🔵 By Xavier Nixon. Photo by lauragrafie.
Have you ever been in a place that you thought you couldn’t get out of? A place of mental torment where you felt isolated from the world? Where nobody could reach you, and when they tried you pushed them out to unconsciously remain in your solitary confinement? It’s not that you want to be alone in this place… your soul longs for the affection that you have been deprived of for so long. But, for some reason, as soon as someone gets close, you close yourself off, put your wall up against them, and end up regressing… feeling hopeless. Like, „What the hell is wrong with me? Why do I keep doing this? Why can’t I just be normal, and live a normal life like everyone else around me? Why can’t I shut my brain off, and stop resorting to these default thought patterns?“
Well, that’s the place where I find myself in at the present moment. That’s the place where I keep going back to over, and over, and over again. I’ve been locked up physically for some time now, but the incarceration in my mind has been much more significant. It’s easy to put up a front when interacting with other people like everything is okay, but on the inside there is a whirlwind destroying my soul. This whirlwind is able to be contained inside of me, until it can’t. Sometimes it seeps through the cracks and crevices of my outer shell with a sole purpose to destroy. Destroy my potential to be a good man to others, and destroy my relationships with those who try to get close to me.
When I first started my 15 year prison sentence I learned to block out the outside world, and harden all aspects of myself. Doing time thinking about the outside world and the things that are out of your control will make you go crazy in here. That’s how „hard time“ is created. So, I shut off the psychological noise of the real world, and this mere existence in here became my reality.
That helped me to get through the last 11 years in here. However, as I approach the end of this long, dark tunnel and see the light at the end of it, my heart is craving what it has been deprived of for so many years. My heart wants love and affection once again. But, something is wrong with me. Something that causes me to sabotage the rare encounters I have with people from the outside. To be more specific, with women, who reach out to me and are interested in getting to know me. They open up a line of communication with me only to be met with disappointment.
Disappointment, because what they find is a broken man. A man who has many imperfections. A very intense man who is difficult to understand. From the outside view, they see something that catches their attention and interest. Maybe the educational accomplishments, maybe the story behind this man, or maybe just a physical attraction. Whatever it is that drew these women to this man was superficial. I know that, because none of them have endured long enough to really get to know me.
Beneath the brokenness, the imperfections, and the intensity there is much more to this man than what is found on the surface level. But, no woman has been able to dig deep enough to find the true essence of this man. Beneath the brokenness, imperfections, and intensity there is a good man, with a good soul, who just wants to be understood. However, the thought of actually allowing a woman to get to know me would be selfish of me, because I truly am broken and I wouldn’t want to burden her with my flaws.
Sometimes I wonder what it will be like when I get out of here, when I am free and living in the real world once again. Will I still be like this? I was not like this before my incarceration. Is it just this place? Is it from the lack of physical touch and in-person affection from someone out there? Did something happen to me psychologically when I got locked up? Does it stem from my former romantic partner cheating on me with my friends, family, and strangers?
Ugh… that’s a whole other topic to dive into in a future writing piece. Having the woman I loved, who I was supposed to marry, have a family with, grow grey, and old with give herself sexually to the people closest to me, and to strangers. What was I doing with her? Why was I with her? I compromised myself, who I was and my values, to be with her when I knew I shouldn’t have. That was my fault. But, that pain that I felt in my heart, that pain where I felt I could not breathe, that pain where I did not want to live anymore… that pain changed me.
I don’t know exactly how, but that pain did something to me internally. When we get sentenced, we get our time to serve, and just get thrown in here like animals, with no rehabilitation. There is no help in here for us. No real psychological help to figure out what went wrong with me when I experienced that, and what followed. I have noticed that there is a direct correlation to that period in my life to my constant failed relationships with women. Maybe there are triggers that I have that cause me to push women away when they get too close.
I don’t know… I just don’t know. What I do know though, is that I’m not okay. This storm inside must be calmed. I just don’t know how to do it. I don’t know where to begin. I’m so sick and tired of not being okay, of not being able to maintain a relationship with a woman. I don’t mean to be this way, and for the few encounters I’ve had with women, the ones where I pushed them away… I’m sorry.