🔵 By Timothy Brunner. Photo by lauragrafie.
I am in a different place today than I was about two weeks ago. I am looking at things around me in a familiar and dispassionate way that has always comforted me. In that comfort I am able to relax and let go of my desire to control things enough to allow events to unfold without my interference. This is often difficult for me because giving up control implies a trust I place in almost nobody. If I give it up, who do I give the control to?
I have seemed to have forgotten that “death ground” is often a choice. Placing oneself in a position where there is no possibility of retreat is not someone else’s fault. That personal responsibility has been lacking in my outlook. Not today.
I took what others may consider to be defect and framed it in a way that the loss could not harm me. Lacking any harm, where is the loss? How’s that for perspective? I have been removing myself from many of the activities and routines that would make me a part of this prison’s “community”. In order to belong in this community there are certain requirements that I cannot live with. Lying to peoples’ faces, stabbing associates in the back, treating others as subhuman because you are afforded power with no accountability: These are not qualities I can or will exhibit or espouse, yet it is also how I was allowing the administration of this prison to coerce me into acting.
That is what this prison reforms men into. Well, not this man because I see it for what it is and I simply refuse to participate any longer. It just amazes me how much I bought into their cronyism and nepotism until the contradictions pulled me apart. Being who they wanted me to be was alienating me from all of the relationships I have rebuilt because the values they preach are completely egocentric.
I am trying not to be that person.
Yet, I see that I don’t have to TRY and NOT BE someone. I can simply not be the person that they want me to be. Back to death ground… Fuck them and their system of hypocrisy. I remove myself from the framework. This choice reminds me of who I am. Severing myself was necessary because their message is death and I need to live. Balance is a wonderful thing.