The safest I had ever been

I am worried that this part of the story could be taken wrong by the wrong kind of people.  I worry about lots of things.  Maybe we will get lucky and none of those types will ever read it.  That someone out there might take what I have to say in regards to the effects of this on my life as being justification for this procedure on others would be outrageous to me.  Do not use my abuse as justification for the abuse of others.  Even in a slight degree this would be terrible to me.  I have studied the effects of thoughts so let me be clear that it is abuse.  It is torture.  I believe there were thousands of other ways it could have come about if people actually had my best interest in mind, but this was the way it happened for me.  I had to make the best of what I had or I wasn’t going to survive.  I do not condone this technique used by the criminal justice system, but all the same it saved my life. 

Locked away in a cell all by myself was truly the safest I had ever felt in my entire life.  Emerson claims that one does not know what they are meant to do in life until they have done it.  It turns out that I was meant to spend massive amounts of time alone in this life.  I use the word massive because I mean it is a lot compared to most other people I have ever known.  I would never have known this fact about myself I don't think without it having been forced on me.  Possibly you could say I was lucky.

I wonder how I could have ever figured out this fact about my personality if I had not been in that situation as I was.  It is not something I could see myself ever guessing and getting right living on the outside.  Seriously, who just wakes up one day and goes, "You know what, I need to spend tons of time alone in life to be happy."  Who does that?  It's not that I don't like to have friends and a social life, I just have to recharge the batteries.  I definitely have my own mental world that requires a lot of energy. 

It really makes that life lesson hit home, about not knowing what you are meant to do until you have done it.  Out in society I would have never been alone ever.  My mother issues would never have allowed it.  That seventeen year old me feared nothing in life more than being alone.  Without something really drastic I would have been doomed in life.  Because of how I was raised it created a maddening feeling inside me feeling alone.  A panic.  An energy that wreaked havoc on my psyche. I would have always latched onto anyone I could.  Even after being forced into this situation I still had to fight it for a long time after getting out. 

Raised like an animal, I was now caged like one.  That is where I found myself; in an eight by eleven cage.  It also made me realize for the first time what an animal I was.  Not totally of course, I was only seventeen, but it was the beginning of the process even though I didn't realize it at the time.  I would end up spending over half a year solitarily confined before this part of the incarceration story is over.  All that time alone gave me a chance to realize things about myself that I couldn't have realized in constant proximity with people who never had my best intentions in mind.  Even now I don't really know how to communicate the glory of it. 

There I was at seventeen facing my greatest fear right in the face, yet doing so in the safest environment I have ever known in my life.  It seems spiritual to me now looking back. 

For the first time in my life I was completely aware of how I alone I was in the universe.  Yet no one could hurt me.  No one could use me.  No one could get to me at all.  I couldn’t have killed myself if I wanted to.  Armed guards were literally protecting me.  Those cops more than anyone else in the world had my best intentions in mind as far as my physical protection was concerned.  It’s true they just wanted a paycheck, but they still weren’t going to let anything happen. 

Reinforced glass, electronic doors, concrete walls, everything bolted down.  Safe.  I was finally safe.  I had to do horrible things to be safe.  Isn’t that ironic?  I never really wanted to hurt anyone in life, but I was so angry at the world I couldn’t contain it.  For the first time in my life I could think my own thoughts and I would not be punished for it.  There was no one there to punish me. 

It was the kindergarten of my mental training in life.  In there, all alone, I was free to think as I pleased.  No harm could come to me because I was as far down in the hole as I could get.  It really couldn’t get much worse, and absolutely no one was going to help me.  Another life lesson shoved straight into my being; there is no one to take care of me, but me. 

I am not kidding about the kindergarten metaphor either.  It took me over two decades to finally get comfortable with my own loneliness, and I've spent more time alone than anyone I know.  I’ve practiced a lot.  If I don't get alone time I don't feel good, but the cultural pressure to not be alone is tremendous. Most people don’t understand when you need weeks at a time alone.  It’s hard on those I live with when they actually like to be around me.

It's been a theme in my life; being alone has a price, and so does not being alone.   It's really no different than not having parents because everyone just immediately assumes something is wrong with you if you don't.  It immediately conjures up negative energy in this culture.  Yet the spiritual benefit of not having parents is profound.  Most people think something is wrong with a person if they are alone so they never discover what it is for themselves. 

Doing months of solitary confinement at seventeen and eighteen saved my life quite literally.  Without that time I would never have been able to calm down enough to survive what was to come.  But again, there are thousands of other ways, with the help of others that could have been used to help me calm down.   I am not talking about drugs either.  All I ever needed was someone who understood my situation, but there is no college degree for life. The justice system simply is not apathetic to abused people so they just throw us in a cell.  It was a cruel thing to do considering my situation, yet it saved me all the same.

I don't remember how long they kept me in the hole while in county jail.  It was several months all said and done.  They needed that cell for other things so they literally cleared an entire cell block just for me for a while.  I still had a couple of months to go before my court proceedings were finished, and then I had to wait in line to go to FRDC.  Fulton Reception and Diagnostic Center was less than a mile from the jail I was in, but the waiting line didn't care.  The prison system was over crowded then like it is now.  It's a big business keeping poor people poor. 

Even while in my own cell block, all alone, I still wasn't allowed to have my shoes.  Cops love to feel powerful.  Who was I going to kick while in a cell block by myself?  Myself?  I didn't care.  I have no problems showing law enforcement all the deference they want.  Being maced and having your ass kicked by multiple cops just isn’t worth it.  They can kill you and not get into any trouble.  My ego and I were getting to officially know each other.  My struggle in life isn't with the police, or the justice system, but with the culture that allows it.

It's amazing the things we will tell ourselves to stay alive.  I didn't really want to die anymore.  I flipped the switch on my own, with my own mind.  I took some control of my life.  It is amazing how easy it is to figure out certain things while talking to one’s self all alone all the time.  You get to know things about yourself you just can’t learn any other way.  How do you describe the view from the top of a mountain to someone who has never even seen a hill?  You can't.  They have to climb it, and see it with their own eyes.

You ever seen that Tom Hanks movie where he gets stranded on an island because of a plane crash?  Spend a couple of months all alone and you will talk to yourself too.  Talking to myself literally saved me.  It grew me up mentally.  I became my own friend.  I was all I had.  Whether you realize it or not, you are all you have too.  Being alone frees one from external criticism.  For the first time in my life I got to be me, fucked up as that was.   

I had to start somewhere.  I was perfectly aware that sketchy times were coming my way.