Before you read this post, please start here. This
is a link to a post my mother wrote about an event we attended together, and
this post is a continuation of that.
To answer the question my mother ended the post with, no,
not really. I have spent enough time over the past year getting out of my head,
which was as bad as any cell I lived in during my incarceration. I wasn’t
afraid of speaking in front of people because it is more than routine in the
rooms of A.A. and the subject matter is something I think I have enough facts
on.
I was, however, nervous that I might be late, so I left home
with about an hour to spare before start time and arrived twenty minutes before
anybody else, and 45 minutes before the start of the program. I’ve been working
now for a year, and I’ve never been later than 15 minutes early, which I
believe carries over from boot camp. It’s one of the few things that I hold on
to because I perceive being late as a threat to my freedom. With just one week
left on I.S.R., I’m still kind of nervous that somehow they will find a way to
throw me back in prison.
So I arrived at the C.V.T., and helped arrange a basket of cookies
then sat down in a chair that was organized as part of a circle. This wasn’t
how it looked in my brain ahead of time, but it was ok because there were far
fewer chairs, which meant less people. Maybe I was nervous that I would have to
speak in front of people. They say that you should picture people naked when
you’re speaking, and that should calm the nerves. Well, I’ve been picturing
people without clothing for about a month now and it hasn’t helped. Also, none
of the people I had pictured were there. Wait, what am I even supposed to be
talking about? Fuck, should I have prepared? I didn’t even bring an outline. I
better eat a few cookies.
I was supposed to talk about how my time in seg impacted my relationships on the outside. I had actually decided earlier that I would read a blog post
and dissect it along the way, and go from there. I chose the material I had written while I was
sitting in segregation, which consisted of parts of the five sheets of paper I
was given to use during the six days I was there. I had my mom print it off
ahead of time, and I sat in the chair going over it, and greeting people as
they arrived if I knew them. I was happy to see a good show of friends of the
family and family to support us in this cause. I saw some people I had not seen
since childhood, and it was pretty neat. The hardest thing I had to do was
greet the guy who sat down next to me. Shit like that scares me. I have no idea
why, but it takes everything I have to say, “Hi, I’m Vince.” But I did it, and
the guy didn’t stab me. He actually introduced himself.
It's things like that that I didn’t get to talk about
because there wasn’t enough time. It wasn’t just prison that took all of my
social skills away, it was likely the decade of drug and alcohol abuse before
that time I did, that had the greatest effect on my anxiety. Spending days
locked in apartments, rooms, and driving alone for days as a drug dealer,
followed by a year and a half of living in 8X10 rooms with toilet/sink
combinations and steel bars was devastating, especially when they released me
to a program where I’m rarely allowed to leave the house under penalty of a
return trip to the clink, which, for a while I actually thought would be
easier. Fuck. Did any of that make sense?
It took a lot of work and a lot of time to get where I am
now, and that’s not even really that far compared to most people my age, but
bounds and leaps compared to a lot of men that have left prison just a year
ago.
I yearn for the things that would make me a normal,
functional, more than just breathing member of society, but some days that’s
all I can come up with. I think often about how I’m nearly 40 and will possibly
never be able to afford to buy a house, or be normal enough to have a wife and
family. I wonder if I’m doomed to a life of solitude, because that’s the life I
lived for so long. Even when I was surrounded by friends, I was still alone in
my little world, and I’m never completely comfortable unless I’m by myself,
which is when I start to think about how much I wish I had more friends, and
maybe a girlfriend. But there I am, locked in my room, reading a book or
watching Netflix.
And that is how prison, and my life as an addict has affected
my relationships.
