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Other essays on this theme
Essay: "Isolation and Solitude"by James Goggans Isolation and solitude in prison means:
1.Being one of 55 in your assigned dorm, one of 800 under a single roof, and feeling that there is not one of the individuals sharing your miserable experience who you could or would want to consider a friend. DTA (Don’t Trust Anybody) is alive and well in the prison system.
2.Not being able to mourn or emote my father’s death in November 2007. If you cry or otherwise show emotion, they put you in Administrative Segregation (lock-up) “for your own good.”
3.Not being able to be as supportive of or as gracious or helpful to others as you would in “the world,” in here, kindness means weakness and weakness means a struggle to survive.
4.The frustration of your experience when interacting with others from “the world” (I am a Library Assistant and work in the Education Department amongst civilian teachers, secretaries, etc…) who try hard not to show their distaste and distrust of you and who consider themselves so much better than you. Yet, you know you are more educated, more legitimately successful, and in general a much more tolerant, helpful, “good” person than they. They don’t realize that in today’s heavily criminalized society, they themselves are just milliseconds from an error or judgment that will make them a resident of your environs.
5.The feeling and belief (and eternal hope) that you are somehow more worthwhile, better than (or at least not as bad as) your fellow inmates. You constantly justify why they need to be in here and you should have never been put in here.
6.Being 350 miles away from your family. How you wish they would write more often, but how you know a day outside equals a week inside and they have a life to live. Just because they are busy taking care of their business doesn’t mean they don’t love you or think about you. How you are so glad you don’t get visits like the other guys do, but you wish your folks cared enough about you to visit occasionally. Then again, you really don’t because the goodbyes are so difficult.
7.How you bemoan the fact that you are so lonely, that you wish you had a wide or a girl-friend who wrote you, came to visit, put money on your books, etc… Yet, you are never alone here: you shower with others under the watchful eyes of officers; you use the bathroom likewise; you brush your teeth, comb your hair, wash your face bumping elbows with others; you cannot pass gas without someone else being there to share the experience; people know when and how much mail you get and are never too bashful to be nosy about it; you must sleep with one eye open at all times.
8.You wish you could be alone enough at times so you don’t have to listen to the trash others watch on TV.
9.You wish your view were more than bars to the front, looking into a hallway; cubicles full of convicts all around you in three directions; and an opening window (I’m one of the lucky few!) out of which the view is always the same twenty feet of grass between this building and the next, a like building full of windows that is used for non-contact visitation and other such things; yet you can never see what’s going on inside.
10.Perhaps the most significant manifestation of solitude and isolation: the lack of caring touches (pat searches don’t qualify), hugs, kisses, looks. You know that if you are touched in here, it was either an inadvertent bump or an unwelcome touch prelude to an unpleasant situation.
11.Having to endure the inanities of those appointed to “baby-sit” you, knowing that as friendly as you each try to make the situation, he/she cannot/will not trust you and you damned sure don’t trust him/her. Hell, you can’t even stand them or what they stand for, although you can understand and appreciate that they are just trying to make a living. Nonetheless, you wonder what kind of creature could tolerate dealing with (sometimes dealing more)/participating in making or causing another human’s misery; these people are paid to make this experience a miserable one!! Some do it grudgingly; too many do it gleefully.
12.Reading everything (and I mean everything) you can get your hands on to ensure that you’re too busy to hear the nonsensical garbage going on around you, or too preoccupied to truly feel how sad, depressed, and empty you truly are.
13.Having thoughts and feelings of guilt, shame, worthlessness, failure, hopelessness, doubtfulness rush at you at any time you allow your mind to be the least bit idle.
14.Even what they call you (OFFENDER) makes you feel set apart as less than, undesirable, different in a bad sort of way, etc… When your mind is idle, you dwell on how outcast and alone you really are.
15.All the time alone breeds such negative thoughts, fears, etc… (We always imagine things will be much worse than they usually turn out to be, but we wallow in those fears and worries. The more time we spend in the mire, the more ridiculous and enhanced " upon reflection later " the fears are.
16.At first, there is hope and expectation of making first parole. (“My offense isn’t that bad.”) When that is denied, we look forward to our short-way discharge, when they have to let us out because I haven’t done anything to lose any good time. But, whoa: Texas now has a law that they can take your short-way (they took mine two days before I was to go home. Some guys learn only when they’re heading out the door to home that their short-way has been taken and they must return to prison). Much hope has been lost and plans torn asunder, but still there’s hope that we’ll be released next time. We lose still more hope when it doesn’t happen next time. Eventually, there is no hope and no good expectations. We become resentful of, but at the same time glad for, those who are going home. You still think you should be the one " not them " leaving. You always constantly compare cases and worthiness; how your offense is not as bad as his, how you’re such a better guy than he is. You drive yourself crazy trying to figure out the logic behind the terrible illogical system.
17.You and your family never really got along, so you think you have no place to go. They can’t love you and they can’t want you around. You think that, although they tell you they want you home, you think they don’t really mean it, and even if they do, something will happen at the last minute and they will tell you “you can’t stay here,” so you’d better look for a halfway house or somewhere else to go. You become angry and tell yourself “I’ll show them (your family). I’ll never write, call, or visit ever again.” Keep in mind that your family has done nothing but say, “please come home” and gone about their business, but the isolation and solitude as allowed the “what ifs,” and the fears convince you that they don’t love you and don’t want you.
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