🔵 By Timothy Brunner. Photo by lauragrafie.
“Home” is a concept that is likely far different in my mind than what’s typically evoked in others. I loved my family with a tenacity that was remarkable, but it was a strained love. We loved each other because we needed each other. Instead of encouraging mutual growth to the benefit of the community by the uplifting of each individual, I cam to know a codependent love that exchanged or bartered in a way that felt more like losing something than contributing anything.
It sounds so harsh when I put it into words, but my way with words cuts true. Surgical, exposing the tumors. I am not putting down anyone here; we did the best we could in a no win situation and with every little help. There was definitely a hole I had to fill, though, and it is much the same now as it was then. Full circle around the rim of my black hole that is loneliness, just past the event horizon.
At some point I found the love and loyalty that true friendship bestows. It’s not something that can ever be earned or deserved because no one person can be entitled to another, so it is bestowed upon those blessed enough to find it. My friends became my inner-circle to, not so much replace, but to fulfill the role my family could not. It was almost like my family was preparing me for a cruel world while my friends helped me accept that cruel world.
I look back on what those bonds gave be when I was lost in the depths of an existential despair. With no purpose given to me, those relationships allowed me to be something, someone so much more than I could alone. Individuality is bound by the limits of the person, but community is only contained by the universe. My friends freed me of my self and gave me a community. They gave me my world.
I lost friends long before I ever came to prison. I was 14 years old when a friend died from a drug overdose as I slept next to him. At 15 years old I saw another friend shot in his face and killed. Loss has never been a stranger to me so I used it to lend greater value to the bonds that remained. The joy is sweeter through the bitterness of tears. That is one idealism that I have lost touch with. I have been in prison since January 21st, 2000. I watched my love, my community, die for 25 years. Everyday that I wake to witness the corpse of my life is worse than when I help the corpse of my friend when I was 15. Both are just lifeless. If hell is an external separation from God, and God is love; I’ve been prepped for the fires. Toasted and crippled.
So, what’s left now, bereft of love and seasoned in despair? I find it easier today to do “the right thing” for its own sake than ever before. It’s odd, but with no more concern about the judgment of others I seem to care more about my own judgment. I am definitely my own harshest critic. Maybe my longing for what I’ve watched slowly wither and die changed me. Or maybe I am just getting old.
I can’t remember who said, “No man is an island”. Maybe Emerson. Perhaps no man should be an island, but there are some isles of man that are scarcely populated. My island has become a desolate no man’s land, regardless of its population.