🔵 By Timothy Brunner. Photo by lauragrafie.
My frustrations have been defeating my determination, lately. The frustration is harder to overcome at the moment. Not the issues causing my frustrations, just those feelings themselves. I have always been emotional; passionate. I have also always had extensive self-control when necessary. That self-control is weak right now and the result is a lot of ground being lost in my retreat.
In this backsliding I have found an old friend… in myself.
In my frustration I am closer to the man who made the decisions that ended up with me in here for life than I have been in over a decade. I am at this point because the people who control this facility have me in a place where I hate on a level that stirs my passion beyond my ability to reason.
I remember a lesson from a novel by Terry Goodkind that says passion rules reason. People will act on the fear that something may be true, even if it isn’t. The passionate emotion becomes stronger than the desire to see reality. I have been threatened by the prison administration for an even where I did nothing wrong. Though this is acknowledged by them as well, they do not care. I am fairly certain that if I am faced with the actualization of the threat I will backslide and find that old friend whom I thought I had buried years ago. I see now that we… no; individual responsibility… I see now that I am always one resurrection away from the man who walked me into prison forever.
I have convinced myself that it doesn’t even matter because I will die in here regardless of any decision I make. Ever. If there is no redemption why should I buy into a system that is designed to benefit only those who get the opportunity to go home one day? In that light, I am only going to suffer because I continue to act like their rules are going to benefit me. My current dilemma is that after 19 years in this prison without a single institutional infraction I am being threatened with a loss of the only privileges my good behavior can ever earn me. The reason for the threat is my lack of a job, while the reason I do not have a job is because the job I had was eliminated and I was not assigned another. I would accept a job if given one, but I am instead being told I will be moved off of an honor block so another person who has a job can take my place. The privileges offered on an honor block are the only benefit that exists for a man serving life.
The root of my frustration is that it doesn’t matter that I have 19 years in this prison with no misconducts, investigations, incident reports, or even a bad job report. It isn’t considered that I took care of and showered a man with my own hands 3 times a week for almost a year because he was dying of Parkinson’s disease. It isn’t even important that I help a blind inmate on a daily basis with tasks he is unable to undertake himself. Nothing that I do matters in the face of one staff members vindictiveness.
In that case, I lose everything I worked for over 19 years to earn.
No, I don’t lose everything. I only lose what I agree to place value on according to their system, right? In order for the loss to hurt, I have to value what they take. The man I was had no value for the privileges they are now threatening to take. Only the man I have become tries to retain a sense of humanity and cares.
So, in defense of my self, I am returning to the amoral man who made the choices that got me here. I am very close to a level of violence that, ironically, this place has never seen from me. I have convinced myself that there is not just a lack of benefit to resisting those impulses, but also no measurable consequences for giving in. Why, then continue to resist it?
If I am removed from an honor block because my job was dissolved and I was not given another, there is a very good chance that I will regress. I am simply calling it as I see it because I do not believe my reason can overcome my passion here. Or maybe my reason is in line with my passion. After all, if 19 years following the rules gains me nothing, nothing can be lost by not following them. I do know that if I am moved then 19 years of exemplary behavior will have meant absolutely nothing to this institution. None of this is a threat in anyway, it is just my reality; the mismanagement of this facility creates these paradoxes for us when staff are permitted to carry out vindictive patters of behavior.
I accept my personal responsibilities. I will not accept theirs.