🔵 By Kenneth Zamarron. Photo by lauragrafie.
I was four or five years old, during that hopeless, break, and terrifying night, as a small child, my innocence was violently and mercilessly ripped away, I did not know how to speak those herculean words: “Help me!”
“Any one please help me!” Is what I wanted to scream in fear, in outrage, and in misery, yet in darkness I remained mute. I would continue in agonizing silence as that first night became many.
With unresolved confusion, pain and rage in both my heart and mind, I started acting out. I became violent, surely, and combative, lashing out at any perceived slight or offense, no matter how innocuous, all of which led me to be labeled a trouble child. In retrospect, such conduct on my part was a manifestation of my desperate need for help in banishing a demonical, so-called human, who used me, a mere child, as an object for his sexual gratification.
Despite my most fervent desires, no help was forthcoming. No bright, white-robed heroic angel to cast out that malignant spirit of the night came to my rescue. Those traumatic experiences couples with maltreatment and domestic violence in the household, multiple parental separations, an alcoholic father, poverty, racism due to me having been biracial: Hispanic and Caucasian, and educational impairment together dramatically increased my risk factors for, “Adverse Childhood Experiences.” (ACE’s).
The Federal Government’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention have endorsed the ACE’s Risk Accumulation, which analyzes the impact of ten individual adverse childhood experiences. Among the references experiences are constellation of problems involving the issue of “executive function” and “affective regulation”, both of which the underdeveloped teenager brain struggles Deficiencies with respect thereto often manifest as violent behavior directed at self or others, substances abuse, and depression.
As it pertains to me, not knowing how to ask for help as a child grew into a mindset in my early teens where I remain numb, unchanged, and persistently acting out. I began to associate with other teens who, like myself had been labeled as troubled. As a negative – behavior reinforcing group, we all began experimenting with copious amounts of alcohol, which ultimately led to us having experimented with drugs. For me, both alcohol and drugs were a mechanism to help keep evil spirits from permanently destroying me. Only had I reached out for help!
I fully understand what I did can in no way be justified or excused. Just thinking about what I am about to write makes me feel like getting up as fast as I can and running away from his paper and pen. I want to run from guilt, run from shame, run from fear. However, I must take full responsibility for my unconscionable actions. I killed a completely innocent man and victimized so many others, all of which resulted in the Court having imposed upon me at sixteen years of age a justifiable sentence of ninety-seven years and one-half years, what is essentially life without the possibility of parole, or what is commonly called a “Methuselah” sentence, named after the Biblical figure who reportedly lived to be 962 years of age.
Nevertheless, even after my arrest, sentencing and transfer to prison, I had not fully awaken and dialectically questioned myself. I continued to act out, and when one acts out in prison, the administration has a place for you called the Secure Housing Unit, or simply the Shu (pronounce “Shoe”), or what I refer to as psychological and physical hell. Once in the SHU, prisoners are usually locked in a cell for twenty-three hours a day with nothing to do, as a result one thinks of the past, the present, and the future. As Carl Jung once said, “No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell.”
My day of reckoning came when my father drove nearly five hours to visit me and found out that he could not give me a hug owing to the fact I had been placed in the SHU for me having gotten into a physical altercation with another inmate. While in the SHU, one is separated from his visitors by a thick sheet of Plexiglas, or one has visits via a video-conference. There are no physical contact visits for prisoners in the SHU as a result of safety and security concerns, all of which prompted my father to interrogate me regarding my actions and the reasons for which I had been placed in the SHU. Subsequently, my father looked at me with profoundly sad eyes and with a sigh placed a hand on his head and asked: “Why? Why, son, are you not changing? I know I made many mistakes and was not the best father to you kids… but I just want to give a hug to my son.” He said.
Days later, in my cramped, cold prison cell, I thought of my father and his sad words and countenance. I stood at my metal icy sink and critically looked into the mirror for the first time and saw the image of the person I had truly become. I then thought of Socrates’ words I had just read, “The life which is unexamined is not worth living.” Tears began to flood down my face and moisten the dark concrete floor. The air seemed to escape that small cell as I placed my hands on the wall to steady myself as I suddenly came to the painful and all too stark realization I had in certain respects became like that specter of evil that had victimized me during my early childhood not only to the person I had killed and his family, but my city, my state, and even my country. Moreover, I had become a profound and unremitting disappointment to those I professed to love most – my own family, as I had betrayed the devotion and trust they had for me.
Engaging in deep introspection both that day and the remaining period of the time I was in the SHU, I finally said to myself, “No more!” It was time to truly change for the better. I needed to confront all my demons and transform my mindset as Carl Jung once said, “I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.” I prayed to God and asked for his divine assistance. With faith, I began to work toward the difficult task to self-education and, even though it was not mandated by department of correction policy, I sought out help from the Facility’s Mental Health Department. Over time, the chains which had bound me fell off and I became free.
Upon reflection, I realized that most prisoners it seems were inwardly weak and hurt individuals who, from my perspective, had never utter their lips that mighty word, “Help!” all of which made me wonder about both my inner self and society as a whole. Why is it apparently so difficult for us to vocalize that particular four-letter word? Is it pride, fear, honor or insecurity that cocoons us, or is it some other reason?
If, like me, you were victimized, either psychologically or physically as a child, you are all too aware of how such abuse in one’s early childhood development wrecks widespread havoc in one’s life. Yet, in spite of the pain and shame, I firmly believe you can be an overcomer and you can, with sufficient effort win the fight to have a joyful life, and conquer your demons. Do not let your pain ruin your life or others. I urge, plead, and advise you to seen out professional assistance. It is ok to ask for help.
As for me, it is a hard fact I still owe an un-payable debt to society, so I do my best to help other people exercise their own demons by being an example of courage every time I share my story and articulate, without reservation or embarrassment the word that the world perceives as the most challenging and yet ultimately emancipating. Help.