspirations or why I’m unable to generate such comforting delusions for myself.  Nor do I understand why I argue pointlessly, trying to convince them it’s far safer to practice acceptance instead of hope.  And that it’s more conducive to mental health to live in the moment, one breath at a time.

I tell myself that they are unwise, that they are wrong and I am right.  I tell myself that my frustration stems from my concern for them.  If I’m to be frank, I sometimes tell myself that I’m better than them, that they are criminals and I am innocent.  And I tell myself I am stronger than they are because I face the agonizing truth without fairy tale buffers.  I tell myself a lot of things I guess, but how can I be sure I’m not the one suffering a delusion?  Perhaps I’m really just a coward.  Doesn’t it take more courage to hope than to despair?  Might they be empowering themselves and living a more quality existence than I?  Maybe, but I’ve been burned by hope before and I cannot bring myself to go near that flame again.

By the time the letter came informing me that I had lost my appeal and that I would likely spend the rest of my life in the hell that is prison, I had saved up enough Thorazine to kill a horse, or not, because it sure didn’t kill me.  I thought I had executed the overdose perfectly:  I took two of the pills an hour before the rest so that I would be close to unconscious once I took the remaining two handfuls, and therefore preventing myself from vomiting out the drug before my system could absorb it.  I was successful in that I did manage to digest all of the Thorazine before they discovered me and pumped my stomach, but a week later I regained consciousness and my escape attempt failed.  My failure took all of the initiative from me and I couldn’t find the energy to try again.  But I didn’t exactly regain the will to live either.  I stopped eating and cleaning myself, I stared at walls for days without feeling anything.  After a few weeks of this existence prison officials caught on.  They strapped me down and force fed me through my nose, and then they locked me in a cage naked, with nothing but thin flesh and protruding bones to cushion me from the cold steel and unforgiving concrete.  I couldn’t lay down for more than a couple of hours as it was too painful.  I suppose that misery trumps despair because I began eating “voluntarily” again just so I could have some clothes and a thin mattress.  As time passed I never really made a conscious decision to live, but somehow it happened anyway, one breath at a time.

Suicide is far from uncommon in prison.  I cannot quote numbers or statistics, but I personally know seven men here who’ve successfully killed themselves, and have heard tell of at least another twenty that I’ve never met on this prison farm.  I’ll be conservative and say that at least 22 men have committed suicide in the past six years here.  There are more than a hundred prisons in Texas so you do the math.  I cannot tell you individually why so many prisoners kill themselves, but I can speculate with one quote from Benjamin Franklin: “He that lives on hope will die fasting.”

Had I refused to hope even a little as I do presently, I never would’ve fallen so low.  I hate to think of others experiencing the same demoralization, especially Michael.  Yet Michael faces a trial that I never had:  it’s not his quixotic aspirations of going home or even the malignant existence of prison that threatens Michael’s spirit the most – it’s the people who love him.

Like most lifers, Michaels’s friends and family will eventually desert him.  This is so common I can practically give a time-line and order of abandonment.  The lover always leaves first, be it girlfriend or wife (assuming she hasn’t been preceded by the friends, who rarely endure the arrest and trial.  The initial separation kills all but the most determined friendships and few friendships are described by the word “determined”).  I’m not sure why the lover is usually the first; romantic love may be the most intense love there is, yet it also appears to be the most brittle, and dependent upon companionship.  Even in the military, which is viewed in a much more positive light than prison, I saw many a love die.  Separation is merely one component of prison’s poison to relationships.  The stigmatization, the financial burden and the very antithesis of the lovers’ separate lives all aggravate the severance, and a life sentence butchers all hope of reunification.

The lover is usually gone before the first year of prison is over.  Secondary family like aunts and cousins are next, depending on how close the relationship was to begin with.  It’s true that an aunt or grandmother may send a card or money on Christmas well into a lifer’s sentence, but does a letter once a year signify love, or merely emphasize abandonment?

The siblings and father are usually gone by the fifth year, again depending on how close they once were.  That’s not to say they might not drop a letter once every few months out of some fading sense of duty, but as the years of separation grow obese, their hearts are no longer in it.  Much of the time it’s the mother who is last to abandon her son, sometimes until death.  But generally, by the time a man serves his twentieth year, he is completely alone and worthless.

Michael will experience all of this, but presently he’s on the honeymoon of his incarceration.  He receives mail almost everyday, he goes to commissary each time it’s allowed, he gets a two hour visit most weekends, and he spends a lot of time on the phone.  The veteran inmates know all of this is temporary, but the kids are always the last to see the end coming.  Michael would never believe me if I told him his family will forsake him, nobody wants to think of that.  Yet, I suspect the abandonment has begun.  Michael is already doing the phone drama with Emily.  One minute he’s shouting at her and the next he’s crying.  I don’t know the specifics of the conflict and it doesn’t really matter; they all shout and cry as they’re being left behind.  Emily and Lisa used to come visit two or three times a month, but it’s been eight weeks since they last came.  The last visit Michael will ever receive from his wife and daughter is coming very soon, it if hasn’t already happened.  The rest of his family haven’t shown any signs yet, but their last visit will come as sure as dusk. The letters will dry up with the phone calls and eventually Michael will be washing other inmate’s underwear for commissary.

There are some exceptions to this pattern of abandonment of course.  Some glorious exceptions actually.  I’ve seen guys do almost fifteen years and still get occasional visits from family including even the father and siblings.  And more amazing, there have even been some wives who’ve kept the faith.  I know one guy whose wife has come every weekend for 11 years, though this anomaly seems endangered because of his jealousy.  His wife recently confessed to a couple of affairs and he is not taking it well.  I told him he’s a fool; if someone loved me like that I wouldn’t waste a heartbeat begrudging her a tryst.  People have needs, they get lonely; does it truly matter what she does in her separate existence as long as she loves you and makes you a priority?  She endures the hopeless wait and you fault her for being human?  I want to shake some sense into him, but it’s his love to throw away.

I’ve heard tell of another guy whose wife stayed the course for twenty-eight years.  Twenty-eight years!  It’s unfathomable. A one-time romantic in my former life, it brings tears to my eyes just to imagine it.  But so rare are these cases they’re unworthy of wistful aspiration.

If you’re a wise lifer, you understand when someone you love finds somebody new, it’s not their fault you’re in prison.  But these kids are neither wise or understanding.  To them it’s betrayal plain and simple, and the ensuing bitterness hardens their heart.  I dread that for Michael because of how bright his light shines.  Despite the disdain I sometimes feel for his naïve hope, I find myself craving his presence.  I guess that subconsciously it makes me feel more alive.  When his torch is finally extinguished, I suspect my own vitality will darken some.

This inevitable abandonment of lifer inmates may strike some as cruel or unfair.  Perhaps there are people who will read this and reflexively deny that they’d ever abandon someone they love, even if that loved one were a prisoner.  Maybe you’re right and you’d be an exception, but consider this:  people change, and you’re not the same person you were ten years ago, you have new wisdom, beliefs and perspective.  Can you honestly predict who you’ll be twenty years from now?

There might even be some people who read this that have kept the faith with a loved one in prison and if so, I commend your loyalty and admire your tenacity.  But for those of you who’ve parted ways with someone you loved, I tell you there is no dishonor in following a natural course.  Change is inescapable, it’s the very definition of life.

Imagine if you will, two people that love each other deeply, they have shared laughter, joy, tears, profound experiences and their bond is strong.  Now imagine circumstances separating them for twenty years.  Consider the awkwardness of a possible reunion; it would be a meeting between two strangers.  Neither person is anything like they once were.  Change is constant for everyone but when we’re together, familiarity and companionship make the changes barely noticeable.  Apart however, we’re living an existence completely foreign to the other.  We cannot imagine the events, new relationships, and unique suffering that’s changing the other person’s whole personality.  Years pass and the person we once knew has a new life and relationships with people who understand and care about the person they are now rather than who they once were.

We place such an ideal on love in our culture than even I want to argue that separation cannot kill what’s in my heart if I truly love someone, even should twenty years pass.  I want to argue, but can I do it without being a hypocrite?  My son was born more than twenty years ago.  From the moment I first held him, freshly warm from his mother’s womb, I felt a love so sublime it overwhelmed me.  I still want to shout from the mountain tops that nothing could destroy that love.  But I haven’t seen my son since he was a baby; can I possibly still love him?  I don’t even know who he is.  If I’m to be brutally honest with myself, my son is a stranger and whatever love I feel is for nothing but a memory.  Love is personal and I would argue that love for a stranger is superficial at best.

Love isn’t static or permanent, it’s alive and dynamic, it has a birth and a death as all living entities must.  Starve it with separation and it dies.  Life requires nurture and love requires communion.  Prison, especially prisons in the south, hinder the nurture of love.  Not just with enforced separation; two resolute people could fight the system, keeping a relationship alive with regular letters and occasional visits, but no matter how determined they are, they’re still living two different existences and it will grow more and more difficult to understand each other as time passes.  The constant castigation of a prisoner alters the very fabric of his thought process.  He must learn to roll with the blows or risk his mental health.  The only real way to minimize his personal damage is to leave the outside world behind and focus on surviving this one.  People who’ve never been brought so low as prison cannot begin to fathom what it does to someone’s psyche.  How many, no matter how strong the love, are willing to sacrifice the energy and frustration to even try to understand what changes prison is inflicting upon their loved one?  Not many, but again, life is full of lovely exceptions.

The best friend I ever had in prison was Pete.  Pete had a mother that surpassed the ordinary and it made all the difference in the quality of Pete’s existence within these malevolent walls.  She made Pete a priority and gave superlative efforts to let Pete know she was invested in his fate, no matter what.  Such was her determination that even Pete’s siblings and secondary family were forced to stay involved or face his mother’s wrath.  Pete received regular visits, money, letters and made phone calls when Texas finally started allowing them.  He never hurt for books, magazines, pictures of home, or any other of the little things a prisoner comes to cherish.  Even Pete’s friends in prison, like me, were included in his mom’s benevolence, as she often sent me books and greeting cards on my birthday and Christmas.  Imagine!  To have someone care about your birthday after years and years of barely acknowledging it yourself!  Pete’s mother made it her mission to understand prison and the policies that governed her son’s life, establishing communication with reluctant prison officials and calling regularly when there was a question or problem.  A lot of guards in our huge prison would hear Pete’s last name and say: “Oh you’re Pete! Your mom is so cool!”  So involved was Pete’s mother it had to influence the way some employees treated him.  Pete didn’t much need to worry about some of the abuses other inmates suffered, because prison officials knew they’d be held accountable by the force of nature that was his mom.  I’ve never seen anything like it.  Of course, Pete wasn’t a lifer and that makes a major difference, as it’s surely easier for a family to stay involved when reunification is possible, but involved on that level?  It was amazing.  And something tells me that even had Pete been a lifer, his mom would’ve went about it the same way.  Case in point: me, whom she has no reason to care about much less value as she would her son, even I still get occasional messages and gifts from her and Pete has been gone for years.

The commitment of Pete’s amazing mother was vital not only during Pete’s prison life, but even more so upon his release.  Pete has been a free man for several years now and I’d bet my soul he’ll never return to prison, barring Texas injustice.  That’s saying something in a system where recidivism is rampant.  Having that family support was crucial to him getting back on his feet.  Quoting The Atlantic magazine: “Incarceration pushes you out of the job market.  Incarceration disqualifies you from feeding your family with food stamps.  Incarceration allows for housing discrimination based on a criminal background check.  Incarceration increases your chances of being incarcerated again.”   The last sentence is an understatement.  Here in the south, where incarceration and recidivism rates remain the highest in the country…actually The Atlantic said we lead the whole world in incarceration rates, and recidivism is a given.  The whole system is set up for failure in a man released from prison.  There are hundreds of jobs a convicted felon cannot hold by law and thousands more that wouldn’t consider employing one regardless of the law.

Pete’s post-release success story is so uncommon I tend to view even short-timers as lifers of a sort.  The only difference between them and me is that they’re doing a life sentence in increments instead of consecutively.  Most of them keep coming back, their sentences growing each time.  Soon enough they come to the realization that they’re disposable, institutionalized and that they have no place outside of a prison.

I often think of Pete’s mom when I consider these kids, these statistics around me.  She hurdled all of the obstacles a Texas penitentiary placed before her and they were considerable.  Southern prisons don’t promote family interaction.  Quite the opposite.

European prisons emphasize policies that prevent inmates from being isolated from their families and surprisingly, from society.  Their prison systems focus on rehabilitation, perhaps because they don’t want the recidivism rates that plague their American counterparts.  They institute programs to keep prisoners mentally and socially adapted to the world they must be returned to.  Many Americans are conditioned to believe such programs are too liberal and soft on crime.  Yet Europe must be doing something right because their crime and incarceration rates per capita are much, much lower than ours.

While few American state prison systems even give lip service to rehabilitation anymore, there are still a few that make an effort to keep families connected.  Unlike Texas and her Confederate sisters who often place hundreds of miles between a prisoner and his family, some states do transfers within the state as a matter of course to make it easier for families, many mired in poverty, to come visit.  Their visitation hours are far more generous, the phone time unlimited and reasonably priced and letters are actually encouraged, again without limit on indigent postage.  Some prison systems even have counselors who will call the family when the inmate is struggling.  There are even a precious number of state prisons that still allow conjugal visits, though I can promise you it’s not because they are kind people or soft on crime.  Perhaps they use it as a behavioral tool, knowing men will make sacrifices for loved ones that they never would for themselves.  Or maybe they believe companionship and intimacy are vital to cement bonds that will surely die with enforced separation.  Maybe they do it out of common sense:  if you intentionally destroy a man’s contact with the world and poison his relationships, leave him without the humanizing traits of love and empathy, abuse him like an ugly insect everyday, year after year: what kind of person are you developing?  Or maybe those states do it because of the bottom line, it’s expensive to keep the revolving door of the justice system going.

But I personally have never had to worry about family.  Texas is where I am and more importantly, it’s where Michael is, and his family.  Texas brags politically about the punitive austerity of its prison system and that’s not likely to change no matter how high their recidivism rate becomes.  In the south, execution and warehousing are the only politically correct ways to deal with crime.  If you have family in this system the policies are clearly insinuating that you should abandon them or be persecuted with them.

I could hope for a different outcome, but I don’t believe Michael stands a chance.  In twenty years it’s almost certain that Michael will be as alone and hopeless as I am.  The world will have abandoned him and he in turn will have abandoned the world.