The day finally came.

The day finally came.  We had about a week and a half notice that our position in line was coming any day.  I had been sentenced to ten years in the Dept. of Corrections for 1st Degree Assault, 1st Degree Armed Robbery, and Armed Criminal Action.  Because of my age I got the minimum sentence.  Somehow my public defender finagled a way for me to go into a 120 day treatment facility within the prison system.  It gave me some hope that I could get out, but I wasn’t really buying it.  They weren't going to let me out after less than a year for robbing a bank.  That kind of thing only happens for rich people.  Please realize I am not bitter now, like I was then, but that really is how it works in this broken culture.  Judges are as crooked and ignorant as the rest they simply have acquired power.

Showing fear while incarcerated simply is not an option.  It's like immediate spiritual karma; fear gets one harmed.  Showing fear is the worst possible thing one can do.  It didn't matter that I was only seventeen.  It didn't matter that my parents were cops.  It didn't matter that I was in way over my head.  I simply could not show fear.  I pumped myself up so much so that I didn't feel the fear.  The truth is I had no idea what to expect.

There were at least twenty other inmates being received that day.  The place was just like the jail with the cinder blocks, glass, and steel bolted down everywhere.  We were all put into a big holding room and made to strip down.  After being stripped searched we were all left naked in that room while waiting to be processed.  We didn't even get to keep towels on while we waited.  Privacy does not exist in prison.  One at a time they would call out a name.  They were handing out rule books, prison ID cards, clothes, doing physical examinations, that kind of stuff. 

Everyone sizing everyone up, which never ever stops in prison; ever.   Prison is much like being with a woman; if you relax at all you are going to get fucked over.  It had to be obvious as could be that I was just a kid.  People were already talking about how young I looked.  My partner was sitting next to me.  He just told me to keep quiet. 

There were several different rooms where these various things were happening.  One room for the ID, one for the physical, one for checking in possessions, etc.  While sitting in one of the rooms talking to a guard about my possessions another inmate grabbed my bag and took the carton of cigarettes out of it.  Even the guard didn't notice it happen.  As soon as I realized it had happened I started running my mouth.  Naturally it was the biggest dude in the whole group who took them, and he too was in there for some serious shit.  I found out later that he had been down several times already so he didn’t really give a shit.  In prison one's ID number is equated with a certain degree of respect.  The older the number the more respect.  This cat had an old number.  All I was thinking was that I wasn't going to let my shit get stolen right off the get, whether I was a kid or not, I was going to stick up for myself.

Holy shit I was in way over my head.  My first two hours in prison was fucking scary.  I might as well have been floating all alone out in the middle of the ocean with the sharks circling my feet.  Might as well have dropped me off in the middle of a jungle somewhere.  Cats were going to be after me for no other reason that my age.  Survival seems to be mostly luck in these kinds of situations. 

The guards were immediately in my business because I was openly running my mouth.  Somehow they got my smokes back from the dude.  Writing this I still feel sketched inside.  Even now, as I am with several years training to cage fight that guy would be a hand full.  I had no idea how badly my life was in danger.  It was all happening so fast.  Then my name got called for the next step in the receiving process.  They were checking me in.  In prison there are certain status' that no one wants and being checked in is one of those.  Being checked in means that one is being segregated from the main population for one's own protection.  Being checked in is completely viewed as weakness. 

Even locked away in prison this bitch was still fucking up my life, but looking back it wasn’t the worst thing that could have happened to me.  I just really hated the bitch. 

My name was flagged; my file had red tape on it because JoAnn was a correctional officer.  It is their policy to not allow those with family as prison employees into general population.  If someone wanted to bribe her, or control her, or pay her back, or whatever, they could get at me to do so.  I was only pissed that they did it right in front of everyone.  I got checked in publicly.  I might as well have just acted afraid.  I was cussing at the cops for doing it that way.  They didn’t care.

Back into the hole I go.  It would be months before being sent to that treatment program.  Everything in prison has a waiting line.  Prison is different than the county jail though.  In jail they force you to come out of your cell all day.  In prison they force you to stay in it.  I was allowed out of my cell for thirty minutes every day for a shower and to walk around the cell block.  It’s inhumane to keep someone locked up 24/7.  The other difference was the number of cells per cell block.  Each cell block had nearly fifty inmates.  In prison it is never quiet.  Never.  Being in the hole in prison was much more dramatic than in jail.  Not even the people who bring around the food talk to you.  The guards never talk to you when they do their counts. 

Their job is to make sure no one dies, which happens more than you would think.  An old man died in my cell block in those first months.  He was in the hole for similar reasons as me.  His age prevented him from being able to protect himself.  I couldn’t help but wonder though, if I would be like him and never leave my cell either.  The inmate who was allowed out of his cell complained bitterly about having to clean out the dead guy’s cell.  The guards told him they would take away his freedom if he didn’t.  He cleaned that cell. 

Each cell block had an inmate that was allowed out more than the half an hour a day everyone else got.  He was responsible for cleaning and running errands for the guards.  This was the only person that really ever talked to me.  He wanted my Kool cigarettes.  I really didn’t care what I smoked as long as I had something to smoke, so he and I traded cigs until I ran out.  I quickly figured out I could get twice as many cheap cigarettes for my name brand ones.  He would always try to run game on me, but it is pretty safe business bartering through a door that does not ever open.  He couldn't do shit to me for telling him no if I didn’t like his offers. 

This is also when I found The Grapes of Wrath.  It was just sitting on the book shelf in the cell block.  It was just a small book shelf.  Three shelves maybe three feet long.  It's kind of like being hungry; the hungrier one is the better things taste.  The more bored one is the better a book will seem.  It always has seemed to me that the books I need somehow are always there.  Forever after books have had a way of finding themselves in my hand.  The right book at just the right time.  It happens to me so much I almost expect it.  Locked down as I was I really had no choice but to face my own self.  Besides reading there was nothing else to do.  I wasn’t allowed to have a cell mate, so there wasn’t anyone else to face.  Those were long months.  Lonely business that was, even though it saved me. 

There were a few times that I would be allowed out of my cell for more than the daily thirty minutes.  These were exciting times.  It always seemed random too.  Part of what happens at FRDC is that one is accessed to see which prison they should go to, and even though I was going into this treatment program they still had to do their evaluations.  They do several different kinds of these in the months spent waiting in line.  Education, mental health, personality type, that kind of stuff.  They have you take all kinds of tests.

It didn’t take them long to figure out what they were dealing with because I was never one to hide the fact that I had been raised violently.  I was so bitter and angry about it that I would speak harsh words regarding that situation to anyone, any chance I got.  Upon them hearing this information I was required to meet with a councilor every so often. 

One of the initial people who evaluated me was an older woman.  She didn't seem to have the same shit attitude towards inmates that most in the prison system have.  She saved my life and I doubt she had any clue that she had done so.  She was questioning me about my experiences so far being incarcerated, the charges, about my past, that kind of thing.  She could obviously tell that I had a fierce temper.  I learned it from those who raised me.  It was a deep part of me.  She just calmly looked me in the eyes and told me point blank that if I did not reign in my temper that prison was going to be a long haul.  She explained that my life would be in danger with such a temper.  The rules of life had changed.  She informed me that if I did not do something about my temper that I would have no chance of ever getting out.  I had no choice but to heed her words. 

That was my first experience of shedding a part of my self.  I did it all alone too.  When I came out of that stretch of solitary confinement I had reduced my temper to something I could control.  I'm not saying that I never got angry and lashed out, but that it was now controlled when I did so.  You see, it was safe for me to cry in there.  No one thinks you’re weak for crying if no one sees you cry.  There wasn't anyone in there to call me a pussy for having feelings.   I had to mourn a part of myself, not my true self, but a part of myself that I had created to survive.  I was mourning it because I was getting rid of it.  For the first time in my life I changed myself.  My temper had been something I identified with deeply.  It was a sense of self preservation, something I used to keep me safe, it was the chest plate of my façade.  That suit of armor though was as outdated as the real thing.  I had to let it go or I wasn't going to make it.

This experience was much like figuring out that I am someone who needs to be alone.  How in the outside world would I ever have reigned in my temper?  The dude who got JoAnn pregnant never reigned in his.  He still has it to this day.  The step dad who abused me never reigned in his.  How would I have learned to reign in mine on the outside?  In the free world I would have been another runaway train doomed to a white trash life.  In prison it was get my shit together or potentially not make it.  For the first time in my life I did the right thing. 

I hadn't formulated it entirely in my consciousness yet, but my energy was no longer about destroying myself.  I turned that energy into not being like them.  No other decision I have ever made was as important as that one.  I just had no idea how difficult that path was going to be.  It's not like I really had much choice.  If I didn't take action I was going to be just like the people I hated more than anything in life.  That just wasn't an option for me.